The Church Halo Effect: Moral Sacralization and Organizational Wrongdoing in the Catholic Church

This article develops a conceptual framework to explain how theological convictions of sanctity within the Catholic Church can become institutional risk factors for unethical behavior. Existing analyses of clerical sexual abuse emphasize governance failures, clerical culture, or individual misconduct, but pay limited attention to how sacred identity shapes institutional reasoning. Integrating organizational ethics, social identity theory, and moral psychology, the article adapts the NGO halo effect to propose a three-stage model distinguishing between intrinsic sanctity, institutional sacralization (the Church halo), and the activation of moral mechanisms (the halo effect). The analysis shows how mission, moral teaching, and ordained ministry—while theologically coherent—can become amplified within institutional life in ways that alter how ethical dilemmas are weighted. It further identifies moral justification, moral superiority, and moral naivety as mechanisms through which such amplification may contribute to safeguarding failures. By analytically separating theological meaning from institutional amplification, the article advances scholarship on religious organizations and reframes clerical abuse as partly linked to the dynamics of sacralized identity. The model offers a transferable framework for examining how moral purpose and moral failure can coexist in faith-based institutions.