Introduction
In recent years there has been an increased attention towards the Catholic Church and the sex scandals and child abuse cases that has been going on behind closed doors. To name a few of those incidents, there is the case where a Priest from Ireland abused an 8 year old child, and thereafter the Priest, with permission from the Bishop, paid her family a lump sum so they would not mention it. Another case is a German scandal, where a Priest sexually harassed kids, and Bishops knew about it without taking immediate action. This case is particularly interesting because the current pope was acting Arch Bishop in that period.
The Catholic Sex Scandal is and has been a big conflict for a long time, and the way that the church has handled it bears the marks of trying to avoid the conflict by suppressing it. We will illustrate and analyze this from the perspectives of Trust, Knowledge Management, Culture, Image Restoration and Crisis Management.
Trust Building and Destroying in
Catholic Church
“And I say also to you, that you
are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church” (Jesus)
Catholics
develop an “identification-based trust” with one another where each of the
members identifies himself with another entity or figure or group of persons
and that they are emotionally connected and share the same values (Thompson, 2009).
In this case, the Catholic community identifies herself and her values in what
they consider the “personification of God” in the figure of Pope and the church
as home of God.
The cases of
pedophilia caused a huge breach of trust between the faithful and Vatican. What
shocked the community is the way the Pope and Vatican hid and covered these
crimes. The abusers remaining unpunished for years before someone came out into
the open.
The Catholic
values and the sermon of the Pope and priest are focused on justice, fairness
and trust. The evangelism mission of the church includes an action in favor of
justice, peace and an interior human growth. If they do not carry out these
duties, they are not able to achieve the first goal of the mission known as
Voltaire.
Repository of
moral values, the Church has tried to put strict rules to the people of Jesus
for years, launching pressing campaigns against abortion, homosexual marriage,
the use of condoms and other kinds of contraceptive methods because of the
defensive position of the integrity and ethical view of the Bible and all of
the people who want to follow it as a “perfect believer”, learning the sexual
morality accepted by the Catholic view.
And for this reason, when the clerical child abuse
scandals hit, the Church – the very advocate of integrity, ethical values and
strict rules – trying to avoid and suppress the allegation and crimes so as to
avoid embarrassment and to maintain the credibility of the Church and their
representatives built over years in the eyes of the believers.
According to
the mechanism of building trust and relationship between Catholic believers and
Church and her representative, they built trust with the faithful, basically
following coherent rules and principles.
Similarity
“People who
are similar to each other like one another” (Thompson, 2009). Usually a priest
in a community should be humble and show himself at the same level of the
people of the community, help them as a caring father. From the figure of
Jesus, a carpenter born in a simple family, priest learns the modest life and
to mirror that of the community.
Mere Exposure
The mere
exposure effect is one of the powerful methods that help the church talk and
communicate with the faithful. “Personal connections make a difference”
(Thompson, 2009). And with celebration of mass, the priest communicates with people
in person, celebrating and discussing the Bible and teaching the values and the
“Word of God”.
Reciprocity
“Love your
neighbor as yourself “(Matthew 22:39). Jesus emphasizes this concept of charity
as one of the three theological virtues to get the happiness. This kind of
“return” and donation is, most of the time, not an obligation (as is possible
it will be in different circumstance) but an appreciation to the benevolence of
the priests and all the religious order and also to the community of brethren.
Schmoozing
The role of a
priest, especially in a small community, is really important because he is not
only a spirit guide but also a friend and a confessor who is able to hear your
thoughts. For every kind of necessity he opens the door of “the house of God” which might be the
“house of all the Catholic people”. This kind of dialog between the priest
confessor and the believer contribute to establishing a relationship based on
honesty and understanding which are the fundamentals of a trust relationship.
Flattery
Trust
relationship among people would also be built with reciprocal adulation that
increases kindness and mutual admiration. Eucharistic adoration is one of the
practices of Roman Catholic Church in which the believers are in a position of
adoration toward Blessed Sacrament. This Eucharistic adoration could be
extended in “perpetual-adoration” 24hours per day, a rite that, during the last
century, is really popular in Catholic parishes around the world.
