The utility from beautiful music for many does not justify
the physical and sexual abuse of a relative few. Even though utilitarianism
goes by the motto, the greatest pleasure (and least pain) for the greatest
number, the severity of the pain to a few can, I submit, outweigh a more
widespread, yet relatively superficial, pleasure for others. Surely the
intensity of pleasure and pain must enter into the ethical calculus. I have in
mind here the Regensburg Domspatzen, a Roman Catholic boys choir, in the E.U.
state of Germany. This case points to the default power of established
institutions and a religious psychology.
On July 18, 2017, Ulrich Weber, an outside lawyer announced
the findings of his investigation. He found 547 cases of plausible physical
abuse, 67 of which involved sexual abuse.[1]
The abuse took place while Georg Ratzinger was the choir’s music director—from 1964
to 1994. His brother would be the Pope from 2005 to 2013. The presumption in
terms of accountability was that the Church would police itself according to
its Canon Law. However, in this case the personal conflict of interest should
have sent the case to the local police, yet this was not the case. Instead,
that pope threatened priests with excommunication should they contact the
public authorities. Cut off from heaven for aiding accountability concerning
people who had abused children! The power to excommunicate itself can thus be
viewed as culpable. Moreover, the presumptuousness, including the accompanying
blind-spots, that religious authority can engender and perpetuate is worthy of
note.
One rather obvious take-away from this case is that the
investigation of illegal act should be left to local police rather than
religious organizations. Put another way, canon law does not trump criminal
law. A second, less obvious, point regards the ethics of the sheer inertia of
established societal institutions such as large, very old, religious
organizations. Like a speeding ball in the void of outer space, such an
institution can go through time seamlessly without virtually any resistance to
slow it down, regardless of how unethical
or even illegal the internal acts and cover-ups may be. This disconnect for
clergy and members alike, wherein they continue as they had as if nothing had changed, can be
reckoned as a sort of cognitive pathology in itself akin to or abetted by
denial. Members as a whole continue to contribute money, and virtually no one
resigns from the organization as an ethical protest or personal stand of sorts.
In terms of organization theory, a disconnect between an organization and the
wider society can be expected to impair the organization in at least some
respects, not limited to diminished reputational capital. In terms of
organizational life-cycles, such a period should be one of significant contraction, rather than steady-state. I
submit that in the case of the Roman Catholic Church, the combination of being
such an established (i.e., entrenched) institution and the psychology of
religious denial block the natural “ebb and flow” that both in theory and
practice pertains to organizations generally.
[1]
Melissa Eddy, “’Culture
of Silence’ Abetted Abuse of at Least 547 German Choir Boys, Inquiry Finds,”
The New York Times, July 18, 2017.
