Our new parsha is Eikev: Consequence. We often hear the word paired with “truth” and I’ve been musing today about that association. Deep in the last century, at the height of the television age, there was a game show called Truth or Consequences. The game consisted of participants being forced to answer impossible trivia questions, and upon (inevitably) getting the wrong answer, being subject to humiliating pranks. I guess it was considered funny in its time. The eponymous town in New Mexico was allegedly named in tribute to the show.

I’m curious about that “or,” though. In real life, it’s not truth OR consequences. Telling the truth has consequences; not telling the truth has consequences. The truth is a thing unto itself and whether it’s spoken aloud or not, it has consequences. They are inextricable, truth and consequences; like smoke and fire, where there’s one, the other is there too.

With the loss of Irish singer Sinéad O’Connor this week, many are recalling the brave statement she made on Saturday Night Live in 1992, when she tore up her mother’s photograph of Pope John Paul II to draw attention to child abuse. O’Connor was roundly criticized for this move; people called her vicious names and belittled her concerns. In today’s parlance, she was canceled, but it was more than that: she was erased.

Sinéad O’Connor was right.

It would be another ten years before the Boston Globe’s Spotlight series would come out, revealing the cycle of sexual abuse committed by priests, and the culture of silence that resulted in perpetrators being transferred to other parishes rather than removed from their posts.

Sinéad O’Connor was right.

There are always consequences.