Confidentiality v. Secrecy (ii)

It seems to me that confidentiality is something that we all should be able to expect, although in organisations and the wider community we should understand that processes are open even when details are confidential. It is when processes are hidden that we enter into the sinister world of the secret. We are rightly critical of processes called "commercial confidentiality", which are often little more than a way of keeping secret big payouts to corporate fat cats
Two examples in church life would seem to highlight where we have confused confidentiality and secrecy...and bear in mind that there seems little reason for the church to be practising "commercial confidentiality" so we should largely expect processes to be open.
In the recent ongoing horror of the Brandenberg saga as reported in the Adelaide Advertiser on 21 June we read the headline "Victims outraged as church cancels mediation". I was intrigued that I had a number of comments from people who thought I maybe could explain what was going on.....there questions were not about the details but about the process. "What is going on?"...I had to admit that in general I didn't know, as I, like them, learn about this process through the media.
I have been present in various gatherings when similar sorts of questions have been answered, and the answers have ususally been..."Well, all is going along. We are not going to tell you what's happening." Indeed, there is never any detail about the process. The answers always rather patronising.
Now, I DON'T want or need to know who the victims are, what the size of payouts are, what the details of the offences are...but I would like to know what the process is and how it is progressing.
There is no need to keep process secret.

Another example relates to appointment processes. We seem to almost launch into paranoia mode in this regard. We lose sight very easily of the fact that the process should be open whilst our dealings with people may need to be confidential. If we are not open in process, then concepts of fairness and equity may as well be tossed out of the window.

When the Archbishop offered me my present appointment I had to say to him six weeks after I had been interviewed for another position......well I don't know if I can apply as I am still waiting to be told if I have got the other job...can you tell me? No he couldn't, wouldn't and didn't!!!
I held my ground, and it was only as I waited and waited that he finally gave in and begrudgingly said..."Well I suppose on balance and without making any admission, and I'm not breaching confidentiality".....shades of Sir Humphrey Appleby......what was forgotten in all that was that I, my wife, and my family were profoundly disappointed. (and had spent six weeks not knowing what was going on...I was one of two candidates interviewed and I still have not been told I did not get the job!!)
Well maybe you should get over something that happened 10 years ago. I have! And I was glad to be able to acept my current appointment.
In the secular world such work practices would be quite rightly decried and denounced as lacking the transparency and accountability that we should expect. I have no reason to suspect that we are any better today than we were then and have a dozen similar stories to illustrate that thesis.

.....but one correspondent asks how does this bear on The Rev'd Don Owers resignation:

I say again that I have no intention of speaking on his behalf, but I do hear him say, and have heard him say on numerous occasions that we have a lack of accountability in dealing with these abuse issues which is scandalous. That there is confusion of process. And so I highlight here the very serious confusion between appropriate confidentiality and the sinister hand of secrecy as an example of that. I believe that the Olsson report makes the same point over and over again.

And we fail to hear that message at our peril