Ruth Krall, A Considered Response to a Canadian Catholic Educator's Quarterly Review of the Covington Catholic Story

Ruth Krall was inspired by Paul2port's quarterly review of the Covington Catholic story last Saturday, and in response to it, she has offered some reflections, with a helpful bibliography for further reading. I'm very grateful to her for this thoughtful response. Ruth writes: 

Sometimes it takes a change in personnel to change a culture.

~ Paul2port, "A Canadian Catholic Educator's Quarterly Review of the Covington Catholic Story"

Hate and hurt are not judged by their intention, but by their reception.

~ Paul2port, A Canadian Catholic Educator's Quarterly Review of the Covington Catholic Story"

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Weak boards of directors appoint weak presidents; weak presidents appoint weak boards of directors.

~ Arden Shank, Executive Director: 2002-2018, Neighborhood Housing Services of South Florida, Personal Correspondence

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On having personal integrity inside institutions — when asked to conform to practices and systems of corruption and evil: You have to be willing to give up your career; you have to be willing to have your career destroyed.

~ James Baker, Former FBI General Counsel, Interview with Rachel Madow on May 10, 2019

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Weak and/or corruptible supervisory boards appoint and support weak/and or corruptible chief executive officers (CEO) and the corrupted CEO now appoints weak and/or corruptible mid-level supervisors; corrupt executives and corruptible mid-level supervisors, in turn, hire weak and/or corruptible employees. Over time it becomes apparent: integrity and accountability are no longer the ordinary modus operandi inside the institution.

~ Ruth E. Krall

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Corrupt institutions hire corrupt or corruptible administrators; corrupt or corruptible administrators create a climate of support and cover for corrupt or corruptible subordinates. Corrupted personnel both support and perpetuate corrupted institutions. Eventually moral rot is everywhere. The institution has become morally bankrupt.

~ Ruth E. Krall

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A continuous cycle of corrupt administrators and their subordinates proliferates inside corrupted institutions. When this cycle sustains itself over time, corruption becomes the endemic institutional modus operandi for doing business. No longer do ordinary means of ethical and moral institutional self-regulation work. It is not uncommon to see various forms of extortion as in “you inform on me and I will inform on you.”

Outside intervention is now essential if the organization is ever to operate with integrity and accountability.  

~ Ruth E. Krall

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Morally principled individuals who seek to intervene and to reform corrupt institutional practices from within (i.e., an insider status) are usually demonized in an effort to intimidate them and bring them into line with institutional practices. When these efforts at institutional socialization and intimidation fail, these reformers and internal critics are either fired outright or sidelined to the outer realms of organizational hell. They are disempowered. Their programs are gutted or may even be shut down. Some institutional writers describe this as a process of social castration. Institutional vengeance against reform efforts is usually swift. Vindictive self-righteousness — inside the organization — is relentless and future employment opportunities in other institutions may be poisoned for individuals seeking transparency and accountability.  

~ Ruth E. Krall

Useful References 

• Cohen, S. ( 2001). States of Denial: Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering. Cambridge, UK:  Polity Press.

• Hamilton, V. L. and Kelman, H. (1989). Crimes of Obedience: Toward a Social Psychology of Authority and Responsibility. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

• Keen, S. (1991). Faces of the Enemy: Reflections of the Hostile Imagination. San Francisco, CA:  Harper and Row.

• Martel, F. (2019).  In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy. (Shaun Whiteside, Trans.) London, UK: Bloomsbury/Continuum.

• Robinson, G. (2007). Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church. Mulgrave, Victoria, Australia: John Garrett.

• Soelle, D. (1992). Beyond Mere Obedience. (L. W. Denef, Trans.) New York, NY: Pilgrim.

• White, W. F. (1986). Incest in the Organizational Family: The Ecology of Burn-out in Closed Systems. Cincinnati, OH: Lighthouse Training Institute.

• Wink, W.  (1992). Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination. Minneapolis, MN:  Fortress.

• Zimbardo, P. G.  (2008). The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. New York, NY: Random House Trade Paperbacks.

Note: Ruth Krall worked as a mid-level administrator throughout her career — serving as a Director of Nursing Services and In-patient Program Director in a community mental health center in central California; as an Assistant Professor of Nursing and Psychiatry in a university medical school in Arizona; and as a tenured Professor in Religion, Psychology and Nursing and a Peace, Justice, and Conflict Studies Program Director in a Mennonite college. In addition, in mid-career she also spent a year supervising Goshen College students in a Studies Abroad Program in Costa Rica. In this response to Paul2port, she draws from years of experience in each of these positions.

An idealistic and naïve twenty something year old has become something else altogether. No longer naïve and an old woman now, she reflects upon her life in wonderment at the person she has become.  She sometimes is totally bemused at her no-longer-naïve idealism in light of the things she has witnessed inside multiple organizations. How, she often wonders, did I become this person? Her personal philosophy of life has become quite simple: in these aging years she attempts to live inside the values she taught in the classroom — believing that to do otherwise would betray generations of students.