For an organization that has helped others deal with their crises over hundreds of years, you might expect the Catholic Church to be doing a better job of handling its own troubles. Unfortunately, in terms of modern-day crisis management practices the church is doing just about everything wrong, and the consequences are mounting daily. News reporting of sexual abuse in the church has expanded to the point that the Poynter organization, a Florida-based journalism education group, created a daily weblog to track the coverage. And, the issue has moved beyond news to the entertainment media, showing up as a sub-plot in a recent episode of the TV series “Boston Public.”

“Like jarring aftershocks from a mighty earthquake, Boston’s clergy sexual abuse scandal has registered around the world, provoking what some scholars have called the worst crisis in the Catholic Church in 500 years,” according to a Dec. 12 Boston Globe article. “Within weeks of the Globe reports in January about the Archdiocese of Boston’s secret settlement of child molestation claims against at least 70 priests, dioceses around the country were forced to confront the consequences of their own policies about sexually abusive clergymen. The clerical sex abuse scandal swiftly reached from New Hampshire to California, from Arizona to Pennsylvania. It resonated in Ireland and Mexico and Poland, the homeland of Pope John Paul II, who was forced to make it the focus of his attention.”

The crisis loomed throughout the year, then, in mid-December it coalesced around Boston Cardinal Bernard Francis Law, who was forced to resign in disgrace. It was Law who had made the settlement and tried to keep it secret. Of Law, the Globe said, “He will probably be forever tarred as the man who chose repeatedly to keep in ministry priests who had sexually molested children and adolescents, priests who had traded drugs for sex, fathered children, and abused women.”

Nothing Law could have done to better manage the crisis that followed revelation of the secret settlement would have lessened the impact of sexual abuse for the victims of priests. But he could have limited the impact of the crisis on the church as a whole if he had taken a more forthright approach.

After the Globe revealed the secret settlement, Law at first refused to discuss the issue with the newspaper, a Globe article said, “But the January (2002) stories provoked such instant fury that Law abandoned his policy of silence within days. Dressed in a simple black cassock, he stood before reporters and a phalanx of television cameras at a press conference and – without defensiveness – said he was ‘profoundly sorry.’”

A public apology in times of crisis can go a long way toward rebuilding trust and the organization’s credibility, but only if it is accompanied by actions that show the organization is determined to reveal the full impact of whatever problems it has caused (or permitted) and only when it undertakes action to make certain the same problems can never cause harm again.

Law followed his apology with reassurances that “he had removed all priests known to have sexually attacked minors,” the Globe said. “When reporters pressed him, he repeated that assertion three times.” Yet, as the crisis mushroomed within and outside of the Boston Diocese, prosecutors had to use the threat of a grand jury to persuade the church to waive confidentiality agreements, which had prevented victims from giving authorities details about priests who sexually abused them as children. By then, the dam was breaking in the number of sexual abuse cases reported, and it became clear that Law’s apology was a sham attempt to continue the cover up.

Law adopted what has unfortunately become a typical two-pronged crisis strategy among large and powerful organizations: he adopted a bunker mentality, avoiding the public, including the news media; and he put his full faith in the ability of lawyers to prevent incriminating information from being made public. Both efforts failed. According to the Globe, plaintiff’s attorney Mitchell Garabedian said “The uncontested facts indicate that they wanted secrecy at any cost…It’s almost surreal that the supposed most moral institution in the world could act so immorally.”

That revelation is shocking. But a curious thing can happen among the senior leaders of any large, powerful organization. Often, they lead insular lives, surrounded by people drilled in the discipline of telling them what they want to hear. As the Globe points out regarding Law’s testimony under oath, “For a man accustomed to having his ring kissed and to being addressed as ‘Your Eminence,’ it was a startling spectacle.”

Rather than squelching the crisis, in Law’s case, this arrogance of authority created a backlash that eventually overpowered him and created untold damage to his organization. According to The Atlanta Journal Constitution, the Boston Catholic laity formed a protest group called Voice of the Faithful, which is demanding accountability by Catholic leaders and punishment for “predatory priests.” Also, the newspaper reported, “The Boston Priests Forum, which now includes about 300 parish clerics, says the time has ended when they kissed the rings and always acquiesced to the bishops.”

With Law now out of power and Bishop Richard Lennon appointed as temporary replacement, the Boston Diocese still faces 500 lawsuits from victims of sexual abuse and the potential of bankruptcy. Law will still be required to give further depositions and testify before a grand jury investigating possible criminal violations by church officials. Meanwhile, church attendance has fallen and donations that support the corporate structure of the diocese have dwindled.

In New Hampshire, “the Diocese of Manchester signed an historic agreement with Attorney General Philip McLaughlin, effectively ending the criminal investigation into the diocese’s part in the widening sex abuse scandal plaguing the church,” according to Foster’s Sunday Citizen, an online New Hampshire news organization. “Local experts said the agreement between the Diocese of Manchester and the state Attorney General’s office this week is a positive step in protecting children, but it’s too early to tell whether it will set off a chain of similar events elsewhere in the country.” According to the Dallas Morning News, “The bishops coming under the greatest scrutiny are several who previously were top aides to Cardinal Law in the Archdiocese of Boston.”

Following decades of criminal abuse within the Catholic Church, the cover up that allowed “predator priests” to continue their activities has finally been smashed. Now it is up to the church to determine whether it will actually practice what it preaches about demonstrating genuine concern for its members.