The Roman Catholic Church has protected evil for too long We are all aware now that paedophiles may seek to conceal their abuse by presenting it to the victim as "our little secret." The younger Father Brady was instrumental in turning Brendan Smyth's abuse into the Church's little secret. The children's parents, who would have been a source of both outrage and protection, were deliberately not informed, and nor were the police. The Church saw a choice between protecting its own reputation, and shielding young children from ferocious abuse, and it unhesitatingly chose to protect itself. Quite unbelievably, it did not even take definitive steps, within its own clandestine terms, to arrest the foul behaviour of Smyth. All of which brings us to that word "authority." The phrase "what would Jesus do?" is overused. But it doesn't seem to me a bad question to ask oneself, particularly if one pursues a career soaked in scripture and moral exhortation. And whether one understands Jesus simply as an interesting historical figure, or as the Son of God, we can all surely agree on one thing: he cared nothing for earthly authority, or his own security, when fundamental questions of right and wrong hung in the balance. On what authority did he turn the money-changers out of the Temple, or prevent the gleeful mob from stoning an adulterous woman? His protective instincts were particularly strong on behalf of children: "And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea." Even if one takes that millstone as a metaphor, I have every confidence that had Jesus been in the room when Brendan Boland stuttered out his agonising evidence, the subsequent consequences for Smyth would have been immediate and forceful. Jesus was not in the room, however: just a group of apprehensive men acutely conscious that their hierarchical institution might lose face. Well, it has now lost more than face, and I lament the distress that has caused to Catholics of deep and genuine faith, as well as to those courageous priests who have always sought to live as they believe. But the authority of the Church needs to move closer to the authority of Christ. The trouble with Cardinal Brady is that he still does not seem to understand the difference. Stylists need to get the hairdryer treatment Every so often, a little detail painfully illuminates the difference between the life of an American film star and that of an ordinary British person: last week, it was the story of Cameron Diaz's botched haircut. Miss Diaz, who now sports a chic, cheekbone-skimming blonde bob, told the chat-show host Jay Leno that it had all been a terrible mistake. There had been a misunderstanding, and too much was chopped off. When the star glimpsed the result, she let rip at the stylist: "I yelled at her, I screamed at her. She felt really bad, I felt really bad. She started crying, I started crying. Now, if Ms Diaz ever comes to a British salon, she needs to know that is not how we do disappointing haircuts at all. The drill here is that you carefully describe your vision of a new style, and then the stylist starts talking confidently in a language you don't quite understand: "So if we keep the volume here, but lose some of the weight here..." "Yes," you say. There's a surprising amount of snipping, but you keep a lid on the worry until blow-drying time, when disaster is confirmed. You look like a red-eyed monkey that has received a very expensive electric shock. Did you, somehow, agree to this? "That's great," you say, in a slightly choked voice. You pay the bill, dutifully adding a tip. "Bye now!" you say. And then passers-by get to see a monkey crying all the way home. Funny how 'The Scream" can make you smile A version of Edvard Munch's picture The Scream - one of four by the artist - sold last week at auction for a record £74 million. There is clearly something about the pungent anxiety of that picture that appeals powerfully to the modern age. If the Mona Lisa's little smile conceals some mysterious secret about the human condition, The Scream exposes its terrors like a raw, dangling nerve. The scream in the picture is both within the appalled, open-mouthed figure and outside it, assaulting the ears and the soul simultaneously. Munch described the experience that inspired it, in which he was walking with friends when, overcome with exhaustion and anguish, "I heard the enormous, infinite scream of nature." Later, he said that at the time of painting: "I was stretched to the limit, nature was screaming in my blood." And yet, perhaps because of its extreme nature, the image can be pleasurable to remember. Indeed, it can pop into the mind's eye for quite trivial reasons, in response to an unstoppable car alarm, say, or a very long-winded person approaching with the dreaded words, "Got a moment?" The tormented Munch might not have anticipated it, but The Scream's enormous price-tag is firmly tied to the popularity of distress.