Wharton School Report on Catholic Church

I attended a fascinating Catholic Church Leadership Roundtable at the Wharton School last year (see Wharton School Report on Catholic Church) . The conference was surprising in many ways, not least of all because of its location at the University of Pennsylvania, which is not noted for its friendliness to religion and the Catholic Church in particular. But it demonstrates Wharton's extraordinary ability to marshal the energy and money of its many successful grads, in this case committed Catholics deeply interested in their church. The conference gathered about 200 Catholic leaders, both lay and clerical, including many bishops, to talk about the Church as a problem in management.

Recently there were a number of articles that discuss the management of the church. Of course there’s plenty of room for improvement in “management” and transparency… But I agree that that it’s important to highlight the Church’s core spiritual message and the ways in which this message is itself the motor for change.

John Paul II’s own ideas for the Church’s “management” program in the Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Iueunte are beautiful – “we shall not be saved by a formula but by a Person, and the assurance which he gives us: I am with you!”

Perhaps what we need most right now is the experience of the Person of Christ, present in the community – and this is the fire which can burn away any egoism, pride, and lack of responsibility which lead to mismanagement or lack of transparency. “Were not our hearts burning [within us] while he spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:32).

From Novo Millennio n.29: "We are certainly not seduced by the naive expectation that, faced with the great challenges of our time, we shall find some magic formula. No, we shall not be saved by a formula but by a Person, and the assurance which he gives us: I am with you! It is not therefore a matter of inventing a "new program". The program already exists: it is the plan found in the Gospel and in the living Tradition, it is the same as ever. Ultimately, it has its centre in Christ himself, who is to be known, loved and imitated, so that in him we may live the life of the Trinity, and with him transform history until its fulfillment in the heavenly Jerusalem."

"To make the Church the home and the school of communion: that is the great challenge facing us in the millennium which is now beginning, if we wish to be faithful to God's plan and respond to the world's deepest yearnings. But what does this mean in practice? Here too, our thoughts could run immediately to the action to be undertaken, but that would not be the right impulse to follow. Before making practical plans, we need to promote a spirituality of communion, making it the guiding principle of education wherever individuals and Christians are formed, wherever ministers of the altar, consecrated persons, and pastoral workers are trained, wherever families and communities are being built up . . . Let us have no illusions: unless we follow this spiritual path, external structures of communion will serve very little purpose. They would become mechanisms without a soul, "masks" of communion rather than its means of expression and growth."