The Scottish bishops must, of course, ensure that the paedophile problem can never happen again. There are many reasons why this will be very difficult.
Firstly, there is the selection of candidates for the Tridentine priesthood on the grounds of “vocation”. A nebulous concept at best, this- and its accurate assessment – can hardly be said to have functioned with any degree of efficiency, as we have seen here and elsewhere. The world-wide lack of applicants for the priesthood may well have solved this problem for them.
Secondly, the cover-ups involved leads one to question the efficiency of bishops in 2015. Appointment to a diocese puts a bishop in charge of staff, organisations, property and finances. He will obviously, in most cases, seek efficient professional help . But he may have been in a seminary from the age of 13 or so, beginning a process of insulation from the wear and tear of practical experience of the world for which no amount of hearing confessions – nowadays less common in any case- can ever compensate. As a CEO, his is a lifetime dedication to an institution with important values, functioning within an environment which surrounds him with the conventions of absolute power and unswerving obedience, even with a traditional mode of address and uniform .CEOs in other professions are aware of the possibility of life-changing scenarios like office coups d’etat, economic downturns and the commercial devastation which can occur overnight from new and unexpected scientific discoveries. They will also have undergone some kind of professional training. This is likely to prove generally more valuable than a bishop’s extensive though narrow theological studies, although data on the learning transfer value of this is lacking.
Thirdly, it is a job for life. As Dr Johnson points out ”When a man knows he is to be hanged…it concentrates the mind wonderfully”. The sacking of a bishop, until very recently in Germany, is unheard of, and the world’s bishops, and not just those of Scotland, certainly show a lack of concentration, not merely where paedophile priests are concerned, but also where Pope Francis’s exhortations to permit extended ordination are involved.
Fourthly, inevitably, the perspective of a bishop in 2015 is more likely to be skewed than not, especially as he is functioning within a thousand year old tradition , although in other professions with an old or older tradition like medicine an efficient change of perspective has , if eventually, been made. To be unable accurately to gauge the distaste for and resentment of ordinary Catholics and their priests at their betrayal by paedophiles , and to ignore this and cover it up is a sign of distorted perspective.
Lastly, old men predominate at episcopal level. Old age dislikes change, and it dislikes hurry. Younger people rightly feel they are not understood by the elderly , especially today, when the pace of change is at breakneck speed.
These factors undoubtedly make the lives of our bishops difficult , and we can have some sympathy for them, not that they would necessarily appreciate this. But they are factors they will have to keep in mind if the Church is to move on into a new era, and a China-dominated and Islam-pervaded era at that.