One episode
that showed the devotion and the flattery of the Catholic public toward the
Pope was the gift of 186,000 hours of adoration, as the rite of Eucharistic
adoration but toward the Pope, for the 60th anniversary of his priesthood.«This
occasion is particularly favorable to prove him our gratitude, our fondness,
our communion for serving God and His Church, especially for “shining the Truth
in the world” » said the Archbishop Celso Morga Iruzuibieta (Tornielli, 2011).
Self-disclosure
“Sharing
information with another person about oneself” is one of the main points of the
Catholic faith developed with the Confession Sacrament (Thompson, 2009). Priest
should be a confidant who helps to set the person free from every sin, gives
him advices as a friend, a father, a member of the family. Most of the time,
the information is really personal and private. This fact helps build a mutual
trust, reinforced by the secrecy of confession that binds the priest to the
confession silence.
Analyzing how
the Church and the Catholic representative builds trust with “people of God”,
we can see the clerical child abuse allegation and scandals destroyed the trust
and especially the values that the Church have built and taught over the years.
The direct representative of the message of God, the major person in charge for
the faithful (priests, bishops, deacons, churchmen)’s failure in handling the
allegation and crimes also destroyed the reputation of the other ecclesiastics
that used to live in the “word of God” following the right way.
Pope Benedict
XVI (still Cardinal during that period) and the Ecclesiastic Hierarchy, tried
to cover one of the most popular scandals in Wisconsin, where a priest abused
200 young guys of one prestigious institute for deaf person (New York Times,
2010). The Ireland case was
another major scandal that gives voice to the victims and leads priests and
bishops to the admissions of the crime.
What is clear
is the incoherence by an institution who fixed straight and strict rules about
justice and sense of the duty, violated the same prohibition that it use to
condemn but is not able to denounce because of the image and the scandal.
This is the
case of identification-based distrust, where all the values and the goals that
used to be compatible (according to identification-based trust) are perceived
completely broken and different. What the Catholic people are seeing after the
scandals is the opposite of the values that they used to follow leading them to
distrust the counter part (Lewicki, 1998).
Knowledge Management in the
Catholic Church
Knowledge
Management has been around for hundreds of years, but it is until recently that
business executives have started talking about it. Hansen, Nohria and Tierney
explain that Knowledge Management can have two different strategies. The first
being a Codification Strategy, where the strategy implies that the knowledge is
carefully codified and stored to everyone’s immediate use. While the second is
a Personalization Strategy, where knowledge cannot be transferred through
documents, but needs a person-to-person contact (Hansen, Nohria, & Tierney,
1999).
The Catholic
Church has a very personalized way of handling knowledge and managing their
Church. This is due to the fact that the church has existed for over two
millenniums without the need of a codified system. To handle different
situations that arise for the Priest, they communicate with their superiors,
Bishops, and try to find a solution to the problem. If no solution could be
found, the Bishops communicate with their superiors, Archbishops, and so on.
The many
incidents involving sexual harassment of children culminated in 2010 when
accusations were made of the Pope Joseph Ratzinger who failed to act upon
evidence of sexual harassment or inform the public authorities about these
proceedings. According to CNN, this happened while he was Archbishop in the
early 1980’s and part of the Munich archdiocese. A psychoanalyst, named Werner Huth,
demanded that action had to be taken upon a molesting priest (Gilgloff, 2010).
The New York Times uncovered a memo suggesting that the current Pope, held a
meeting in which he approved psychiatric treatment of the priest and a transfer
of the priest. Within days of the transfer, he worked with children again. This
indicates that the Pope had opportunity to refer the molesting priest for
prosecution or ensure that the priest would not be in contact with children.
The priest would later be prosecuted as a child offender, but that would be
four years after the current pope left for a new post (Kulish & Bennhold,
2010). Catholic News Agency highlights the fact that some information might be
distorted: “He (editor: Fr. Federico Lombardi, director of the Holy See's Press
Office) stressed that the document shows that as archbishop the future Pope
Benedict was completely "extraneous" to the decisions made after the
abuses were verified” (Accused Munich Priest Resigns In Sex Abuse Case Wrongly
Linked To Pope, 2010).
