When Divine Justice is Mission Impossible: What Non-Profit Leadership Must Do to Prevent Moral Injury

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions” is an idiom that most people have heard before, and dare I say, most have felt was applicable in their workplaces. While researchers in the field of moral injury may never have used that exact idiom in their scholarly articles, many theologians examining moral injury in pastoral care and public health are familiar with both St. Francis de Sales and St. Bernard of Clairvaux.

St. Bernard is the patron saint of religious vocations. Born in the year 1090, he established new administrative structures among various monasteries during his lifetime and effectively created a new monastic order. While sometimes referred to as “the difficult monk,” he was an adept leader in building his brotherhood, resulting in the establishment of more than 60 new abbeys. According to Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard, St. Bernard was “the most contemplative and yet at the same time the most active man of his age.”

St. Bernard was complicated, dynamic, and deeply polarized. On the one hand, this saint preached love above all virtues; on the other, he wielded a mighty sword of “malicide”, a word he coined when convincing soldiers that killing was not a sin if they were killing evil people with evil intentions. He preached this theology while attempting to recruit men in Europe for the Second Crusade. St. Bernard is also famously Dante’s guide to his vision of God in Paradiso, where he answers Dante’s final question on ethics and moralism, specifically addressing the nature of “divine justice.” St. Bernard was something like the mythical fire-breathing hybrid creature called a Chimera: part of him was a peacemaker, yet just as much a part of him was a true warmonger. He was a difficult saint indeed, quoted by St. Francis de Sales as having said, “Hell is full of good wills and desires.”

This is the origin of our modern idiom, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” St. Bernard knew this to be true in his own life. After leading thousands of men into the battles of the Second Crusade, tens of thousands of Europeans died in what became the failure of an impossible mission. The last years of Bernard’s life were saddened by this failure and by the weight of responsibility thrown upon him by the King of France and Pope Eugene III. While he had preached indulgences for all who entered the battlefield to protect Christendom, thousands instead died of starvation and illness, or were slain by their enemy. In St. Bernard’s final letter, he wrote, “We said ‘Peace,’ and there is no peace; we promised good things, and behold, only trouble.”

As a young frontline professional, I worked for a rape crisis center. It was the 1990s, some 850 years after the Second Crusade, yet I was thrown into a warzone to protect women and children. The mission statement of the non-profit I worked for was simply this: “To End Sexual Violence.” The organization was small, made up of only eight to ten dedicated women who covered 17 counties in East Tennessee. Our job was to educate the public, advocate for just policies and laws, and provide direct services to child and adult victims of sexual violence.

As a frontline worker, I did not spend a lot of time considering the mission statement of the non-profit. However, in the decades that have passed, I can see how I had to polarize my values of peace and justice, embodying a kind of mythical fire-breathing hybrid creature in order to hold onto my personal integrity in this impossible mission to end sexual violence. On the one hand, I was acting on my value of compassion with victims in emergency rooms, courtrooms, and community spaces where counseling occurred. On the other, I was wielding a mighty sword of vengeance as I faced off with politicians, reporters, and lawyers while advocating for our clients. Divine justice and the impossible mission to end sexual violence engendered in me such anger and disgust at the world that I found myself struggling with my faith in humanity, feeling utter despair at the trauma inflicted on the oppressed and marginalized people I sought to serve.

This anger and despair led me, in one moment, to risk my own life as I confronted a sex-trafficking panderer who held me at gunpoint while I was attempting to help a victim escape the hotel room where he had held her for weeks. I was totally alone in the field after a long night with the victim in an emergency room. I was only 21 years old when that happened. I did not choose to take on this gun-toting human panderer because of our organization’s mission to “end sexual violence,” but I also didn’t not take him on because of that mission either. We were fighting a war protecting women and children, and I was determined to win the battle at any cost. 

Let me be clear: I do not blame the people who sat in a boardroom and created the mission statement “To End Sexual Violence” for the situation I found myself in that day, or for the many other traumas I experienced as a frontline staff person. They had good intentions. However, that road did sometimes lead to hell for those of us on the frontlines.

Asheville, North Carolina, has the highest overall non-profit density of any major city in the state, with about 10 non-profit organizations for every 10,000 residents. Those non-profits employ roughly 27,000 people in Asheville. It is important to consider what those 27,000 frontline professionals face every day. The various “warzones” they are sent into are consequential, and the mission statements that undergird the work matter. For example, as a housing case manager for a non-profit, you are responsible for helping individuals and families experiencing homelessness or housing instability find and keep safe, permanent housing by assessing their needs, securing financial assistance, connecting them with community support services, and advocating with landlords.

While case managers work endlessly to address client needs, very little is being done to stop the economic crisis that birthed the current housing market, a crisis that, in turn, creates the need for legal aid and case management. This unaddressed economic crisis often makes case management direct service efforts futile in the mission to “End Homelessness.”

The mission statements of major non-profit institutions funded to hire these case managers are lofty and grandiose: “To prevent and end homelessness in our community through permanent housing and support.” While well-intentioned, such claims further burden professional staff when the root source of the crisis remains unnamed, and the resources are not accessible to fulfill the mission or even to meet the basic needs of the people they serve.

The rape crisis center where I worked, which sought to “end sexual violence,” was made up of a small number of all-female professionals. Yet, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, 93% of all sexual assaults are committed by men. 

Perhaps I am stating the obvious here, but what can eight women in East Tennessee do to “End Sexual Violence” without the work of men to stop committing sexual violence?

Likewise, what can 1,500 case managers in Asheville do to “End Homelessness” without the work of local government and public policy leaders to plug the breaking dam of our local economy that has built the current Asheville housing crisis?

In St. Bernard’s final letter, in which he expresses deep remorse and guilt for his role in the Second Crusade, he says, “We promised ‘Peace,’ and there is no peace; we promised good things, and behold, only trouble.” Impossible missions that make impossible promises lead to moral injury for professionals who are burdened by the impossible task of fulfilling them.

So, why does all of this matter anyway? Moral injury caused by unmanageable caseloads and administrative burden is the number one reason professionals leave the social service workforce. It is not the low pay, nor is it the immense emotional toll the work takes on our hearts. Rather, we leave this crucial public health work because of the moral injury caused by being caught between our personal ethics and values, and the impossible missions we lack the resources to fulfill.

As non-profit leaders, we must choose to reimagine the mission statements of our organizations. We must ask ourselves and our board members: Is this mission possible, and at what cost? 

Leadership must begin by asking frontline workers why they do what they do, what moral, ethical, or spiritual principles lead them to the work, and what they need to meet their moral obligations, not just what they need to fulfill the organization’s mission to secure more funding. Using the insights provided by frontline professionals, leadership can then strategically build mission statements that address the complex problems society is facing, while also paving the road to organizational wellness by centering meaning, purpose, and attainable goals in daily work. No matter what your organizational mission statement is, when professional staff are suffering from moral distress or injury, the mission will remain impossible.