February 23, 2012
Penn State Scandal Reflects a Flaw Found in Many Organizations
By Jim Berlucchi
Entering the gym last week, I was greeted by Ryan, the normally cheerful manager and head trainer. Ryan is a former college football player who volunteers as a high school coach. His chipper manner and optimism always pick me up, but on this day, I could see he wasn’t himself. “What a sad, sad story,” he murmured, with a nod toward a TV reporting the Penn State scandal. “And it’s only getting worse,” he added.
Sifting through the quagmire of the Penn State scandal is a miserable and near impossible task. As of mid-November, some facts are established, others are contested, and many will certainly never come to light. In any event, PSU trustees felt the facts they had seen were enough to warrant a thorough house cleaning. They fired two top administrators, the president of the college, and a living legend, Coach Joe Paterno.
Some people have rushed to condemn Paterno, and others to defend him. I don’t know enough about what actually happened to render a judgment on his actions, but it certainly looks like he may have chosen to do far less than he should have. He has admitted as much himself, when he said. “It is one of the great sorrows of my life. With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more.”
For Catholics, that awful regret is a poignant reminder of our own scandals, where the failure to act more forcefully undermined the moral authority of leaders. The Penn State scandal reminds us that the same misguided instinct is a trait woven deeply into the fabric of many institutions. And here as in other cases we’ve discussed at the Spitzer Center, the key lesson points to the role of the Cardinal Virtues in helping leaders make good decisions. More specifically, it shows what occurs when a secondary virtue – loyalty – is placed above more primary virtues like Justice, Prudence, and Courage.
Justice always trumps loyalty
Loyalty is justifiably held in esteem as a virtue, while its violation, disloyalty, is rightly condemned as a vice. But only one form of loyalty can be trusted in and for itself, and that’s loyalty to God. St. Thomas More well expressed the order of loyalty in his famous statement, “I am the king’s good servant, but God’s first.” More’s loyalty flows from the love of God that forms the greatest commandment. In the Christian tradition, the loyalty supremely expressed by the martyrs is the greatest of virtues. Such loyalty is a literal imitation of the crucified Christ, whose self sacrifice was the highest expression of love.
All other expressions of loyalty must be directed by a higher virtue, namely Justice. It’s no accident that the Universal Catechism begins its commentary on the virtues with a listing of eight qualities, the first three of which are “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just (Philippians 4:8.).” To be loyal to an unjust cause or person is not a virtue, because virtue, by definition, must point toward the good.
Here again is where loyalty becomes a “rogue virtue” that is loosed from its proper place, permitted to trample on higher virtues that should take precedence, and weaponized to intimidate good people into silence. In many professions, it goes without saying that you never “rat out” a peer, no matter what awful wrong that peer may have done. If you ignore this rule and show “disloyalty,” your own career and reputation may suffer irreparable harm. |
That’s why loyalty must always bow down to Justice, which always seeks to give others what is owed to them. To violate the rights of others through an instinctive loyalty to one’s colleague, boss, or friend is a profound distortion of loyalty. That’s why the figure of Justice is customarily blindfolded: We’re tempted to unfairly favor our friends and shortchange strangers or competitors, which is why we must turn a blind eye to our allegiances is deciding what it just.
Many institutions have a culture in which loyalty is implicitly or explicitly held as THE most important virtue. Insofar as this view takes hold, injustice is almost certain to follow, because doing what’s right will always take a back seat to protecting the organization’s interests.
Only Prudence exposes the seductions of loyalty
By its nature, loyalty inspires powerful emotions and deep sentiments. When faced with the need to confront the wrongdoing of those to whom we are bound, these sentiments can cloud our judgment and set us in search of excuses not to act. The temptation is to feel bad for those who committed the wrong or will suffer from its disclosure. The victims may be reduced to mere abstractions or even threats, undeserving of empathy.
This is where Prudence comes in, and why it’s the primary Cardinal Virtue. St. Thomas Aquinas calls it the commanding virtue of the conduct of life. It can be defined as “the perfected ability of right decision-making,” and the ability, in any given situation, to see what is true, what is good, what is fair, and what is necessary.
Prudence is the antidote for what Fr. Spitzer calls “the nearly infinite human capacity for rationalization.” When Justice and loyalty are on a collision course, it takes Prudence to assert which virtue has the right of way.
The Courage to act
While it’s easy to critique the failures at Penn State and elsewhere from afar, doing the right thing often requires great Courage. Even when “blowing the whistle” is a clear-cut moral imperative, actually doing so can be like walking into a firestorm.
At the very least, it means subjecting friends and beloved institutions to a public scandal. At worst, it can make you the target of vilification and accusations of betrayal. It’s not surprising that people faced with this prospect might opt for the easier route of staying quiet or passing the buck in the hopes that someone else will take the heat.
Here again is where loyalty becomes a “rogue virtue” that is loosed from its proper place, permitted to trample on higher virtues that should take precedence, and weaponized to intimidate good people into silence. In many professions, it goes without saying that you never “rat out” a peer, no matter what awful wrong that peer may have done. If you ignore this rule and show “disloyalty,” your own career and reputation may suffer irreparable harm.
The Cardinal Virtue of Courage is the ability to overcome fear and do what we know to be right despite the consequences. Prudence guides Courage, because it can tell you how best to take action and minimize harm, including harm to yourself.
In conclusion, it’s easy in retrospect and with the benefit of distance to see the mistakes that lead good people to make bad decisions. It’s much harder to steer through the moral hazards that suddenly loom up in front of you. In such crises, people tend to default to the unwritten laws of the culture in which they work. And if that culture gives short shrift to the Cardinal Virtues, disaster often ensues.
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Last changed: Nov 17 2011 at 12:41 PM