It used to be that all sin in Ireland had to do with sex, but now, it seems, it has all to do with spondulicks. In the libertarian light of the present, we look back at the dark days of Catholic control of the national bedroom and see the workings of an arbitrary ideology designed to punish and subdue.
Similarly, in a lifetime or so, we may look back at Ireland at the turn of the millennium and be equally incensed by intolerance and arbitrariness which at present characterise the pursuit of those who put their wallets about the place a bit more than we approve of.
The old inquisitors have been silenced and more or less confined to barracks. But the new inquisitors have acquired their power and reappropriated it to address lucre instead of libido.
And though each group would to a roughly equal extent perceive itself as the antithesis of the other, the methodologies, language and fanaticism are similar.
Fundamentally, Liam Lawlor's only established sin was appearing to be wealthier than he ought to have been. Likewise, Charles Haughey.
Conspicuous affluence was the only prima facie evidence against either of them. Our current national obsession with money will pass, perhaps when we become significantly richer or go back to being poor once again.
It is, fundamentally, a function of our sudden discovery of the possibility of riches. Many people now have a sense that there is a lot of money about the place and they are getting no more than the smell of it. This makes them deeply unhappy.
The culture of the tribunals, no matter how it may be dressed up, is based fundamentally on envy and greed. Those who are accused may themselves turn out to have been guilty of greed as well, but it will not emerge as anything like as toxic as the impotent, rageful greed of those who pursue them.
A stranger listening to the advocates of the present culture of inquisition might imagine that Ireland is extraordinarily beset by political corruption.
In fact, in a recent international survey of corruption, conducted by the Berlin-based Transparency International, Ireland did not rate even a dishonourable mention.
There is therefore no rational justification for the current wave of fanaticism in relation to financial and political corruption. The culture of tribunalism has very little to do with reestablishing standards in high places. Its purpose is the same as that of inquisitions through the ages: to purge society of unapproved remnants.
If we were as interested in eliminating all forms of corruption as the tribunal-fest implies, would we confine ourselves to those forms of corruption which have enriched only individuals? Would we not also seek to examine the types of corruption which have served to enrich a majority of Irish people in the past decade or so?
For example, it is fairly common knowledge that many of the multinational corporations currently operating out of Ireland, and to which the Celtic Tiger owes its existence, have vigorously exploited the low levels of corporation tax applying here.
But this is not simply a question of these companies being able to avail of low tax rates (about a quarter of the rate in most other developed economies). There is also the issue of the fiddles operated to maximise the benefit to the parent companies abroad.
A blind eye is turned to the fact that, for example, many Irish-based subsidiaries import their raw materials from the parent company at greatly reduced prices and export the finished products at inflated ones.
Thus, a far greater proportion of the cost of such products qualifies for the low Irish tax rate than should properly be the case. This little racket is known as "transfer pricing" and is described in detail by Denis O'Hearn in his fine book, Inside the Celtic Tiger (Pluto Press). O'Hearn quotes a 1992 survey of 79 American multinationals, two-thirds of which were discovered to keep two sets of books, "suggesting that one set was for tax purposes and the other for evaluation of performance by subsidiaries".
This kind of thing should surely get a tribunal all to itself. The amounts involved, after all, are vastly greater than anything in which Messrs Haughey and Lawlor might conceivably be implicated.
But since this scam is the cornerstone of the Irish economy, there is absolutely no danger of such an inquisition being initiated.
Even to acknowledge publicly that there is anything wrong with these practises is to invite outrage and condemnation from the same people who pursue soft targets like Lawlor and Haughey.
Everybody knows that a similarly literal approach to fiscal probity in the multinational sector would cause the Celtic Tiger to put his tail in the air and head off into the nearest sunrise.