Catholic Clergy Public Relations Strategy: Misdirection

Exchanging comments on this blog recently got me to thinking how clever some Catholic clergy are at diverting attention away from their weakness to a direction that takes them off the hook.

One of them is Hitler. We all agree Hitler was one of the most terrible dictators in modern history. There is an ongoing effort to assign him to some modern group. It's common to say, "He is like Hitler," or "They are like the Nazis."

Catholics have a public relations problem with Hitler because he was born and baptized a Catholic. At various points in time, he self-identified as a Catholic. At an important time in his history Catholic officials said Hitler was one of them. All this does not mean he took Catholicism, or any other religious view, seriously. But, the problem remains for Catholic leadership.

What can Catholics do about this? It is to engage in political misdirection by claiming Hitler was an atheist. I envision a fictitious meeting of leading Catholic clergy to have gone like this:

After a prayer, the Cardinal opens the meeting, "We have to get this Hitler monkey off of our backs.    Critics are saying he was a Catholic. There is a little truth to that. But he also attacked Catholic clergy  and flirted with Protestants. Any suggestions?"  From the back another Cardinal suggested Hitler be    referred to as a Lutheran. "Oh no. We can't do that. Lutherans will just throw it back to us. And               anyway we have to stay on good terms with them. Here in Europe we both need to keep the                 government collection money and giving it to us. My solution is we just call Hitler an atheist. He           never said he was an atheist, he talked up religion. But that doesn't matter. Atheists are not popular and they are too small in number to give us any trouble. Let's just go with Hitler was an atheist."

 A similar misdirection is used for the priest pedophile problem. A certain percentage of people, often men, have in their brain a sexual attraction to children. We all agree it is a terrible thing and wish it were never present. 

That this affliction is found among clergy like it is found across society should not be surprising. What has been surprising is that Catholic executives hide these abusers by transferring them from one perish to another instead of having them arrested. 

For whatever reason, Catholic leadership decided to not label the abusers men who had the well know attraction to children but instead label them homosexuals. I read often clergy saying if it could rid the church of homosexuals this pedophilia problem would be solved. I suppose it helps justify the Catholic label of "sin" it has placed on homosexuality. 

The impulse to keep up the image of Catholic clergy being separate and on a higher plain than the rest of society causes its leadership to stretch the truth.