Priest going for MBA

Success Is All in a Day’s Work

2006-12-31T12:02:00.000-08:00

A friend at the Yale Law has forwarded me this article by Ben Stein (http://www.benstein.com/bio.html) which I thought was appropriate to share with you all!

Success Is All in a Day’s Work

Merry Christmas, everybody, and happy New Year.

First off, I don't have any new advice on stocks right now. I still like the S&P 500 Index Fund, the widest possible total stock market index funds (such at the Fidelity Total Stock Market Index Fund), the European, Far Eastern, and Australasian Index Fund (EFA), the Emerging Markets Index Fund (EEM), and the Russell 2000 Value (IWN).

I wouldn't have a ton of the EEM right now because it's gone up so high and because so much of it is Russian, and I don't trust them as far as I can throw them. But a bit is all right. I also like the Cohen & Steers Quality Real Estate Income Fund (RQI), although it's also very high. For the very long run, though, it'll be fine (I hope).

A Wasted Weekend

Anyway, I don't want to talk about stocks right now. For most of us, our primary source of income is our own livelihood. I think I have something more useful to say about that.

Today, a Sunday, I had a long phone conversation with a young man who lives in Washington, D.C., my ancestral home. He's 30 years old and a highly talented writer. He aspires to be famous, although right now he's a humble writer for as newsletter about environmental protection legal issues. He calls me many times each day and tells me how eager he is to be famous and much better-paid.

When this man, whom I'll call Chuck, called me on my car phone, I asked him what he'd done with his weekend. "I played tennis," he said. "Then I swam, then I hung out at a bar in Georgetown. That was on Saturday. Today, I played tennis and swam, then watched the football game, and now I'm about to go to a movie."

He asked me what I did with my weekend. "Well, you're 30 and I'm 62," I replied. "So on Saturday I researched some issues about hedge funds. Then I studied the performance of some of my investments. Then, today, I worked very hard on a research paper on basic economic issues of hedge funds, and then I did some investigation into the performance of defunct auto parts companies."

"Wow, he said. "I wish I could have done that."

The Truth Hurts

By then I was out of patience. "Look," I said, "you want to be a writer. No one knows who you are now outside a tiny circle. But you're a good writer. Why don't you write a short freelance article every day? Just on whatever comes into your mind. Then try to get them published. Throw them against the wall. If one in three gets published, in a year you'll be really well-known and in five years you'll be a household name."

"But I don't have that many ideas," he said.

"Well, beginning writers are required to have an unlimited stock of ideas. So either get the ideas or get out of the business."

"I don't want to just write garbage," he said.

"Then don't write garbage."

"I don't want to just have frivolous articles," Chuck added.

I paused a while and broke the news to him. "You're not really cut out for fame and success You're making excuses instead of working. You're hanging out at bars instead of writing."

I continued, "The people who make it in this field work all of the time. They work weekends. They work nights. They work holidays. They're hungry and they work like demons."

"You don't like me," Chuck said. "I don't feel well. I have to go now."

Effort Equals Success

He hung up, but as I drove along, I had a sudden realization. I know a lot of really successful people -- in finance, in government, in politics, in Hollywood, in journalism, in literature.

Their common denominator is a modicum of talent and a capacity and an eagerness -- not just a willingness, but an eagerness -- to work like Trojans to get ahead. I don't know of one really successful, famous man or woman who didn't work insanely hard to get there and to stay there. (I don't count heirs and heiresses as successful.)

Please don't get me wrong. Fame and money don't guarantee happiness. It's perfectly possible to be famous and unhappy, just as it's perfectly possible to be happy and obscure. Most of all, I assure you that while money is fabulous stuff, it by no means assures happiness or peace of mind.

But for those who want to be rich and famous (or rich or famous), there's no way to do it without daily, unremitting work. It's best if the seeker loves his work so much that he or she doesn't even consider it a burden, but rather a joyful, fulfilling, highly organizing principle of life.

As for little old me, who makes no claims to anything like being a great example, I would go crazy in about a week without having work to do. I would have little sense of worth or even of who I was without work.

Get to Work (Tomorrow)

If you feel differently and get your sense of joy or purpose from going to movies or playing pool and hoisting a few beers with your pals, more power to you. But don't expect to be famous or rich.

