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	Temptation to Cover-Up Globe and Mail March 30, 2010 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/editorials/temptation-to-cover-up/article1516706/ CANADA -- A mistaken application of the Christian theological concept of scandal has tended to tempt the Roman Catholic Church into cover-ups, which have compounded the abundantly justified outrage over the sexual abuse of children by priests. The Catholic Church is not like a business corporation or a government department that happens to be inept in its public-relations strategy. Its purposes and principles are different, and its seriously held ideas are complex enough that its leaders can become entangled and misapply them. Whether Pope Benedict XVI, in his previous or present functions, has been at fault in these matters is a question of fact that may or may not be sorted out in due course. But the institutional propensity is unmistakable. As Michael Higgins, the former president of St. Thomas University in New Brunswick, put it in a Globe op-ed in 2002, "Rome's almost pathological fear of causing scandal has created scandal." The very word "scandal" is derived from a group of Greeks words in the New Testament, used by both Jesus and Saint Paul, which are notoriously difficult to translate. Paul, in his letter to the small Christian community in Rome, said that Christians should not "scandalize weaker brothers" by departing too far from the Jewish dietary laws, although, in his view, these were no longer binding; members of the community who did not fully grasp the new freedom might be shocked, go off the rails and lose their faith entirely. That paved the way to extensive moral teaching about the consequences of setting bad examples, as well as of otherwise neutral behaviour that might shock the laity, or what the great 13th-century philosopher Thomas Aquinas called "passive scandal." Catholic thinkers always knew that clergy could do evil things, but the theological concept of scandal has often led to the hushing up of clerical sins, with the professed intention of protecting lay people from disturbing disillusionment. Catholic authorities could sincerely, or self-deceivingly, decide on discreet reassignment or retirement for sinning priests. Some Protestant thinkers, notably John Calvin and Soren Kierkegaard, have done a better job than most Catholics at expressing the highly paradoxical quality of the Biblical concept of scandal. The wave of disclosures of priestly pedophilia in the past few decades has spectacularly demonstrated the need for some Catholic rethinking. Rather than alluding to "petty gossip," as he did on Palm Sunday, Pope Benedict ought, as a start, to write a major pastoral letter on abuse and scandal.
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