Smoke Signals
Next week, as the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church begin voting for a new pope, they will do so as leaders of a scandal-plagued institution.
Scottish Cardinal Keith O’Brien is only the latest member of the church to confess to sexual misconduct, and in January of this year the release of an immense trove of church documents revealed that Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles effectively shielded pedophile priests from public scrutiny or law enforcement. For this reason, many Catholics feel that Mahony should not be permitted to attend or vote in the upcoming conclave.
While many management lessons can be learned from the mistakes of the Catholic Church, the case of Mahony offers a particularly vivid illustration of what happens when you neglect what Peter Drucker called the “duty to anticipate impact.”
Portrait of Pope Leo X with cardinals de Medici and de Rossi by Raphael
“It is the job of the organization to look ahead and to think through which of its impacts are likely to become social problems,” Drucker wrote in The Age of Discontinuity. If an organization fails to take the lead, the problem grows and, in Drucker’s words, “boomerangs.”
“Conversely,” he added, “whenever the leaders of an institution anticipate an impact and think through what needs to be done to prevent it or to make it acceptable, they are given a respectful hearing by the public and the politicians.”
In an open letter of apology, Mahony himself admitted that he’d failed to anticipate impacts of all sorts. “Even as we began to confront the problem, I remained naïve myself about the full and lasting impact these horrible acts would have on the lives of those who were abused by men who were supposed to be their spiritual guides,” Mahony wrote, apologizing “for the years when ignorance, bad decisions and moral failings resulted in the unintended consequences of more being done to protect the Church—and even the clergy perpetrators—than was done to protect our children.”
Drucker had some empathy for institutions embroiled in scandal. “The popular thing is to assert that the problems are obvious,” he wrote in Toward the Next Economics. “They are not.” But for that reason it was all the more imperative for an organization to be out in front of problems. “The ‘public relations’ attitude is totally inappropriate and, in fact, self-defeating,” Drucker warned, and it “penalizes business far more seriously than willingness to be unpopular could possibly have done.”
That public-relations attitude came out in full force in a letter that Mahony wrote in 2000 (part of a batch of released documents) questioning whether the church ought to make widespread public announcements. “We could open up yet another firestorm—and it takes us years to recover from those,” he worried. “There is no alternative to public announcements at all the Masses in 15 parishes??? Wow—that really scares the daylights out of me!!”
What do you think explains the failure of the Catholic Church and officials like Roger Mahony to address the abuse allegations sooner—naïveté, panic, indifference or something else?
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10 Comments
John Holborn
March 8, 2013It is high time that religious authorities are no longer exempt from criminal law. Cardinal Mahoney and those who participated in hiding and abetting child rape from the Church and civil authorities need to be held criminally accountable for the crime of non-disclosure. Penal Code Section 11164 & 11165.1 et al. requires this of protestant ministers, teachers, therapists, doctors, and licensed professionals. Why are priests continuously exempt?
The penalty is loss of your privilege to practice and perhaps jail as an accomplice after the fact. Teachers and coaches lose their jobs and suffer incarceration in such cases. Sadly priests, who have not been arrested, have been given a free pass to inflict pain and betrayal to new parishes; destroying the innocence of those they prey upon. Those who suffer from an impulse control disorder are not fit to serve in the such capacities, and should be forbidden from unsupervised contact with minors.They don’t end up working the shelters. I find the decades old excuses morally repugnant and outrageous.
Confess your sins and submit to the consequences- The Church has held to position of forgiveness and I absolutely agree; then face the jury of your peers. Interestingly enough those who recently were found to steal from the Vatican are to be ex-communicated and held to the highest letter of the Law. Perhaps we should start here. JC Holborn CGU ’96
Luciano P. Galman
March 8, 2013I don’t want to speculate on what goes on in the minds of people like Mahoney and countless others who shield erring clergy on whatever “mistakes” they make in their exercise of ministry.
Admitting sins, asking for forgiveness involve firm resolve not to do it again and the indicator of that resolve is taking the consequences of sins…penalty, punishment, biting the bullet.