There's nothing wrong with seeing your life as something divorced from your work. There's not a thing amiss in not caring if you ever get to be in the headlines or on TV. But if that's what you desire, you have to get to work.

Don't make excuses. Don't shirk. Just get to work and stay there until it's not work any more, but your life. That's success in and of itself.

Today, however, I give you my happy permission to avoid your work. In fact, your work today is to love the people close to you, and then to go to bed with a smile on your face.

Then, tomorrow, get up and go to work. Fate will accept no substitutes.

Something not to laugh about

2006-12-13T07:59:00.000-08:00

If they know of him at all, many folks think Ben Stein is just a quirky actor/comedian who talks in a monotone. He's also a very intelligent attorney who knows how to put ideas and words together in such a way as to sway juries and make people think clearly.

The following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS Sunday Morning Commentary

Herewith at this happy time of year, a few confessions from my beating heart: I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are. I see them on the cover of People and Us constantly when I am buying my dog biscuits and kitty litter. I often ask the checkers at the grocery stores. They never know who Nick and Jessica are either. Who are they? Will it change my life if I know who they are and why they have broken up? Why are they so important?

I don't know who Lindsay Lohan is either, and I do not care at all about Tom Cruise's wife.

Am I going to be called before a Senate committee and asked if I am a subversive? Maybe, but I just have no clue who Nick and Jessica are.

If this is what it means to be no longer young. It's not so bad.

Next confession:

I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened.. I don' t feel discriminated against. That's what they are: Christmas trees.

It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, "Merry Christmas" to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu. If people want a creche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an
explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution, and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him?

I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too.

But there are a lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the America we knew went to.

In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking.

Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her "How could God let something like this Happen?" (regarding Katrina)

Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, "I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives.

And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?"

In light of recent events...terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found recently) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK.

Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school. The Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock's son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he's talking about and we said OK.

Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with "WE REAP WHAT WE SOW."

WSJ: "Wiki" Book from Wharton, MIT and McKinsey

2006-11-16T07:01:00.000-08:00

Pearson is joining with two top business schools - MIT Sloan and Wharton School - in a project called "We are Smarter Than Me" to create a business book authored and edited by a "wiki." There was an extensive article covering this in today's issue of Wall Street Journal:

U.K.'s Pearson Tests
The Group Dynamic
For a 'Wiki' Book
By WILLIAM M. BULKELEY
Wall Street Journal
November 16, 2006; Page B1

In a move that could shake up the book industry, publishing giant Pearson PLC is joining with two top business schools to create a business book authored and edited by a "wiki" -- an online community dedicated to writing.

The effort is inspired, in part, by the best-known wiki-produced work -- Wikipedia, a not-for-profit online encyclopedia. Despite occasional hiccups, Wikipedia is increasingly regarded as a reliable source for information, aided by community-enforced rules that it can't contain either personal points of view or original research.

In general, a wiki is an online site that lets users add and edit content. The name is based on a Hawaiian term meaning "rapidly" -- as in "wiki wiki."

The wiki book, produced by a community of business experts and managers, will be called "We Are Smarter Than Me." It will explore how businesses can use online communities, consumer-generated media such as blogs, and other Web content to help in their marketing, pricing, research and service.

Barry Libert, a former McKinsey & Co. consultant who is CEO of Shared Insights Inc., a Woburn, Mass., company, persuaded London-based Pearson, the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School to help develop the new book, which will be published under Pearson's Wharton School Publishing imprint.

The WeAreSmarter.org Web site, co-founded by Mr. Libert and Wharton vice dean Jon Spector, went online a month ago with initial content they shaped along with MIT management professor Thomas Malone, among others. They chose chapter headings and then wrote a few pages to create a starting point. For instance, a chapter titled "We Can Research It," tells an anecdote about an Australian man who started a mail-order brewery based on votes by 20,000 cellphone users on what makes an ideal beer. Other participants can then edit the contents or add anecdotes.