These events
may have occurred with or without the knowledge of the current Pope, but
nevertheless highlights the serious lack of communication and knowledge sharing
between the different levels in the church. Dealing with a situation like this,
explicit knowledge would not suffice, and tacit knowledge has to be given to
coordinate the situation (Kasper & Haltmeyer, 2002). This situation, and
many like it, has occurred due to the bishops thinking they can handle the
situation without guidance from their superiors. By avoiding giving out too
much information to the Archbishop or other, they are of the thought that they
can manage the information given their knowledge. This can also be caused by
inter-cultural difference between the ranks of the Church, meaning that
language and different culture could lead to different perceptions of the
problem at hand (Kasper & Haltmeyer, 2002). It appears as if the Catholic
Church has failed to make it explicitly clear how they should handle sex
offenders. And thereby created a situation where bishops could handle the
situation as they pleased.
Cultural Difference in Catholic
Church
Sexual
misconduct towards children is not new in Church. The Church had been settling
child abuse quietly until 1980. Due to globalization and the advancement in internet,
the public have more channels to information. Some studies suggest that there
is up to 75% of the female victim of child abuse did not report, since in many
cultures, females do not fight back, taught to be “nice”, and were told that
the abuser would be more violence if they struggled. Male victims are less
likely to be revealed. Different cultures have different forms of punishment
and reporting styles (Campbell, 2005).
It is common that child abuse is
not disclosed due to the below causes:
Authority
There are
power distance differences between countries and cultures. According to McShane
and Travaglione (2007), “power distance refers to the extent to which people
accept an unequal distribution of power in a society” (p.47). Asian countries
are likely to have higher power distance; the people in those countries will
accept unequal power. Asians value respect to authority, and they are
comfortable receiving orders from authority without discussion. Since the
abuser in Church is in a higher position than the child, the victim from high power
distance will tend to obey the authority, and keep silent about the incident
without debate.
Fear
There is
cultural difference in gender and sexual preference. For example, in some
countries, males are bias being confident and muscular. In western countries,
the public are more open about being homosexual. However, in many eastern and
mid-eastern countries, homosexuality is a taboo. The male victims are fear for
getting blame for the abuse and being ‘seductive’ to the abuser. Those
societies will judge the abuse negatively against the victim.
Studies
showed that collectivism (which value group and group harmony) view any sexual
maltreatment before marriage as taboo. Anyone of collective cultures (African,
Indian, Chinese and Mid Easterner) has sexual contacts before marriage will be
punishment severely. In contrast, individualism (which emphasize on personal
freedom and admiration over distinctive qualities) highly value their
children. Parents from
individualism cultures, such as United States, show less tolerance to incidents
regarding sexual abuse. Moreover, individualism cultures also believe in early
discussion of sex, develop school system and basic knowledge on sex and
protection. English-speaking societies, like United States, United Kingdom, Canada,
Australia and New Zealand, place a greater focus on child sexual abuse (Pratt,
2005).
Threats
Different
countries have different achievement-nurturing orientation. Cultures with high
achievement orientation value competitiveness and materialism. On the other
hand, cultures with nurturing orientation put emphasis on well being and
relationship with others. The Church abusers often threaten young kids. Since
children have not fully developed, nurturing orientation victims might think
that hiding the abuse will be building a relationship with others.
Image Restoration of the Catholic
Church
For the most part, the Catholic
Church has adopted an avoidance attitude in the child abuse scandals and has
spent well over US$2b on different cases around the world so as to avoid
litigation (Trumbull, 2012). Besides buying reputation with money, the Church
has put much effort on shifting the blame and so diffusing the world’s
attention on the string of scandals and allegations as a way to maintain its
image.
Covering Up
The Church’s most early and most criticized
way to uphold its reputation is to play down the child sex abuse problem by remaining
silent and covering up. This controversial strategy has drawn criticism from
different parties. An Italian academic professional Lucetta Scaraffia called
this practice “"omerta" – the Mafia code of silence that described
the conspiracy involved in hiding the offences” (Butt, 2010). Even when the
civil justice system intervened, the Church would still block the information
flow and hence hinder the investigation. Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny
strongly criticized that the Catholic Church’s cover-up culture “encouraged the
rape of children” (Pogatchnik, 2012) and that the Church's failure to deal with
the child abuse cases as "absolutely disgraceful" (McDonald, 2011).
Shifting the Blame,
Diffusing World’s Attention
The Church also employed other
tactics to avoid having to resolve the clerical sexual abuse problems –
shifting the blame on the social broader context.
