of body tissue thieves hits local funeral homes and cons the mortuary workers into giving them access to bodies. In many cases, the criminals steal bones and replace them with PVC piping. Item- Former Enron executives Skilling, Causey, and Fastow are serving jail time for fraud and corruption that led to the energy-trading giant’s collapse. CEO Kenneth Lay died before learning of his sentence. Somehow, this group of enterprising men (The Smartest Guys in the Room, Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind call them) managed to hide $500 million in debt from stockholders. Shares of Enron stock plummeted from $80 to under $1. Item- WorldCom’s Scott Sullivan and Bernard Ebbers have been tossed in jail for hiding $4 billion from investors in the country’s largest bankruptcy. Stock dropped from $60 to $16 to just 5 cents. Sullivan had to surrender a 30,000 square foot mansion in Boca Raton that he had been constructing with company cash. Item- Tyco’s Dennis Kozlowski lavishly spent company money like a drunken sailor: $56 million in bonuses for himself, $11 million to furnish his Manhattan apartment, $17,100 for a traveling toilette box, $15,000 for a dog umbrella stand, $6,300 for a sewing basket, $6,000 for a shower curtain, $5,960 for two sets of sheets, $2,900 for coat hangers and $2,200 for a metal wastebasket. Item- A Kentucky couple bilks aspiring authors out of $1.5 million and then skips town. None of the authors got their books published and the two scammers, with only high school diplomas between them, serve time in federal prison. Their scam: upfront money from authors to publish their novels. Item- Florida pharmacy giant Eckerd Drugs (now CVS) estimated, one year, that employees had stolen $5 million in merchandise right off the store shelves. The company was forced to pass the losses off to consumers by raising prices. Item- Monsignor John A. Skehan and Reverend Francis B. Guinan, two Delray Beach, Florida priests, were accused of misappropriating $8.6 million dollars of parish funds. The money was used to purchase real estate in Florida and Ireland. The rest of the cash went toward gambling trips to Las Vegas and The Bahamas, a rare coin collection, as well as the support of a couple of girlfriends.
Imagine the Cognitive Dissonance associated with Enron and WorldCom scandals. Thought #1: Stealing is wrong. Thought #2: I’m in a position of public trust, yet I’m stealing millions from hard working Americans. Result: I feel absolutely fine about myself. How about you?
Feel fine? How on earth would this be possible? Well, consider that the majority of these financial giants pled not guilty to their charges. Only a handful copped pleas and rolled over on their superiors. This resulted in several high-profile trials that cost the public millions. Of course, prosecutors succeeded in securing convictions against all of these meatheads. Meanwhile, thousands lost their retirements and have been left in financial ruin. But this scandal leaves us with a very disturbing question: Is it possible for the ring leaders of the Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia and Tyco scandals to steal and defraud in such a prolific manner, yet feel absolutely no empathy for others? Absolutely, many in the business world say. It’s called Narcissism and sociopathy— terms I’ll explore a bit later on.
I Look out for #1. That’s Justification Enough for me
For now, however, suffice it to say that the term narcissism finds its roots in Greek Mythology. Narcissus, a handsome youth, fell in love with his own reflection in the waters of a placid pond. He sat himself down on the shore of that pond and gazed continually at his beautiful reflection. There he pined away and died, and from that spot sprang a flowering plant we now know as the narcissus. Narcissism has evolved into a full-fledged Axis II personality disorder, although it doesn’t look like it will survive the cut for the next diagnostic edition of what’s known as the DSM (it will probably be included under the general umbrella of psychopathy). Anyway, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV- TR (Text Revision) has a very thorough description of this disorder, starting on page 714. Basically, narcissists have a grandiose sense of self-importance, and are preoccupied with fantasies of incredible success, brilliance, beauty and power. They have an incredible sense of entitlement that springs from their convictions that they are special, unique, above all rules and laws, and deserving of special treatment and status. They routinely exploit situations and others in order to achieve their own personal goals. They lack empathy for others and many come across as haughty and arrogant.
In a 2002 New York Times article, Tim Race interviews Professor Jay A. Conger from the London Business School. Conger is himself an author of an article entitled “The Dark Side of Leadership.” Race quotes Conger extensively.
“It happens every decade; the proportion of these cases increases during times of market euphoria.” Conger says that the “romance of leadership” (in the business world) tends to deify these corporate executives. “This can be a liability if the leaders begin to believe they are geniuses,” citing the Enron case as a perfect example. “They begin to believe they and their organizations are one-of-a-kind, that they’re changing the face of industry. They desire entitlements beyond any other C.E.O’s.”
A perfect example, Race writes in his article, was Harvey L. Pitt—then chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Under fire almost from the time of his nomination by President George W. Bush, Pitt served a tumultuous 15-month term before stepping down amid a firestorm of criticism. The tempest didn’t prevent Pitt from proposing a promotion and pay raise for himself. Said Pitt, “It is an enormous advantage to the public to have somebody who knows about the securities law as I do, and it would be unthinkable to deprive people of my expertise.”
A Sacred Trust Violated: Cancer Steps up to the Altar
I suppose, of all the corporate scams that have been perpetrated recently, the ones that disturb me the most are the Skehan/Guinan cases from the Diocese of Palm Beach, Florida. Just imagine the Cognitive Dissonance. Thought #1: I’m a priest, a man in the public trust. Thought #2: I’m stealing money from my parishioners to support my sophisticated lifestyle.
I can almost see Skehan now. He’s sitting in the celebrant’s chair, at the ten o’clock mass, and ushers are taking up the second collection after communion. He surveys the church and watches as his parishioners drop money into the baskets. What is he thinking? How that money can best serve the poor? How that money will help with the parish maintenance? Is he thinking about his rare coin collection and how to enhance it? Perhaps he’s thinking about that forty-two inch plasma in his pricy condominium? How about all of the above?
In many ways a parish is a corporation, but in many ways it’s not. The head of the parish is a priest, a pastor, a man of the cloth. Not an accountant; not a CEO. Like most corporations, money pours into the operation and certain services are provided. And the individuals in positions of power (we pray they’re at least half-way honest) control that money and where it goes. And like a corporation, the pastor must accurately account, to his bishop and parishioners, for the money coming in and going out. As a Catholic, I’m highly offended by what these two crooks did. After all, this is just what the Catholic Church in America needs after the recent sex scandals involving a small number of abusive priests. I’m also offended by the reasons given by Skehan as to why he illegally and immorally diverted parish funds. First, he saw himself as the CEO of a multi-million dollar corporation. Next, he felt that, as the CEO, he was inadequately compensated for his work. Finally, he viewed the diocese as frugal and parsimonious—refusing to fund his further studies and this is why he needed to dip into parish funds.
I suppose the bishop in Palm Beach should have given Skehan stock options, a $2.5 million bonus and the company car. Did these delusional beliefs give this fraud-in-a-Roman collar permission to grab money hand-over-fist? Apparently. This is Cognitive Dissonance in all its glory. I’ve been to many ordinations but I’ve never witnessed an ordaining bishop exhort the ordinundi to fleece their flock and squirrel away funds earmarked for the poor and needy—all the while making up a litany of lame excuses as to why. I spent some time in the seminary in the 1980’s. Trust me on this one: From the moment a man begins to seriously discern a possible vocation to the priesthood, he
