Church leaders justified covering up child abuse on utilitarian grounds

Evidence

However, the cover-up by the bishops required justification. The bishops’ actions indicated that their justification was based on utilitarian grounds: The harm to the moral authority of the church from disclosing the sexual abuse outweighed the harm inflicted on children. In the cover-up, which went on for years in the United States and Europe, some of the offending priests were relocated to other parishes. Many were assigned to mainly nonparish duties and referred for spiritual counseling. Families of victims who filed charges received sizable settlements. The lawyers representing the families referred to the payments as “hush money.” — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 492

Categorization

• XREF: Cf. the ADDENDUM article on sacrifice as a stabilizer of stratified societies — both show institutions weighing authority-preservation against individual harm.
• SEED: An essay angle: ‘utilitarian cover-up’ as a general template for how institutions rationalize protecting their own authority over protecting the vulnerable — extending beyond religion to corporate, academic, and political scandals.