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Non-Tech : The ENRON Scandal -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mephisto who wrote (4105)	6/20/2002 2:04:06 AM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 5185

Lagging Arthur Andersen on ethics By Derrick Z. Jackson, Globe Staff, 6/19/2002 TO THINK that Arthur Andersen beat the Catholic Church to justice. Even if the more accurate thought is that some conniving accountants were beaten into justice more quickly than pathological bishops, it is not a good weekend when fairness and closure were found more clearly in the rows of federal district court than in the pews of the church. Last Saturday, a federal jury convicted Andersen of obstruction of justice for altering documents in the investigation of Enron. That same day, the nation's Catholic bishops ended their conference in Dallas. The conference was dominated by the clergy child sexual abuse scandal. The bishops adopted a policy where priests past and present who ever sexually molested a child would be removed from service. Standing up to applaud the new policy was Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law. Law, whose local shuffling of abusive priests from parish to parish mushroomed into a national scandal, said, ''We accomplished something significant.'' What the bishops accomplished seems significantly less next to what happened to Andersen. Andersen admitted to abusing pieces of paper in January. By March, with the criminal indictment handed down and clients fleeing, the global chief executive of Arthur Andersen, Joseph Berardino, resigned. Berardino said: ''I have concluded that my continuing as worldwide CEO could become an impediment ... to save the US firm. While my nature is to keep fighting and protect our clients, the fact is that the improper shredding of documents took place on my watch - and I believe it is now in the best interests of the firm for me to step down.'' Berardino said he was moved to resign because ''on a personal level, I've been trained by my parents and by Jesuits who taught me in college that the greatest thing you can do is do something for someone else. That's all I'm thinking about right now. Someday maybe I'll think about myself.'' Law's coddling of abusive priests exploded on him in January. He admitted mistakes but refused to resign. Ignoring the fact that the Catholic Church in the United States collects twice as much in parish donations as Arthur Andersen collected last year in revenues - $8.2 billion to $3.97 billion - and ignoring the church's deep reach into political issues, Law said, ''It's important to remember that a bishop is not a corporate executive, is not a politician.'' Law said, ''I want the archdiocese to become a model for how this issue should be handled.'' Two weeks after Berardino resigned at Andersen, Law continued to be a model for mishandling his scandal. That was when his direct role was exposed in promoting the Rev. Paul Shanley, who had three decades of accusations of molestation to his name. In America, we take money so seriously that when Andersen went to trial, business prognosticators predicted that no matter what the verdict, public trust in the company was mortally wounded. After the verdict, Andersen, despite nearly 90 years counting the money of the Fortune 500, declared itself dead. The abuse of children within their walls has yet to spark concern by the bishops for their clerical mortality. Sure, they took testimony from victims at their conference. Given the prior stone walls erected by too many bishops, any public recognition of victims' pain was worthwhile. But the real deal of the conference was for the bishops to look like they were lowering the bridge over the moat while heaping more stones and mortar on the wall. They say they will remove abusive priests, but they made no policy to remove bishops or cardinals who reassign abusive priests. It was of little wonder then that Law, in a news photograph, was on his feet ahead of almost all the other bishops around him to applaud the policy. ''We're holding ourselves accountable ... accountable to one another,'' Law said. Law was applauding because once more he knew he had escaped accountability. Berardino said he resigned because he was a fatal impediment to Andersen restoring its credibility. Even though one would think that abused children are more important than abused records, Law still refuses to see his shuffling of priests, and his deploying of lawyers to fight the victims brave enough to bring charges, as an impediment to the Catholic Church restoring its credibility. With the Boston Archdiocese losing so much in contributions that it faces program cuts of up to 40 percent, it is obvious how much of an impediment Law has become. Having hurt children once by ignoring abuse, he is about to hurt them again with the loss of services. Whatever Jesuit teachings motivated Berardino to resign have been lost on Law. Law has so put himself above the fortunes of the church he is willing to continue to cost it a fortune. Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson@globe.com. This story ran on page A19 of the Boston Globe on 6/19/2002. © Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.