I confess to enjoying cop shows, despite having been an imaginative enough child that even listening to the suspense music in the ones Mum and Dad watched after I went to bed could give me nightmares! I was a teenager before I could watch such shows with comparative impunity, and back then my favourite was Cop Shop. Blue Heelers and Police Rescue both helped fill the intervening years, and now it’s The Bill.
Which brings me to my point. Currently, a major character (Sergeant Smith) in The Bill is facing investigation for beating up a criminal who was, in turn, beating up a fellow officer. And the only person who knows the truth of what happened (apart from the crim) is Smith’s fellow sergeant Calum Stone, who himself has been shown to be somewhat inclined to administer what we might call rough justice.
Stone is prepared to back Smithy up, regardless of the truth, because “the crim deserved it”. And this brought me to musing on the “protect one of our own” mentality that prompted Stone to lie for Smithy. Police are encouraged to think this way, and there’s good reason for it. Watching and defending your fellow officers’ backs might save their life one day. Or they might save yours.
And this is where the tension between truth and mateship pulls me in both directions. Because it’s that “watch your mates’ backs” attitude that sets up this kind of situation, where protecting your mate takes precedence over the truth, and it seems that while the basic attitude can be life-saving, it can also – in non-life-threatening situations - destroy those to whom justice is denied as a result.
Is Smithy still a good police officer despite stepping over the line on this occasion? Hell, yes. Is the truth more important than his career? I confess I’m not sure.
And perhaps you can see where this is leading, because the situation isn’t all that different in the church. Clergy step over the line, their mates close ranks, cover up and lie for them, and justify it on the basis of his career (and possibly the reputation of the church). And I’m quite clear that that is wrong, but not so clear on it in the police force.
But I think there are two fundamental differences. Firstly, that in the police force, they can and do face life-threatening situations. In the church, they don’t. So in the church, there’s no real justification on that basis for a culture of closing ranks. And secondly, that the church supposedly puts morals first. In fact, many denominations or church spokespeople argue that morality outside the church is necessarily deficient. To argue for morality, yet not place primary importance on truth seems to me to be duplicitous.
In some ways, maybe, it comes down to who do you protect first – your mates, the criminals or society/injured victims? I don’t support vigilantism, but neither do I support excessive societal protection of those whose actions put them outside society. And I certainly don’t agree that anything less than the truth is appropriate in the church.