Churchmen paired public remorse with aggressive legal defense of the church

Evidence

In response to the scandal, the Vatican issued guidelines for internally reporting cases of suspected abuse. However, Maeve Lewis, the director of an Irish charity representing child-abuse victims, criticized the Vatican because it “still did not accept responsibility for its role in creating the culture that facilitated cover-ups” (Donadio, 2012). Lewis also reports cases suggesting a more assertive legal approach toward complainants. In these cases, senior churchmen expressed remorse to the victims for the abuse and asked for forgiveness while instructing their lawyers to fight the civil compensation suits. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 541

Categorization

• XREF: This dual-track of remorse plus institutional self-protection is a concrete instance of the compartmentalized moral disengagement the reader connects to social-conservatism rationalization claims.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 541