Even after three weeks, the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry has come to resemble the earlier Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
We have seen the same initial resistance to a public enquiry, the same insistence that revelations of sexual or financial abuse reflected a few bad apples and not a bad culture, the same endorsement when the royal commission was called, and the same shaming as the public questioning of hapless senior officials followed damning evidence of abuse and of the failure to address it.
We have also seen evidence of the same incompetent management, whose very incompetence perpetuated abuse, diffused responsibility for it, and deepened the harm done by it. There was the same failure to maintain adequate systems of reporting; the same quiet moving on or transferring officers guilty of financial or sexual abuse; the same unwillingness to find out about the extent of abuse and the same slowness to offer redress.
We have seen evidence, too, of the same reluctance of senior management to know about the abuse; the same priority given to preserving the reputation of financial or church institutions; the same muted complaints of unfairness and of ignoring the contribution to society of the respective institutions; the same assistance in cover-up by regulating officers, whether in government departments, police or ASIC, effectively leaving the institutions a free hand to ignore the abuse.
We have seen the same reluctance to admit to a culture in which abuse, sexual or financial, flourishes; the same public scepticism whether the institutions will ever reform themselves; and perhaps the same lull in conversation and the same inquisitorial gaze when one admits to being either a Catholic priest or a senior bank executive.
No doubt these claimed similarities could be expanded on or questioned in detail. But to observers who share a personal and public-spirited interest in the decent functioning and trustworthiness both of financial institutions and of churches, they surely raise larger questions beyond structures of governance, remuneration, legal penalties and compensation. They invite reflection on why two apparently different forms of institution should behave in such similar ways.
An unsophisticated observer might respond that churches, banks, financial institutions and big corporations — which so far have avoided Royal Commissions — are all in fact religious organisations. Behind the metrics, the microeconomic analyses and the organisational complexity of financial institutions, as well as of churches, lies the worship of a divinity which shapes their ends.
"When the church is made into an idol, the values of its founder are inevitably compromised. This leads to the corruption and consequent loss of a good name."
In the case of financial institutions it is wealth — national, institutional and individual. Adherents of the cult see their ultimate end as the profitability of their institution, which — because wealth is one and undivided — is ipso facto the salvation also of the nation. The sign of individual election is to share in that wealth by promotion, by the high salaries, bonuses and status that go with them.
In Christian preaching, the cult of wealth is called idolatry, defined as the worship of images instead of the living God of Jesus Christ. Idolatry can inspire great dedication and self-sacrifice in its adherents. Its weakness is that the claim of its deity to be the highest value for society, institution and individual must inevitably override such other values as honesty, truthfulness, faithfulness and accountability. The corruption that inevitably ensues reveals the idols to be false gods, not worthy of human worship.
The same unsophisticated observer might also remark the same recurrent idolatry in the Catholic Church. The church of God comes to be worshipped instead of the God of the church. The living God of Jesus Christ is identified with the interests of the church, and self-sacrificing service of the church is identified with protecting the reputation of the church and its ministers. The signs of God's favour are then to be found in the approval of one's superiors and by promotion based on loyalty.
When the church is made into an idol, the values of its founder — transparency to the truth, unconditional love of others and especially the most disregarded, and attentiveness to the voice of God in the messy daily reality of human society and the world — are inevitably compromised. This leads to the corruption and consequent loss of a good name.
The wise and prudent of this world will no doubt accuse the unsophisticated observer of naivety in claiming that Catholics should be more concerned about idolatry than about unbelief, and that financial institutions should be more concerned about greed than about diminished profitability. But the unsophisticated observer may observe that the track record of the wise and prudent of this world is not great in recognising and calling out idols.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street.