The wiki leaders expect business consultants and executives to contribute to the book site, which, like Wikipedia, doesn't pay writers for their work. The site is open to anyone, but does ask contributors to supply information. WeAreSmarter expects to close submissions to the book wiki by the end of the first quarter next year and turn it over to paid ghostwriters to turn it into a 120-page business book aimed at the fast-growing airport bookstore market. It will go on sale next fall. Despite the free labor of the original authors, the list price will be $25.99, says Tim Moore, publisher of two of Pearson's business imprints, Wharton School Publishing and FT Press. Authors will vote on a charity to receive any profits.

"Wikis are one of those things that you have to embrace early, so you can figure out what the brave new world looks like," Mr. Moore says. Part of his goal is to avoid being ambushed by the Internet like "the music industry, which really got whacked." He wouldn't say how much Pearson was spending on the project, but called the sum comparable to other business books.

Wiki authoring of a printed book could be a "wonderful" online marketing tool, Mr. Moore says. After the book is published, WeAreSmarter will remain online, where people can continue to contribute. He notes that 10,000 people, mostly alumni and faculty at the two schools, have already heard about the book through invitations to join the project and 1,000 have accepted; the plan has already been cited in "like, 47 blogs," he adds.

Other publishers are looking on with interest. Joe Wikert, executive publisher with John Wiley & Sons Inc., a Hoboken, N.J., textbook publisher, predicts that the book's quality will be high. "The community won't allow it to be garbage," he says. But with so many experts involved "it will be interesting to see how they manage the egos," he says.

"I doubt authors will see this as much of a threat to their domain," says Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild, a New York-based writers' organization. "Readers generally look for a strong, consistent author's voice, which isn't something a wiki can really provide." However, having a wiki produce a book about wikis might be one of the few times that it would work, he adds.

The Wikipedia Foundation, which produces Wikipedia, has an online textbook project with the longer term goal of providing an alternative to pricey high school and college texts that often cost over $100 each. But these "Wikitexts" -- now online only -- haven't been embraced by school boards and professors who assign reading material.

Many experts are impressed with the ability of large groups of people to solve problems or predict outcomes. The 2004 best-seller "The Wisdom of Crowds," by James Surowiecki, covered the phenomenon. Many companies have started using wikis internally and with partners for product development. "Prediction markets," in which participants invest imaginary money, have often proved accurate in forecasting elections.

One goal of the WeAreSmarter project is to see how a wiki can organize and balance material provided by experts such as consultants and professors and managers who are using the techniques in their own businesses.

Mr. Libert thinks that the big community collectively will select solutions that are better than the answers provided by individual professors or consultants.

One of the big challenges will be finding ways to motivate the professional experts, many of whom make money by writing books themselves, says Mr. Malone of MIT. "The question is, can we create an incentive structure so they'll put in some of their best thinking, or will this just be incidental thinking?" He says it's possible that individuals may get credits for having primary responsibility for a particular chapter. On the other hand, he says, "If you really are an expert in this area, you wouldn't want to be left out." Authors' names will be printed on the book cover and on the Web site.

The wiki is handling the copyright question by getting participants to agree to a Creative Commons license that turns their contributions over to WeAreSmarter. Creative Commons, organized by Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig, provides a variety of different licenses by which people can allow or restrict their words or music to be used by others.

Marketing and target ads in Church sermons

2006-11-15T13:22:00.000-08:00

Knowledge@Wharton had an interesting article Product Placement in the Pews? Microtargeting Meets Megachurches in today's issue. While I haven't such examples in my own practice, the trend is very disturbing. Faith and commerce should not be combined.

Haven't been to church recently? You might have missed something. Church pastors last year had a chance to win a free trip to London and $1,000 cash -- if they mentioned Disney's film "The Chronicles of Narnia" in their sermons. Chrysler, hoping to target affluent African Americans with its new luxury SUV, is currently sponsoring a Patti LaBelle gospel music tour through African-American megachurches nationwide.
Advertising has begun to seep into churches, and the phenomenon shows no signs of slowing down, say academic, religious and marketing experts. Among the wave of early adopters: the Republican Party, which successfully sold its platform to church-goers in the 2000 and 2004 elections; Hollywood, which discovered the economic power of faith when Mel Gibson's church-marketed film "The Passion of the Christ" became a blockbuster; and publishing, with Rick Warren's best-selling The Purpose-Driven Life, heavily marketed by a Christian publishing house.

