The use of sociological concepts in ordinary knowledge: Paedophile priests between moral panic and denial

The paper aims to think over what happens when the concepts we use within a specific discipline, such as sociology, cross the frontiers of the disciplinary discourse, coming to the public debate. The starting point deals with a news story implicating the catholic Church in a wide scandal. The sequence of events, and the ways institutions (such as media, political actors and church representative) construct representations of the scandal, become the setting for putting some questions about the proximity between sociological concepts and those in the ordinary language.