The Pope and Employment Law Redux

The Vicar of Christ reads my blog?  The Bishop of Rome surfs the Web for advice given to him?  Pope Benedict XVI decides to set an example for CEOs everywhere?  Do miracles still happen?

On April 16, I posted “The Pope and Employment Law,” admonishing the Pope for not meeting with victims of the priest sex-abuse scandal.  I compared him with other CEOs who won’t meet with employees, look into their eyes, and hear their grievances first hand.  I chastised him–the ultimate CEO–for losing the opportunity to teach all CEOs the right way to handle difficult people problems.

The next day, April 17, yesterday, he surprised almost everyone by meeting privately for about twenty-five minutes with five victims (three men and two women) at the Papal Embassy in Washington, D.C.   According to news reports, after speaking to the group, he met one-on-one with each victim.  Four were middle-aged and had been sexually molested as children.  One was in her 20′s and had been abused relatively recently.  He listened to them, prayed with them, and gave assurances that such abuse would not occur again.

For weeks, the Vatican had rebuffed requests for the Pope to meet with victims, but Benedict XVI apparently decided on his own (which CEOs can do) that the meeting should occur.  Some outraged, non-attending victims and their advocates criticized the Pope for meeting with such a small number of victims (although the Pope was given a list of 1,000-1,500 names of victims who had been sexually abused by priests in Boston alone), for not opening the meeting to all victims who wanted to attend instead of a select few, for meeting with them for such a short period of time, and for not making the meeting an announced, scheduled part of his trip to the states.

That’s fair criticism.  There are 12,000-13,000 victims, and meeting with several hundred or thousand aggrieved people is a much different experience than meeting with five.  While there’s nothing wrong with the privacy of the meeting, it should have lasted longer, involved more people, and had more to it than platitudinous statements about no more victimization.  After decades of destructive sexual molestation, the Pope should have personally reached out to more of the abused, listened to them for agonizing hours, and then promised that some of the bishops he had met with earlier that day would be leaving their posts for gross dereliction of duty.

On the other hand, it can be argued that a small meeting like the one Benedict conducted, short though it was, produces an impact that a larger meeting can’t.  Each person there was able to speak to the Pope in a personal way that’s harder to do in a large group.  One victim told the Pope:  “You have a cancer in your flock . . . . You need to do more.”  Another asked the Pope to forgive him for hating his church, as he handed him a picture of himself at age eight or nine, the time when his molestation began.

The Pope can be criticized for not doing more, but Benedict XVI did have the meeting.  He looked into the eyes of aggrieved people, listened to their stories, saw their tears, and observed, for the first time, their pain.  Could he have done more?  You bet.  The Pope is the Pope.  Like any CEO, however, he has to deal with church or corporate politics.  It shouldn’t be that way, but it is that way.  CEOs usually take baby steps before they’re ready for big boy shoes, and sometimes they remain paralyzed–completely stepless–when confronted with a crisis.  But not this Pope it would seem.

I know, of course, that the Pope isn’t reading my blog.  Alas, I can take no credit for what he did.  I do applaud his action.  He did something that’s hard to do, and he did it on a national stage.  Although he’s talked a lot during his U.S. trip about the victims, he probably should have done more with the victims.  Hopefully, he will do more.  But the CEO’s CEO set an example.  He showed respect, courage and conviction.   He was a leader.  We should all feel better for seeing the way a CEO who is a leader can take a small step that delivers large hope.  What remains to be seen is just how much of a leader he can be.  For now, I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt.

