Are General Officers More Accountable than Bishops?

Amy Welborn has a great post on the Monsignor Clark scandal.

It's the ever-present peril of ministry as a job, as a profession, as something you go and do to get paid rather than something you do because you are following Jesus. Those of us who have been in professional ministry talk about the risk of losing your faith in the midst of it, and this is one of the ways it can happen. The swamp of bureaucracy, routine and simple human dynamics can put an enormous distance between your present reality and the lively, on-fire soul that started out, thinking that this was the life, that it would be so easy to keep your faith strong and alive in a church environment, surrounded by church people 60 hours a week.

As soon as we enter an institution and give our assent to it's mission, we run the risk of "inordinate attachments" to the instituion's values. In other words, the insitution becomes an idol that we have to protect at all costs. We hide our own failings in order to protect the instituion. Hypocrisy and denial are but a step away. Institutions, like persons, can practice denial.

What interests me is that the military is more likely to hold its leadership accountable than is the church. This is illustrated in the recent case of a four-star general being relieved of command for an extramarital affair. The Air Force Academy commandant was held responsible for failure to actively investigate rapes of female cadets. Top level church officials, in contrast, are rarely called to account.

Can it be that the military has higher ethical standards for its leaders? Or is it the case that the military are accountable to the public through congress while the institutional church, taking refuge in the promise that the "gates of hell will not prevail" has closed itself off to all outside accuntability?