New departure in reputation-risk management by the Vatican

Toyota, is the largest motor corporation in the world in terms of sales volume and it sustained this position through achieving the highest possible standards in various engineering functions and processes.

Toyota recently had a spot of bother when some Toyota vehicles suffered major quality problems involving defective brake pedals.  The US Department of Transportation wanted to fine the company over $16 million following a spate of injuries and a number of deaths.

The president of Toyota, Akio Toyoda, has prostrated himself in front of Toyota’s worldwide customers to redeem their goodwill and he also established a special committee of global quality experts to respond to its global crisis and product recall.

Compare this approach to that of The Vatican.   Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Dean of the College of Cardinals, gave an interview recently to L’Obsservatore Romano who described the criticism of the Holy See relating to clerical child sex abuse as ‘truly incomprehensible’ , a comment that I would describe as absurd, unworthy and mischievous,

Sodano claims that those who criticise the Pope and bishops' are transforming ‘individual guilt’ into ‘collective guilt’; that this is manipulative and part of a cultural battle that challenges the moral truths propagated by the Pontiff.  How would Toyota customers’ have responded to charges that they engaged in a cultural battle with the car company that challenged the quality of its engineering?

Those who criticise The Vatican are doing no such thing. They are seeking a degree of accountability and candour that has been concealed by decades of obfuscation and evasion to the point where too many bishops’ have lost the vital resource of their office – moral authority.

They are also seeking recognition that the civic processes in society are supported unambiguously by the Church and not impeded by anything. including canon law and diplomatic bolt-holes. They demand that the Holy See promptly replace bishops who have lost moral authority and stature because they have concealed wrongdoers’ from justice, or were implicated in doing so.  There is no justification whatsoever for the creation of a flimsy cordon sanitaire to insulate them and the Pope from accountability and consequences.

The Pope’s Letter is a starting point

Greetings from Istanbul!  I reflected on the Pope’s letter on the 4-hour flight to here today.  The Irish newspapers were filled with comment about it.

I welcome the Pope’s candid apology and the empathy reflected in his letter. His language is straightforward and direct.  It would have been impossible for a single letter to have dealt conclusively with the complexity connected to clerical child sex abuse in Ireland.  His letter has the potential to open a new relationship with Ireland - if words are followed by actions that chart a new direction which inspires confidence and recovery.  But much hard work is required to achieve this and it may not be possible for change to come quickly enough to satisfy many people.

The Pope criticises the Irish bishops for having failed - at times grievously.  Their errors of judgement and failure of leadership, to which he refers, will require a radical response from the Holy See in terms of who leads the Church in Ireland and what the nature, style and tenure of the desired leadership is.  One characteristic of bishops in Ireland is the extraordinary length of their tenure which extends up to 40 years in some instances.  Longevity of service does not equate with a disposition to change and an absence of accountability leaves them in a most undesirable position when things go wrong with devastating consequences.  There is no obvious method for those in difficulty to validate an impaired mandate.

The first response to systemic failure in an organisation, or institution,  are new faces at the helm, even if those effected by such change believe that they are not directly culpable for adversity uncovered.  The consequences of such change is to achieve effective accountability, inspire trust and a revitalise the institutional culture.

Ireland has had to deal with a plethora of such instances in the recent past and many of the new incumbents have arrived from outside the country to take over pivotal positions in various fields, such as financial services, the State funding of research, the investigation of venality and incompetence in banks, running a loss-making airline and the inspection of policing. 

Will the Pope need to nominate an archbishop of Armagh with the patience, eminence and stature of Senator George Mitchell to achieve what is necessary?  Does such an individual exist within the global Church hierarchy?  How would the incumbent bishops react to the imposition of a new broom from far away, untutored in their native habits and preferences?  Should they be innovative and demand a time limit to their tenure of, say, five to seven years, and be free to deploy their experience constructively in another role?

A right Papal cop-out

The summit between the entire cohort of Irish bishops, Pope Benedict and the members’ Roman Curia seems to have been little more than a self-serving display of pious political theatre based on a disjointed script played before an increasingly sceptical and despairing Irish public. While the summit acknowledged that the failure of Church authorities has resulted in a breakdown of trust, this same dialogue has resulted in no consequences, no sense of urgency, no concrete initiatives or imaginative departures intended to nurture a positive sentiment from which to progress towards recovery. Best practice, it seems, is to be bolted on to the remnants of a culpable administration.  The Pope's comment that the current painful situation will not be resolved quickly is a cop-out that will facilitate more empty excuses and buck-passing and breed nothing but inertia and resentment.

No new resignations were apparently demanded. No resignations already offered were confirmed. The sentiment underlying the discourtesy shown by The Vatican authorities to The Murphy Commission continues to prevail as The Papal Nuncio declines an invitation to a dialogue with an Oireachtas Commission.  There is no evident engagement between the Vatican authorities and victims. Three months after the publication of The Murphy Report the fundamental issue of the accountability of bishops remains as ambivalent as ever. Their unique practice of self-validation is clearly a case of ‘my way or the highway’ as far as the attitude of the Church authorities and the victims of clerical sex abuse are concerned.  How can best practice in any field be achieved if public sentiment towards to those charged with its implementation is negative, especially when the issue in question concerns pain, anger, betrayal, scandal and shame?

The unilateral declaration following the summit by the Bishop of Galway, whose resignation was sought to demonstrate that the cobwebs of the administration in the Dublin Archdiocese that presided over the abuse would be totally removed, is not an appropriate response by him to either stimulate the renewal of the faith of the Catholics of Dublin or to heal the victims.  Why is it therefore tolerated by the authorities?

Is the final prolonged act of this dreadful tragedy to be based on a dysfunctional Hierarchy who cling to office whatever the consequences as they pander obsequiously towards their counterparts in The Vatican but squabble in public among themselves like characters in Macbeth?