Corruption

2006-11-07T06:03:00.000-08:00

It is common knowledge that many of the developing countries have legal systems are overburdened, over regulated, and corrupt. For example, India ranked 70th on Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index (about halfway).

Wharton Business School offers a special online portal called The C2 Principles. This is a framework promoted by Caux Round Table to reduce global corruption. A good summary is on the website at http://www.c2principles.org/

We've been told corruption and poor governance are bad for business. The World Bank, IMF and countless economists have singled them out as the biggest problems holding back developing country growth. Yet all these counties with corrupt political systems continue to grow, outpacing US and EU. Why is this contradiction?

Entrepreneurship @ Stanford

2006-09-29T22:18:00.000-07:00

Forbes posted a streaming video interview with Mark Thompson on the lessons from world's most enduring entrepreneurs. A Stanford GSB faculty, Mark Thompson is a co-author of Success Built to Last, a sequel to Built to Last and Good to Great books.

Success Built to Last is probably the best management book that I've read. Jerry Porras, another co-author of the book, has been Academic Dean of Stanford for 35 years. Porras and Thompson impressed me greatly with this book. I earnestly hope this book wins Stanford the Nobel Prize for Management!

What is most important in your life?

2006-09-25T20:00:00.000-07:00

There was a lot of publicity about Stanford Business School faculty - Jim Collins and Jerry Porras's famous books "Built to Last" and "Good to Great." Both books went on to sell 4 million copies - more than any other management book.

The Stanford based research team led by Jerry Porras has launched a follow up book recently. It is called "Success Built to Last". I have noticed the book in B&N shop last week. I've started reading the book and just couldn't put it down. What an amazing and a thought provoking writing! It has been a long time since a business book had such a profound impact on me.

A few facts about the Jerry Porras. Profession: Academic Dean of Stanford Business School for 35 years. Management Thought Leader, Founder of Organizational Management and Organizational Strategy subjects

Here is a recent article that appeared in the media.

For most, success that's built to last starts with a portfolio of passions
By Kerry Hannon, Special for USA Today

Success is indeed an elusive prize, one that a trio of authors examine in this new self-help business book.

Jerry Porras, co-author (with Jim Collins) of the best-seller Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies; best-selling author Stewart Emery; and executive coach Mark Thompson interviewed more than 200 people.

Most everyone was over 40. Some are well-known: Nelson Mandela, Steve Jobs, Maya Angelou, Steve Forbes, Quincy Jones, Dalai Lama, Alice Waters.

And some aren't, such as Norma Hotaling, a former prostitute and addict, who founded an organization to help women get off the streets.

The bottom-line conclusion about how successful people operate: "Their passions create meaning in their lives that is nothing short of a lifelong obsession from which they seek no escape."

And there you have it. There is, in the end, no trumping true dedication and passion.

"Success in the long run has less to do with finding the best idea, organizational structure, or business model for an enterprise, than with discovering what matters to us as individuals."

Everyone they interviewed have three essential traits in common.

They are:
•Meaning. What you do must matter deeply to you, so much so that you lose all track of time. It's a "flow experience."
•ThoughtStyle. You have a highly developed sense of accountability, audacity, passion and optimism.
•ActionStyle. You find effective ways to take action.

To quote Apple co-founder Jobs: "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life." What's most important, says Jobs: "Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition."
Most of the men and women interviewed refer to themselves as "Builders," meaning success is something that happens over a long period of time, not just a flash-in-the-pan.
They are trying to make a difference in the world.

Money, ultimately, isn't the goal.

Builders come in all personality types from shrinking violets to swashbucklers, but enduringly successful people are lifted up by the power of their passion.

"The essential difference with Builders is that they've found something to do that matters to them and are therefore so passionately engaged, they rise above the personality baggage that would otherwise hold them down," the authors write.

And you can have more than one passion. In fact, you should. That's what makes a balanced life.
The authors advocate building a portfolio of passions.

"Carve out a little time each week, on the job or after work, to experiment in some way with one of your other passions."

Moreover, you've got to fail on the path to success. A cliché, but true, they write.
In final analysis, one of the best qualities a successful person can bring to the table is a sense of being an explorer.

"The journey is like shooting for the moon and instead hitting Mars — perhaps a better, but different, outcome than envisioned," according to Success Built to Last.