Instead of finding immediately
and feasible ways to tackle the child sex scandals, the Catholic Church
insisted on seeing the problem in its broader social context, which they did
not have any control on. Pope Benedict XVI shifted the blame of the clerical
child sex abuse case to the secular world in which “the mistreatment of
children was frighteningly common” and that “child pornography [was] seemingly
considered normal” (Vetter, 2010).
The Pope also diffused the
public’s attention on the clerical child abuse scandal by saying that “sexual
abuse was not just confined to within the church, but affected every
institution in society” (Knortz, 2011).
Changing of the
Playfield
Although heavily
criticized, this way of avoidance through downplaying the scandal has been very
effective for the last few decades until 10 years ago when more and more
victims came forward to the media. The powerful social networking technology also
facilitates the sharing of victim’s side of the stories amongst people in a
greater speed in recent years (Tryout, 2009). As a result, the failure to close
the floodgates of litigation might have helped pry them open (Kellerman, 2006).
More and more incidents are believed to be exposed in time to come.
Government Crisis Management for
the Scandal of Child Sexual Abuse
Oversee the Resignation of Bishop
The abuse of children
by clergy members remains one of the most difficult for the church and the
government. For example, Pope John Paul II once accepted Cardinal Bernard F.
Law's resignation because he involved into the sexual abuse case; it was known
as the most striking development yet in the Roman Catholic Church's efforts to
manage the crisis of child sexual abuse (Bruni, F., 2002).
For more example, in
2010, the Vatican accepted the resignations of several Irish bishops after a
report by the Irish government detailed the physical, sexual and emotional
abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests in church-run residential schools (Kulish,
N., 2010).
Resignation of bishop
is one of the very passive ways for the government has done to protect the
children from sexual abuse because resignation also happened after issues
occur. The church has been respected greatly; it is hard for governments to
influence the church.
Facilitate Settlement to Avoid Litigation
Another method
government deal with this scandal is using money, trying to conceal the problem
by compensate the victims. Numerous victims told horrific stories of abuse.
Many later filed lawsuits. In an effort to stem the litigation, church
officials entered into negotiations with the government. Under the agreement,
the church will provide $110 million in cash and property to pay restitution
and for counseling for survivors. Any victim who accepts restitution must agree
to not initiate legal action against the church or the government (Church &
State, 2002).
The society wants the Church face problem
Action 1: Independent Commission
Unit
The Irish Commission
was set in 2000, to Inquire into Child Abuse by the Irish government after a
string of sexual-abuse cases emerged (Cassell, B., 2009)
Ireland's health minister,
Micheal Martin, has announced a formal government investigation into the sexual
abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests in a rural diocese after growing
public pressure and lobbying by victims' rights groups (Lavery, B., 2002)
Action 2: Imply Law and
Regulation
The Department of
Justice has reached agreement on the inquiry with groups representing victims
and submitted proposals to the Department of Finance…under the Government's new
powers to establish commissions of investigations into matters of public
interest, would examine how the diocese handled cases of alleged child abuse
against priests (Wall, M., 2005).
But now, the public
has been increasing the awareness of the problem. Government around the world
is now setting commission and law and regulation to avoid the problem will be
occurred in the future.
Conclusion
Avoidance is one of the
five basic conflicting styles. Each style has its own merits and can cause further
barriers too. Avoidance in the Catholic Church child sex scandal seemed to be
able to help the Church preserve its image for a few decades. Especially for
the past 10 years, avoidance has been proven an ineffective way for the Church
to tackle this issue, be it in preserving its image or in reducing the number
of child sexual cases. Clearly, avoidance is not the answer. Considering different
perspectives of the issue, we attempt to make the following recommendations to
both prevent further cases from happening and handle the existing cases:
For Prevention:
1)
Mandatory psychological assessment on the church officials at the start
of their service for the church and thereafter every 6 months, so as to ensure
they are in the right mental situation to serve the church and work with people
especially children. A time-off from church service is imposed on those you
fail the assessment. Immediate removal from church for those who fail the
assessment 3 times.
For Handling of Existing cases:
1)
Change the Church Doctrine – Canon Law or draw a supplement to include a
clear code of conduct between church officials and the believers. They may also
consider if they can let the priest get married.
2)
Set up a mandatory report system to the church and the local police if
there are any sexual abuse allegations and subject the cases to local judiciary
system if appropriate.
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