Parenting & Family Quote by Sinead O'Connor

The line lands like a slap because it drags a polite, long-running scandal into the harsh fluorescent light of basic workplace logic. O'Connor isn’t arguing theology; she’s stripping the debate down to management 101. If harm is known, you remove the perpetrator. No commissions, no slow-moving internal reviews, no handwringing about optics. The blunt conditional - if you were the boss - recruits the listener as an unwilling participant, forcing them to admit what they would do in any normal institution. That’s the trap: once you grant the premise, the “why not here?” question becomes unavoidable.

The subtext is fury at the exceptionalism afforded to powerful institutions, especially religious ones, that are allowed to treat abuse as an administrative complication instead of a moral emergency. By framing priests and clerics as “employees,” she punctures the sacred aura that often shields them from the consequences that would apply to a coach, teacher, or office manager. It’s also a critique of complicity: the “boss” isn’t just a CEO figure but an entire hierarchy - and, uncomfortably, the public that keeps accepting excuses.

In context, O'Connor spent decades being treated as hysterical for calling out the Church, then watched revelations and reports validate the scale of what she was screaming about. The quote is intentionally unpoetic. She’s done with symbolism; she’s demanding the most mundane form of justice: termination, accountability, and a refusal to let spiritual branding function as a get-out-of-ethics-free card.