Catholics and Soviets Cannot Self Correct

When an institution of any kind makes a big mistake and says, "The people in charge at the time did not understand what they were doing. We now understand their mistakes. Our institution continues providing the high quality, truthfulness and integrity that has always been its mission." be skeptical. 

The best example of this that appears almost every day is the Catholic Church. I remember decades ago watching a Catholic TV show where the host said, "That our church was wrong back in history does not mean at all that it is wrong today. Quite the contrary." What he meant was that leaders of the church were wrong but the church itself was not wrong. 

Pope Fracis used precisely the same shell game recently. He apologized for mistreatment of children in Catholic Indian schools. He said the people who ran the schools should not have abused those children. He made the same remarks about past treatment of Jews and racial segregation. Priests who sexually abused children had nothing to do the Catholic Church, even though those running the church hid the abusers by transferring them to other parishes. The Catholic Church, and some branches of Protestantism, cannot self-correct. The institution cannot be allowed to be wrong.

The Communist Party in Russia is similar. It cannot admit it was a mistake to invade Ukraine. Mistakes have been made by troops and their generals who have not wrapped up the war. The leaders of the Party do not make mistakes.

Contrast that with the American Society of Psychiatry. Forty-eight years ago it made decision that put it at odds with a prevailing view of our society. It voted to declare that homosexuality is not a mental illness. Following that decision, the Society did NOT say, "We apologize for the error of previous less knowledgeable people in our field. The profession of psychiatry has always been correct but individuals in our field have made mistakes." Instead, it recognized the Society of Psychiatry is whatever its doctors think it is. When its members were wrong, the organization was wrong because they are one and the same thing.

What the clergy, or Russian Communists, believe at any given time is what their respective organizations stand for. If the Catholic Church was wrong, it would be healthy to say it was wrong instead of trying to blame it on individuals.