AN ETHICAL ANALYSIS OF TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY IN CHURCH ADMINISTRATION
Keywords:
Accountability, Democratic Culture, Informational Culture, Opacity, Subsidiarity, Transparency, ‘Vectoral’ AccountabilityAbstract
We find corruption in different sectors of society; civil as well as religious. The Catholic Church also tended to corruption and malpractices in its administration. Transparency and accountability help to eradicate corruption. Transparency is counted as an informational mechanism whereas accountability is that one is responsible and answerable for one’s action. The Church has been questioned by a series of events related to unaccountability and opacity concerned with sexual abuse cases and financial mismanagement. A depraved conception is that when somebody admits the error, it defames the Church. The problem of ‘vectoral’ accountability and the pervasiveness of hierarchia intensified the situation. Pope Francis has taken measures in favour of transparency and accountability. It enhances a democratic culture and informational subsidiarity to have credibility in the administration so that the virtue of truthfulness and justice can be performed. A pre-conventional, conventional and post-conventional ethical reasoning would help the Church to recapture the spirit of the gospel to form a just and uncorrupted society.
References
Wayne Sandholtz and William Koetzle, “Accounting and Corruption: Economic Structure, Democracy, and Trade,” International Studies Quarterly 44, 1 (2000).
J. Jay Choi and Heibatollah Sami, ed. Transparency and Governance in a Global World, Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing 2012.
Secretary-General OECD, Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes: Hong Kong (China) 2019 (Second Round): Peer Review Report on the Exchange of Information on Request, Paris: OECD, 2019.
Stephen Kabera Karanja, Transparency and Proportionality in the Schengen Information System and Border Control Co-Operation, Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2008.
Thomas O’Loughlin, “The Credibility of the Catholic Church as Public Actor,” New Blackfriars 94, 1050 (2013).
Jonathan Fox, “The Uncertain Relationship between Transparency and Accountability,” Development in Practice 17, 4-5 (2007).
Joao Cesar das Neves and Antonino Vaccaro, “Corporate Transparency: A Perspective from Thomas Aquinas’ ‘Summa Theologiae,’” Journal of Business Ethics 113, 4 (2013).
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II.
Thomas Docherty, Confessions, Bloomsbury Academic: New York, 2012.
Paul G. Thomas, Performance Measurement, Reporting, Obstacles and Accountability: Recent Trends and Future Directions, Canberra: ANU E Press, 2006.
Robert E. Goodin Mark Bovens, Thomas Schillemans, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Public Accountability, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Roszaini Haniffa and Mohammad Hudaib Sofia Yasmin, “Communicated Accountability by Faith-Based Charity Organizations,” Journal of Business Ethics 122, 1 (2014).
Robert O. Keohane, “Abuse of Power: Assessing Accountability in World Politics,” Harvard International Review 27, 2 (2005).
http://www.bishop-accountability.org/reports/1985_06_09_Doyle_Manual/index.html.
Francis, Apostolic letter on 26 March 2019, On the Protection of Minors and Vulnerable Persons.
Tom Barth, “Crisis Management in the Catholic Church: Lessons for Public Administrators,” Public Administration Review 70, 5 (2010).
Sheldene Simola, “Ethics of Justice and Care in Corporate Crisis Management,” Journal of Business Ethics 46, 4 (2003).
Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate.
Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, Vatican: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2005.
Antonino Vaccaro and Alejo Jose G. Sison, “Transparency in Business: The Perspective of Catholic Social Teaching and the ‘Caritas in Veritate,’” Journal of Business Ethics 100, 1 (2011).
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, “‘Oeconomicae et pecuniariae quaestiones’. Considertions for an Ethical Discernment Regarding Some Aspects of the Present Economic-financial System,” Rome, 6 January 2018.
Marcin Lisak, “Democratisation of a Hierarchical Religion: The Roman Catholic Church in the Time of a Credibility Crisis Caused by Sexual Abuse Misconduct,” Studia Religiologica 45, 1 (2012).
Robert West and Charles Zech, Internal Financial Controls in the U.S. Catholic Church (study paper, available at http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download? doi=10.1.1.499.4316&rep=rep1&type=pdf).
POCSO or The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO Act) 2012, https://wcd.nic.in/sites/default/files/POCSO%20Act%2C%202012.pdf. This Act was subsequently revised and updated.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Fr-Robin-Vadakkumchery. Also in https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/kerala/kerala-priests-rape-of-minor-girl-5-nuns-among-eight-booked/article17407529.ece.
Available at https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/kerala-priest-fr-robin-found-guilty-raping-and-impregnating-16-yr-old-girl-96819.
