The toxicity of cover-ups

History seems to show that the public will forgive almost anything except a cover-up. The Vatican is learning this lesson yet again. That there are pedophiles in an organization as large as the Catholic Church is hardly surprising - there are probably pedophiles in any organization that large, religious or otherwise. If the Catholic Church had just been forthright about it, removed offenders as soon as they were recognized, and dealt sensitively with the victims, it would have been at most a one-day news story.

The mistake has been to cover it all up for years, and move the offenders around from parish to parish, trying to hide the problem (and vastly multiplying the victims). Such cover-ups are judged much more harshly by the public, and feed suspicious of even darker conspiracies. Apparently the Vatican has yet to learn this lesson, as they continue an almost hysterical, but not very convincing, defense of the Church and the Pope. Pope Benedict could put an end to all of this bad publicity by a simple admission of error or bad judgment - a mea culpa - a sincere apology, and promulgation of a strict set of guidelines for future cases. That he doesn't seem to be able to quite bring himself to take these steps (though he came close with his recent pastoral letter to the Irish Church) suggests the Catholic hierarchy hasn't yet learned the lesson about cover-ups.