LEADERSHIP IN THE CHURCH (Part I)

The Catholic theological tradition has always affirmed the inherent goodness of creation. The Biblical doctrine that God created the universe and found it good supports the Catholic instinct to look both to creation and revelation as joint starting points in our journey toward understanding God and God’s purposes. The Catholic tradition would go so far as to say that one cannot correctly understand either creation or revelation in isolation from the other.

And so when we come to reflect theologically upon leadership in the Church, we look for insight from both the Bible and from creation, that is, the world of nature. Natural science, both the physical and human sciences, provides knowledge that we can use in our investigation of this topic.

If we begin by taking a sociological approach, it is apparent that the Church is a community or society, and as such is subject to the same natural laws as any other human community or society. To my knowledge there has never been a community that has been able to function successfully without leadership. This should not surprise us when we consider the role that leadership plays within a community.

A community is like a human being in that a community learns, decides and works (all of which are forms of activity), just as an individual learns, decides and works. Since the community is not an individual, it learns, decides and works through the coordinated learning, deciding and working of the individuals who make it up. In order for a community to function it has to find a way of coordinating the activity of its members.

Leaders are the individuals who have the task of coordinating the activities of the members of the community so that the community as a whole can accomplish its purposes. Leadership is exercised within  subgroups of the community and it is exercised within the whole community.

Every leader is given responsibility for directing the activities of a group, be it a subgroup or the whole community. All the members of the group agree on the purpose of the group, and leadership is given to an individual on trust that he/she will direct the activities of members of the group so that the group may accomplish its purposes. The members of the group decide which activities are subject to the leader’s direction and the conditions under which the leader may expect his/her directions to be followed. A leader may be deposed either through a formal process or by members of the group simply ceasing to accept his/her directions.

It is clear that someone who compels compliance to his/her directions through coercive means in not a leader in the sense I have defined. Dictators cannot be leaders. Leaders serve the community by helping it accomplish its freely chosen purposes, whereas dictators seek to make the community serve their personal purposes.

Since the Church’s founding the key community within the Church has been the worshipping community, that is, the group of people who meet regularly for worship, sharing the Christian faith, and mutual support. Whether they meet in private homes or in a dedicated building, each worshipping community is a church. In fact, each worshipping community contains within itself all the essential qualities of the universal (catholic) Church.

If each worshipping community contains all the essential qualities of the universal Church, why do we need a universal Church? The purpose of the universal Church is to be the forerunner of the community of all human beings that we call the Kingdom of God. When God’s purposes are fulfilled at the end of time, there will be only one worshipping community made up of all human beings who love God. Until that day dawns, there will be a multitude of worshipping communities spread throughout the world, and the universal Church will be the forerunner of the Kingdom.

The Roman Catholic Church is one of the visible manifestations (symbols) of the universal Church, and may justly be said to be the preeminent symbol of the universal Church because of its size and historical continuity with the Apostolic Church. Other Christian denominations, however, are also visible manifestations of the universal Church.

If nothing else, the lack of unity and historical animosity of the Christian denominations would make each of them an imperfect symbol of the universal Church. The Roman Catholic Church may be the preeminent symbol of the universal Church but it is no less defective than any of the other denominations. This can be substantiated not only on the basis of the Church’s historical sins (e.g., the inquisition, anti-semitism, acceptance of slavery, sexism, etc.), but can be deduced from the simple fact that in comparison with the Kingdom of God, all denominations are equally imperfect. This parallels the truth that no human being has a greater right to boast in the presence of God than any other human being. The saints know themselves to be the greatest of sinners.

The Roman Catholic Church, apart from its primary role as symbol of the universal Church, is also a bureaucracy that has the practical purpose of assisting the worshipping communities that identify themselves as Roman Catholic. The chief problem with how the Roman Catholic Church operates is that members of the hierarchy are able to, and sometimes do, act as dictators rather than leaders. In doing so they wound the worshipping communities that they are charged to serve.

Nevertheless, worshipping communities can survive and some can even (with difficulty) thrive when popes and bishops act dictatorially. What no worshipping community can survive is lack of leadership within the worshipping community itself. The key leaders in the Church are the leaders of the worshipping communities (parishes, basic church communities, religious communities, and so on). Where leadership on this level is lacking or becomes dictatorial, the worshipping community falls apart. Traditionally the leaders of worshipping communities have been priests. Today we are faced with some difficult questions. Can we continue to look to priests for leadership in our worshipping communities? Will the role or characteristics of the priest have to change in order for the priest to be an effective leader? Should leadership in parishes shift from the priest to elected lay leaders? What is the relationship between leading and providing sacraments?

I will address these questions in Part II of this series on leadership in the Church.