Monday, 1 November 2010
Morning Scepticism: Reputation
It's come to light that the cover-up of child rape by the Catholic Church was done to protect the good name of the church. Over and over again. So when the scandal broke, it came out not only as priests committing abuse but the Church engaging in a wide cover-up. So not only was there the problem of the Church's good name being ruined by the scandals, but the added reputation-destroying action of allowing such actions to take place over and over again. Is protecting a reputation in the short term really worth the damage it might take later if such systematic cover-ups come to light? And this isn't even taking to account that there's meant to be some sort of link between religion and morality!
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It must have been thirty years ago or more that my mother told me about a newspaper story in our town that mentioned graves of babies and small children being found near a Catholic church. Priests went from door to door asking for copies of that day's newspaper because they wanted to destroy the copies and suppress the story, in case it gave rise to some scandal about Catholics--nuns and babies perhaps. As it turned out, she said, the graves were the result of an epidemic long ago. But, her point was, the Church's first impulse was to suppress the story without regard to the facts behind it and whether or not they reflected badly on the Church.
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