By Debbie McGoldrick

Hard to believe, but Sinead O’Connor just turned 40 last week.

Does age come with wisdom? You be the judge, as the oft-crazy chanteuse is once again commenting on the 1992 incident on Saturday Night Live when she tore to pieces a picture of Pope John Paul II.

Her career suffered greatly as a result, and she gave all sorts of explanations as to why she acted so bizarrely. (The producers of the show had no idea of her plans, and they were bombarded with complaints from thousands of irate viewers. Needless to say, she was never invited to appear on the show again.)

Now, in a new documentary examining the relationship between religion and music that will air later this month in the U.K., O’Connor says she pulled the stunt to protest the Catholic Church in Ireland, and specifically its reaction to child abuse.

“I was wondering what would actually happen if you were to do that, to test. Sometimes as an artist you just want to know what would happen if you cut a cow in half and stuck it in formaldehyde. It was very, very interesting, because obviously everybody thought I was a lunatic,” she says.

“I don’t know why it is that Americans get steamrollers and roll over copies of people’s records when they don’t like what you say.” Maybe she can chat about that subject with the Dixie Chicks, the newest queens of musical scandal who turned their fight with President Bush into a highly acclaimed documentary among other things.

Happily, Sinead — who’s declared herself a lesbian and a priest in lives past — has other things to be thinking about these days. She’s due to give birth to her fourth child on Christmas Eve. The dad is Frank Bonadio, the estranged husband of Irish singer Mary Coughlan, who reportedly freaked out when she discovered the new coupling.

The status of the relationship these days, however, is unknown. Some reports say they’ve split up, while others claim they’re still together.