Accountability and Leadership in the Catholic Church: What Needs to Be Improved
The Catholic church is many things: a sign and instrument of Christ; a gathering of flawed human beings; a mystery. It is, in some ways, unlike any other organization in the world; yet it is, nevertheless, an organization: as St John Henry Newman observed, “it has developed according to the laws under which combinations of men develop.” Over the past century, a body of knowledge has emerged concerning how to create “healthy”, effective organizations. This volume innovatively applies this knowledge to the church, identifying ways in which its organizational life needs to improve. One fundamental problem considered here is that there is a “gap” in leadership above the bishops: about 6,000 people report to the pope, which is unworkable, with the result that the curia (which is largely unaccountable) illegitimately moves into that gap, and tries to run the church. The book proposes a new role for cardinals, to remedy this, and outlines a new structure for the curia, reorienting it towards its proper functions. Things can, and should, change, if the church is to show the world the light within it.
Brian Dive, a New Zealander, is an international manager, consultant and author with fifty years of experience in organization design, leadership development and transformational change. For many years, he was Global Head of Organization at Unilever, where he led around fifty organizational design reviews. He also served as Chairman of the New York Conference Board’s Council on International Organization and Management for eleven years, working with thirty of the world’s leading multinationals. He has written three books on organizational development: The Healthy Organization (2002), The Accountable Leader (2008)—rated one of the best business books in the US that year by Soundview Executive Books—and Mission Mastery (2016). In 2014, he was honoured with a Doctorate in Business Administration from London Metropolitan University, where he was a Visiting Professor and a Fellow of their Centre for Progressive Leadership.
“Dive’s book is to be welcomed as a contribution to the debate about how we can find a way out of the crisis, which is costing us Catholics and many others dear [...] Dive, in bringing his secular knowledge to the ecclesiastical field has some very useful suggestions... He rightly identifies several weaknesses in the current way of doing things: for example, bishops are appointed to dioceses by men in Rome who do not know the individual or the places concerned at first hand. [...] Dive’s book is good, and thought provoking, and it convinces the reader that we cannot go on as we have been doing. Something has got to change, and soon.”
Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith
Catholic Herald
“His points strike home. What is evident throughout Dive’s analysis of all levels of the Catholic Church is that the people […] given responsibility have barely been prepared for it. […] Even more bizarre is the way in which they are chosen, via nods and winks, secret chats, and investigations by people in Rome who know little of them. […] He goes on similarly to critique the elite, secretive modus operandi of the Roman Curia and points out that the Pope has an impossible task, supposedly in charge of 6,000 bishops across the globe. Dive’s main proposed solution is another layer of management – a set of what he calls pastoral cardinals below the Pope who would look after the bishops.”
Catherine Pepinster
Tablet
“The present crisis in the Church, says Pope Francis, is the failure of accountability at crucial levels of leadership. […] Dive, a vastly experienced international manager, distinguished author and consultant, with a deep love of the Church, is eminently suited to evaluate what structures and leadership are needed so that the Church becomes truly an accountable Church.”
Gerald A. Arbuckle, S.M.
Author, Abuse and Cover-Up: Refounding the Catholic Church in Trauma (2019)
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