Moral Bankruptcy & Compassion
April 13, 2010
The Catholic Church has been under attack recently because of new revelation of sexual abuse committed by priests. Tom Heneghan, the Religion Editor at Reuter calls the recent sex abuse scandals in the Church, particularly the way the hierarchy at the highest level as handled reports of sexual abuse a moral bankruptcy.
The Catholic Church has more than 1.147 billion members and 400,000 priests. It is the world largest religion. There are evil men in all walks of life and that includes priests. Their abject behavior and crimes does not tarnish the lives and dedication of the overwhelming majority of Catholic priests.
None of us and no institution are “too big to fall” into moral bankruptcy. The question is what do we do about it once it happens? There is no Chapter 11 in moral bankruptcy. The individuals or institutions are not or should not be protected from creditors or victims.
Just as it is possible to come out of bankruptcy, it is also possible to come out of moral bankruptcy. (Some will call it redemption.) There are however some critical conditions for that to be possible. Let me name four that I think are essential.
1) Acknowledgement that precludes, cover-ups, denials, blaming of others, or giving excuses.
2) Apology that must include real empathy and true sorrow for the victims.
3) Compensation and/or punishment. We all have to be accountable for our faults and crimes. Being accountable also means bearing the penalty for the infractions.
4) Prevention, making everything we possible can so that the offence is not repeated. That is most important in the case of sexual abuse. We as individual and as a society have to do all we possibly can to protect our children.
Once these conditions have been met, society should welcome back the “returning” (repentant) individual or institution in its fold.
What about compassion?
I was speaking with a friend and mother of young children this week that told me how shocked she was when she heard her minister say, from the pulpit, that we should have compassion for the perpetrators of such crimes.
Should we?
It is in interesting question. Do all human beings deserve our compassion no matter who they are and what they have done? Should we have had compassion for Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot or Saddam Hussein? Should we not rather have compassion for their victims?
I do not think that there are any moral guidelines to answer that question. The answer lies in the individual and personal beliefs of each one of us.
Compassion however does not mean absence of justice. Our Constitution precludes “cruel and unusual punishment” but does not exclude punishment. Leonardo de Vinci once said: “He who does not punish evil commands it to be done.”
In our prison system we treat or at least we claim to treat our prisoners humanely. The same is true in the application of the death penalty. We, for instance use clean needles to inject the poison that will bring an end to the lives of the condemned. We have systems in place that tries to protect the dignity of the guilty and condemned. That is a form of compassion.
As Mark Twain once wrote:
“If we should deal out justice only, in this world, who would escape?”
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