Leadership in The Catholic Church

Confusion of leadership and administration, as if they were synonyms, exacerbates a sense of crisis in the Catholic Church today. I believe that leadership has to do with excellence and with passionate and exemplary performance of a given role or task. Thus, leadership may be found in any profession or vocation within the Church, including those of teachers, scholars, writers, pastoral ministers, chaplains, whether they are celibate or married, men or women.

When we think about leadership, I suggest that it will be helpful to lower our expectations of administrators, not so much because of failures of bishops regarding sexual abuse cases or other matters, but because it is always unrealistic and inappropriate to expect administrators to carry, alone, the burden of leadership. This is as true for superiors in religious orders as it is for diocesan hierarchies, and for other levels and instances of administration, such as in Catholic schools, colleges, universities. It is extraordinarily wasteful of the talents of a broad range of people, when we proceed as if leadership could only exist ex officio, as if conferral of office created a leader, as if leadership were non-existent apart from administrative titles. Conferral of office may create an administrator; it does not create a leader. Archbishop Rembert Weakland, O.S.B., in his autobiography, "A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church," points out that "he learned firsthand that exercising leadership was not the same as having power, and that leadership cannot be given to one; it must be earned."