The Catholic church isn’t the only institution to close ranks in a scandal | Simon Jenkins

The police, the NHS, the army – all suffer from a culture of denial. Yet for democracy’s sake, they must reform and revive

‘We need a change of culture.’ Whenever I hear this I think of the Catholic church, the army, the NHS, the police or any number of British institutions. They all share a curious lack of concern for how the outside world sees their internal practices and procedures. After some scandal they may agree to a change of culture, but it is usually code for the opposite.

There is little new in this week’s United Nations report on the handling by the Roman Catholic church of sex attacks by priests. Nor is there much new in other running horrors, such as the army’s alleged tolerance of rape, the NHS’s hiding of hospital mistreatment, or the deaths of juvenile offenders in custody. In each case institutions seemed to assume a degree of immunity from accountability, which government for a while concedes. The contrast is stark with the crown prosecution service’s running obsession with celebrity sex, which came to grief in the acquittal of William Roache.

The UN claims that years of Catholic sex abuse and concealment have gone largely uncorrected. On the radio on Wednesday a victim accused an unnamed priest of having regularly raped her and others as children, on the grounds that it was “God’s punishment for their sinfulness”. Despite constant pleas for his removal, he is still in office.

The UN accuses the Vatican hierarchy of “consistently placing the reputation of the church and the protection of the perpetrators above children’s best interests”. For good measure it also urges Rome to change its stance on abortion and contraception, and to tone down attacks on homosexuality.

Such recommendations from an international body are hard to evaluate since, as with the UN report on British housing, they seem to express little beyond the personal politics of officials. They have nothing to do with the under-employed organisation’s core purpose. If the UN means to venture into the social impact of religious dogma it must presumably address the victims of other faiths.

I am sure most Catholics are appalled by the revelations of abuse by their clergy, and by the blind eye turned to them by elements within the church leadership. Whether they accept that their church can no longer be left to set its own house in order is another matter. On the issue of sex abuse it must sooner or later be confronted by the forces of law and order. Likewise its dogma on birth control is being widely challenged by democracy.

Meanwhile other institutions should beware of smugness. Most of those now in the spotlight are governed by hierarchies also committed to hidebound practices and doctrines. In Britain a young female soldier committed suicide after her accusations of rape were ignored by a macho army culture. In mid-Staffordshire a woman was ostracised and driven from home for revealing dreadful patient neglect and maltreatment. Equally …read more