Mark Horne » Blog Archive » Covering for the damage you do.

What if you promise that your cakes will only have a certain ingredient which will make them superior.  What if you then find that you have to provide more cakes than the supply of the ingredient will allow for?

You have options.  You could tell people that your cakes are wonderful but that there are other ways to make almost-as-wonderful cakes. You could provide cakes made from the more plentiful ingredient even if you believe your original recipe is superior.

Or you could strenuously look the other way while your supplier sold you a diluted version of your ingredient.  Diluted with what?  Well, if anyone could be convicted of knowing too much then there might be problems.  Plausible deniability demands that you simply avert your eyes and hope for the best.  There will surely be some stellar cakes provided to customers.  You can always point to them and your high ideals.  In the meantime you can do your best to use legal means to pay off and silence those who got food poisoning.

I didn’t make the full case in my post linked above, but I have received help in the comments.  When the Roman Catholic Church demands that the only suitable priest is a celibate one, they may in fact allow certain pastors a needed amount of freedom to be dedicated to the ministry and not feel pressured to marry because some in society expect them to be married.

But how many of those potential pastors or priests are there?

And who else is going to be drawn to the job?

If the Catholic hierarchy knew quite well that they are putting their flocks in harms way, but were willing to do so because they couldn’t afford to lose face by backing away from their position on clerical celibacy, would they act any differently than they have been caught acting time and time again?

I don’t think so.