1. 

   nancy says:

   April 18, 2008 at 10:22 pm

   You call that the benefit of the doubt? What more do you want him to do? Publicly apologize? He did. Be ashamed? He is and has said so. Demand his Bishops to shape up and care for the victims? He has. Pay out millions of dollars to the victims? We have. As he said nothing he can say will ever take away the suffering and abuse they have already experienced. what else shall he do?
   And by the way there are millions of dad’s who need to do more and apologize to their daughters and sons for sexual abuse…that have not yet said a thing or even admitted the abuse was wrong. After all they were a parent and the children belonged to them….that is THE ultimate trust betrayed…speak of it, if you can….the numbers are out of proportion to what the Pope/CEO of the largest org. in the world is dealing with publicly. Speak up…I’m listening….Hello?
2. 

   nancy says:

   April 18, 2008 at 10:26 pm

   Oh, and by the way…do you have a comment about the CEO’s of the nuclear family? Can you even begin to justify the 146,000 babies aborted world wide EACH YEAR! The world’s largest holocaust..if you just looked at America’s last 35 years of legalized abortion by parents….53,000,000+….Hello, is anyone out there..does anyone see what I see….does anyone really care???
   Let’s focus on the bigger issues..our culture of death!
3. 

   nancy says:

   April 18, 2008 at 10:27 pm

   Sorry my misprint, that is 146,000,000 worldwide each year!
4. 

   John Phillips says:

   April 19, 2008 at 7:29 am

   Nancy, you’ve given me a lot to think about. I appreciate your weighing in.

   As I think many other of my posts demonstrate and as I tried to explain in my response to another comment about my posts on the Pope, I like to take an event in the news that may not appear at first blush to relate to the workplace or HR or employment law and try to draw employment lessons from it. I guess what the Pope posts show is that doing this in the context of religion can create controversy, to say the least. I’m glad to find that out, because differences of opinion present healthy, thought-provoking educational opportunites for any subject–in my case, the workplace or HR or employment law. Religious events won’t become my only staple for the blog, but they can obviously generate heartfelt, powerful differences of opinion.

   The questions you raise give me food for thought in terms of possible topics for my blog. Looking at a parent as CEO is an interesting proposition. Although I’m a parent, I’m not sure I would have thought of that. Posts about the nuclear family may also have possibility. Working abortion into the employment law arena will be more challenging, but I’ll definitely give it some thought. That would cause the controversy meter to heat up significantly.

   Back to the Pope, while you and others have made some good points in disagreeing with my approach to the Pope and employment law, I stand by the points I was trying to make. The Pontiff–any CEO–can make all the diffference in the world in how people issues and problems are handled–for good or ill. Although some of my comments about Benedict XVI were critical, I ended up saying that he has set an example for all CEOs to follow in dealing with difficult people issues. I stand by that as well.

   You asked what more I would have him do. My answer is to stand by one more thing I’ve already said. In the parlance of employment law, he needs to fire some bishops. Easier said than done I know. And something all CEOs have difficulty doing. Among other things, politics and friendships make that hard–sometimes too hard. But when it happens–when someone at the top who derserves to be fired is fired–the entire organization becomes more healthy, and the people–employees, parishioners, victims, other bishops/supervisors–know that the ultmate person at the top means what he says.

   Thanks for making me think. I hope you’ll provide other comments in the future.
5. 

   John Phillips says:

   April 21, 2008 at 6:27 am

   Thanks for the mention. Very interesting Blawg Review.
6. 

   John Phillips says:

   April 21, 2008 at 2:25 pm

   Thanks for the mention. Your blog is quite interesting.
7. 

   Shawna says:

   April 22, 2008 at 11:13 am

   Folks, there is only one savior. It’s not the Pope and it’s not John Phillips (though I think they are both great – maybe not equally great, but great none the less).

   We are facing unfortunate circumstances in difficult days. No good deed goes unpunished. We should know that by now. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. We should know that by now as well, but it seems we just can’t grasp that concept. What the world needs now is education, sweet education. The school of hard knocks is at risk of being demolished by a society of victims and limited enforcement of natural consequences.
8. 

   John Phillips says:

   April 22, 2008 at 11:39 am

   Shawna, thanks for weighing in with such a different point of view. It’s both refreshing and sobering. I really appreciate it.