Vicar suggests shoplifting may not be a crime

An Anglican vicar has provoked a minor outrage by suggesting that shoplifting from major retailers is not necessarily a crime if one is poor and hungry enough. Father Tim Jones, vicar at the Church of St Lawrence in York was reported to have said in his latest Sunday sermon that: “My advice, as a Christian priest, is to shoplift,” going on to advise that those in need should choose supermarkets and multiples rather than smaller family-run businesses if they do need to pilfer.

While we have to agree with Father’ Tim’s comment that “God’s love for the poor and despised outweighs the property rights of the rich,” we can only sympathise with the furious reaction of the British Retail Consortium - defender of all retailers’ rights extraordinaire -  who retorted that: “Shoplifting is wrong and it is not more or less wrong depending on who the victim is.”

What a moral dilemma shop-keepers! It would be hard to dispute the fact that a starving person has a right to try and live by obtaining food wherever they can find it, but at the same time we have to wonder at the wisdom of a vicar sanctioning theft. Not because of those in need who might take heart from his forgiving words, but because of those in less need who might use it as an excuse to run riot in Asda…..

One thing we do know, however, is that there is no excuse for mountains of food being sent to landfill while there are still hungry folk left in the world. That has to be the greater crime?