Sweeping mess under the rug is no housecleaning. It’s sitting on top of an active volcano.
Ghanshyam Popat
March 8, 2013To best of my knowledge, Jesus never advocated celebacy. That means, concept of celebacy, cam after Jesus. Celebacy requires that an individual channels all his/her energies (including sexual energy) in search of devine. Excellent concept.
Other than Christianity (catholisism) , there are several ohter religions that require celebacy from their priests. All of them have crisis similar to the Catholic Church. Priests abusing young women, children etc.
This sexual tensions, take away from the central theme of the every religion; search and be one with the devine. Jesus referred to devine as father.
Today’s Catholic Church has been painfully slow to acknowledge, and deal with the priest abuse scandal. No. of people entering seminary has suffered severe decline for last 20 years. What is wrong with Catholic Church allowing priests to marry? Protestant church allows it. Child abuse, in protestant is almost non existent. Full disclosure; I am not a protestant.
Unless, Catholic Church deals with basic needs (sex and family) of it’s priest; the church will go from one crisis to another crisis. Eventually leading to decline of Church influence.
wislaw
March 9, 2013Ha ha ha ….. It is absolute wrong problem. Drucker wrote that Catholic Church aim is not services of the World goods, but salvation of souls !
Please, people from Drucker Institute back to Drucker lectures !
Mike Grayson
March 9, 2013The failure of Catholic Church leaders to deal with the problem of pedophilia is due to the lack of following the principles taught by their founder Jesus Christ. They have become mired in the ritual of celebacy and the separation of the church “leadership” from the leity. Jesus had a lot to say about putting rituals ahead of principles. It is wrong.
As a role model, Jesus demonstrated inner strength, virtue, personal character and integrity. If any of these men were to demonstrate integrity, they would have resigned. Then, they would have had the strength of character to admit their transgression and be willing to pay the penalty, whatever the cost.
For this to type of action to be tolerated by church leadership, much less protect it, indicates a true cancer within the organization at the highest levels. The only way to rid the organization of the cancer is to expel the offenders from the organization in a way that shows their dishonor and council them to confess and pay the price for their actions. Anything less than that will not restore the integrity and harmony that is needed.
Maverick 18
March 9, 2013Church leadership abettted child molestation world wide. The crime could not have been greater. Why did they do it? The felt their first duty was to distance the Church from the problem and maintain Church doctrine, dogma, reputation and support. Plus, they never thouight they would be caught.
Church leadership is entirely out of tune with its membership, both philosophically and geographically, e.g. two thirds of the Cardinals are old and from Europe and two thirds of Catholics are younger and from everywhere else. A situation very analagous to a board of directors and officers of a very large corporation that make decisions in favor of maintaining their positions without regard to shareholders, workers or customers.
All of this has nothing to do Jesus, except, of course, for a bunch of old men praying for forgiveness and guidance, and then doing things exactly as they have done before.
The majority of Catholics may support an end to celibacy rules, anti-contraception rules, and rules against women becoming priests. The best thing that the College of Cardinals could do at this point would be to wake up and pass the red slippers to the next leader of the Church, Pope Dorothy the First.
George L. Williams
March 9, 2013Any bureaucracy takes as its number one priority, it’s own survival. For a bureaucracy as old as the Catholic Church, with skeletons buried all over this planet, there comes a time when survival becomes impossible. All past efforts to protect and survive pile up; and the bureaucracy comes crashing down!
In one of H.L. Mencken’s essays, he poses the question: ‘Where is the graveyard for dead gods?” For the Catholic Church, it’s long past time. The people, the flock, the blind believers, must be set free to find truth.
Alba Patricia Valencia
March 10, 2013It is something else. Catholic Church is a global player since its origin. In any case, Pope and his transnational consortium execute market idolization. They gravitate to deontological theory in many respects, but there is one very marked. This is correcting and completing his own opinion. They compare their theory with that others, far from causing doubt and hesitation apply in practice. This is the only solid foundation for a just reliance on it.
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