On Good Friday, the Church crucified itself. It's extraordinary to read the latest claims by the Catholic Church comparing the criticism of the Church and Pope Benedict XVI to anti-semitism and the persecution of Jews.
Yeah right, like the priests are being slaughtered in pogroms and are being burnt at the stake. These people have absolutely no shame. Did someone actually think this was a good idea? The Church is giving businesses a lesson in how not to run public relations.
The PR spin from the Church is ruthlessly slated and shown up for what it is by Maureen Dowd in the New York Times. And Dowd, who went to the right Catholic schools, knows this creature better than most.
Dowd writes: "It doesn't seem right that the Catholic Church is spending Holy Week practicing the unholy art of spin. Complete with crown-of-thorns imagery, the church has started an Easter public relations blitz defending a pope who went along with the perverse culture of protecting molesters and the church's reputation rather than abused – and sometimes disabled and disadvantaged – children. The church gave up its credibility for Lent. Holy Thursday and Good Friday are now becoming Cover-Up Thursday and Blame-Others Friday. This week of special confessions and penance services is unfolding as the pope resists pressure from Catholics around the globe for his own confession and penance about the cascade of child sexual abuse cases that were ignored, even by a German diocese and Vatican office he ran. If church fund-raising and contributions dry up, Benedict's P.R. handlers may yet have to stage a photo-op where he steps out of the priest's side of the confessional and enters the side where the rest of his fallible flock goes."
As the Financial Times points out, the Church is losing swaths of its 1 billion worldwide followers and their donations, and it's facing mounting lawsuits costly both in financial and moral terms. US dioceses have already paid out more than $1.1bn in compensation.
At the end of last month, I did a blog entry looking at how a corporation would handle this scandal. If this had happened at a Ford or a GE, the company would have set up an independent inquiry, suspended the people at the allegations and then sacked them if the allegations were found to be true. The organisation would also work closely with the regulatory authorities.
But then, that would require a lot of soul searching in the Catholic Church. It's reached crisis point but the Pope refuses to recognise that. The Church needs to revises its strategy if it's too survive.
no comment untill now