The celebration of Holy Mass on Sunday morning featured a much-loved tract from Matthew’s Gospel.

Before this bit though, Jesus lays down the law about how to deal with malcontents and bams. “And if he refuses even to listen to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”

This made me slightly edgy. It’s reasonable to imagine that at least one employee of HMRC was sitting mortified in our midst. Is this not the sort of irresponsible labelling that can trigger anxiety? What did the Prince of Peace think he was jolly well playing at?

Of course, even a thin grasp of the exegesis in this text reveals that, in the time of Jesus, tax collectors were the corrupt agents of the invading Roman interlopers. Gentiles, being non-believers, wouldn’t be expected to possess a robust moral compass anyway. The Son of God was painting pictures his audience would understand.

Even so, you can’t be too careful. Judged in the spirit of the age, priests or ministers could find themselves in severe soapy for reading such verses if they haven’t taken care to provide a warning.

The dangerous lesson at the heart of Miss Jean Brodie still resonates

I spent August at the Fringe – and one question kept coming back to me

Scottish Greens have discovered the morning roll – what could possibly go wrong?

This was reinforced the very same day by a report in a Sunday newspaper that police have arrested more than 60,000 people across the UK for speech deemed problematic, especially on social media. Research by the monitoring group Big Brother Watch found that 62,199 people have been arrested over alleged hate speech since 2021. Less than a third were later charged........

© Herald Scotland