Which is more damaging? Revealing wrongdoings or covering them up? The instinct of the church to hush things up appears stronger than the instinct to do what’s right. That’s doubly damaging, since you now not only have the original transgressions, but heaped on top is the revelation that humanity is not what the church considers to be supremely important, which strikes at the heart of what most people understood to be fundamental.

 

The damage to the brand is immense. What does the church stand for then, people will ask themselves. And it will be hard to find the answers, when the leadership has miscalculated so badly. But at times like this there is an opportunity to revitalise the brand. The pope should reveal all, and then use the crisis to modernise, striking at the causes of the problem, like celibacy and infallibility. A new, revitalised brand, more relevant to today’s world, might be some recompense to the victims.

 

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