Catholic Church in a far deeper crisis
CRISIS communication is a simple science which derives its principles from the Catholic sacrament of confession.
You disclose all your sins, you beg forgiveness, you undergo a form of penance and then you are forgiven and can resume your life again. This formula works for individuals and for organisations and is always the basis of any planned response to a media firestorm.
What irony that these simple strictures do not appear to apply to the church itself!
The reason for this is that the crisis faced by the church is far, far deeper than media coverage in Ireland, north or south would suggest.
Our news outlets have, quite legitimately, concentrated on the respective inaction and actions of Cardinal Sean Brady and Bishop Seamus Hegarty. But the problems faced by the church are much more widespread than failings of individuals, no matter how serious.
The John Jay report in 2001 found that more than 4,000 priests in the USA had been involved in the sexual abuse of children. There have been incidents in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and England. The church in Germany, homeland of Pope Benedict, is also enmeshed in controversy. Stories are also surfacing in Italy.
The fact of abuse is shocking enough but statistics show that there's a much lower incidence of abuse amongst the clergy than the general population. The real issue is how the church has responded – and across the globe an identical picture of denial and cover up emerges.
All organisations will from time to time suffer reputational damage as a result of wrongdoing and mistakes. These can readily be dealt with.
But it is much more serious when problems are the result of the organisation's own faulty processes. These are called systemic errors.
Systemic errors are the responsibility of an organisation's leadership – in the business world that is the board of directors, and ultimately the chairman. A typical response to systemic problems would be to overhaul the relevant processes and to ensure that all directors involved are removed from office and, where appropriate, prosecuted.
The business is then re-built and in extreme cases re-branded. It's all about demonstrating that the organisation has cleansed and renewed itself.
For a limited company that is a painful but perfectly do-able exercise, but then company chairmen are not infallible. It's hard to see the Catholic Church being able to take that sort of action.
As a result there is nothing but more pain on its way both for the hierarchy and its flock. The scandal has the potential to drag on for many years, and no amount of pastoral letters will change that.
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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