"It is better for eight innocent men to suffer than for millions to lose their faith."
Allegedly, this was spoken by a lawyer involved in trying to get the Catholic church to investigate the crimes of Father Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legion of Christ. Maciel brought a lot of money into the church, was beloved by thousands of followers, and recruited hundreds of priests. He was also a monstrous criminal who raped dozens of young men (including the eight priests who brought the complaint), had at least two wives and several children and, it has been creditably reported, sexually abused his own children. Despite the gravity of the charges against him, and a huge weight of evidence, it took the Vatican a decade to finally get around to removing him from office. It is hard for outsiders to find out what is happening inside the Vatican, but all the evidence points to Pope John Paul II as the one who held up serious investigation of Maciel's crimes.
Maciel seems like a clear case to me, because he was such a vile man. But I was just wondering, should we always, in every case, expose and prosecute all wrongdoing? Are there cases in which we should just leave criminals alone, and tell victims to keep their mouths shut? Should honesty be the basis of all reputations, or does the need for heroes, or the need for people to have faith in institutions, ever justifying suppressing unpleasant truths?
See, the church chose *both* the suffering of those 8 people and the loss of thousands of faithful.
ReplyDeleteObviously, some suffering for the overall good is sometimes tolerated by society. We accept, for example, that some innocent people will go to jail, because there is no way to punish criminals without accidentally convicting innocent people occasionally.
But if the prosecutor jails a man he knows to be innocent to make society feel safer, then that prosecutor has crossed a line.
Injustices in good faith we can accept. If the Pope in good faith thought Maciel was innocent, it would be one thing. If the Pope thought it was too damaging to his church to punish Maciel, well, it was far more damaging in the long run to let him stay. In general, covering up scandal causes a rot. It not only lets Maciel continue, but signals to others in the church that pedophilia is sometimes okay. It causes a moral rot, which, when exposed, will be thousands of times worse.
I agree that cover-ups usually fail, in least in our reporter-saturated world, so these schemes end up making things worse.
ReplyDeleteBut what if you got away with it?