Contrasting holy images

The governance of the Catholic Church is often discussed in management schools that continuously search for the holy grail of the ideal management system for today’s businesses. A good, clean public image is considered by most business academics as an essential element of success for today’s modern businesses that depend on keeping the loyalty of their existing customers and attracting new ones to promote growth.

While the Catholic Church is definitely not a business organisation, it has an interest in projecting an image of itself that endears it to its followers and at the same time attracts new ones, especially young people. Many will, undoubtedly, claim that the Church commands the loyalty of its followers by preaching the truth and being consistent in what it teaches throughout the ages. One can hardly disagree that there is merit in this argument.

But while spin and slick public relations strategies may not feature highly in its set of management tools, the Catholic Church is undoubtedly interested in projecting a friendly image of itself. To what extent has the Church been successful in projecting such an image in recent years?

The picture of the Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe receiving Holy Communion in the Vatican on the occasion of Pope John Paul’s beatification must have sent a cold shiver down the spine of all those who associate Mugabe with tyranny against his own people. This incident brought back to mind a similar incident of a few years ago when the same Pope Paul John II was seen on TV giving Holy Communion to the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet when the Pope visited Chile.

Some years later the Catholic Church in America projected a very different image of itself when Archbishop Raymond Burke of St Louis denied Communion to the Catholic Senator John Kerry for supporting the ‘pro-choice’ abortion legislation in the US. To the applause of almost 100 bishops, Burke had warned those politicians that were ‘pro-choice’ on abortion that “they were not eligible to receive Holy Communion in his jurisdiction.” Yet, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Archbishop of Washington disagreed with Burke and claimed that he was “uncomfortable denying Communion to someone such as Senator Kerry”.

The late US Catholic Senator Edward Kennedy could not stomach the treatment meted out to his colleague. Kennedy is quoted as saying: “Pope John Paul II has absolutely no business telling bishops in the USA not to give Holy Communion to Senator Kerry when the Pope himself had given Communion to General Augusto Pinochet when he visited Chile and Pinochet was still in power”.

More recently, the Vatican’s representative in Tripoli, Bishop Giovanni Marintelli spoke vociferously against the Nato attacks on Libya. On one occasion he was rushed with other Church leaders to the mortuary where Muammar Gaddafi’s son’s body was lying to give his final blessing in front of the world’s leading TV stations’ cameras. Many asked why Martinelli did not find an occasion to be seen blessing the bodies of some of the thousands of ordinary people who were massacred in this bloody civil war.

Seen in this context, the behaviour of some clerics in the local Catholic Church in the divorce referendum campaign is hardly surprising. It seems that we have our fair share of the ‘fire and brimstone’ school of theologians who try to convince the faithful by all religious means at their disposal. But there are other local clerics who, like Cardinal McCarrick, feel “uncomfortable” using outdated moral threats to win over souls.

The Church can be very slick and effective when it wants to project a friendly image of itself. I particularly like the adverts on Italian TV produced by the Catholic Church to solicit tax-efficient donations from the faithful. The images of parish priests caring for the elderly, of nuns trying to give orphans a normal life, and of young priests playing football with youngsters trying to shake off the habit of drugs are as heart warming as they are a true representation of an important reality of the daily mission of the Church.

While the Catholic Church can never be governed in the way a business is, it still needs to project a friendly image to today’s society that is so influenced by modern communications technology. It needs to project images of itself that are consistent, real and attractive not only to those who sympathise with its mission, but to others who are quite neutral about the Catholic Church’s teachings but acknowledge its important role in society.

jcassarwhite@yahoo.com