Here's the rub: You should have plans — they get you going — but along the way other things happen in life.

And what you end up being successful at may not be exactly what you pictured when you first started out.

Top Five Business BooksA List of Books for MBA Students, Faculty, and Business Practitioners

2006-09-24T08:13:00.000-07:00

Kenny Benge, a Graduate & Faculty Ministries staff member working at Vanderbilt University, passes along this list of best books about living a Christian life in the marketplace.

The Fabric of This World: Inquiries into Calling, Career Choice, and the Design of Human Work, by Lee Hardy (Eerdmans).
A great theological and historical perspective on work and calling.
Called to Holy Wordliness, by Richard Mouw (Fortress).
A theology of the laity.
Redeeming the Routines: Bringing Theology to Life, by Robert Banks (Bridgepoint).
An excellent theology of everyday life and routine.
Redeeming the Time: A Christian Approach to Work & Leisure, by Leland Ryken (Baker).
Leisure, the Basis of Culture, by Josef Pieper (St. Augustine’s Press).
A profound reflection on the theological implications of losing the rhythm of work and leisure.

Business Prophet

2006-01-18T08:06:00.000-08:00

Business Week has a fantastic article on how management celebrity C.K. Prahalad is changing the way CEOs think. This article comes with a podcast that is an extraordinary value all by itself. Prahalad's work, reflected in his latest book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid has taken my respect for this management guru a whole new level.

Link to the article:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_04/b3968089.htm

Wharton School Report on Catholic Church

2005-11-25T12:36:00.000-08:00

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."

Sustainable Strategy

2005-06-22T21:08:00.000-07:00

Few weeks ago Aregon and iwhoElse wrote about Stuart Hart's seminar on the Sustainable Strategy (Dr. Hart is a Director of the Cornell's Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise).

This subject is of great interest to me. Unfortunately I couldn't make it to the conference but I did read his new book that day. My energy level tripled. Stuart Hart does that to people.

EDIT: Thanks Clearadmit for the Financial Times link

A One-Stop Christian Destination

2005-05-21T18:14:00.000-07:00

Business Week recent issue had an interesting story titled, “A One-Stop Christian Destination”

Kirbyjon Caldwell, a Wharton MBA turned pastor, discusses how his vision to build a prayer center turned into something much bigger

Q: As a Wharton MBA, how do you view the use of business principles to run megachurches?
A: It is not uncommon for small and medium-sized churches to view larger churches as a business. I think that is unfortunate. But the other side of the coin is that when you take up money and spend money, if you don’t have sound business principles in place, you go to jail.

It is unfortunate that we’ve created this canyon between what is spiritual and what is practical. The Lord builds a bridge between [them]. And over half the parables told by Jesus deal with money. So I don’t make any apologies for the fact that we try to run the church as efficiently as we can.

Best Practices of the Church Management

2005-03-17T17:56:00.000-08:00

Catholic lay and religious leaders came together today to announce two constructive developments. The first is the creation of an important initiative, a new organization to help the Church in America strengthen the managerial structures and processes at the national, diocesan and parish levels. The second is the release of a sweeping report on best practices in Church management emanating from the Leadership Roundtable at the Wharton School last July.

The National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management (NLRCM), the new non-profit organization based in Washington, DC, will consist of influential laity and religious working together with Bishops to promote excellence and best practices in Church finances, management practices and human resources and working together to ensure that the Church more fully utilizes the talents of all American Catholics.

Geoffrey T. Boisi, a founding leader and Wharton Alumnus, said in making the announcement, "Our mission is to facilitate a collaboration among Catholic leaders to promote excellence in the Church's organizational and management capabilities and to help reestablish the relationship of trust between the hierarchy and its parishioners."

The comprehensive report of the Wharton Leadership Roundtable provides an example of the significant contributions the new organization will provide. The report maps out 48 short- and long-term recommendations for strengthening the organizational and managerial structures of the church at its three fundamental levels: national, diocesan and parish. The NLRCM will seek to identify best practices in the areas of management, finance and human resources at all levels, and then work to promote and adapt best practices throughout the church.

The Wharton report noted that if the resources of every diocese in the United States were combined, the aggregate would have one million employees, with an operating budget of almost $100 billion, comparable in scope and size to the nation's largest corporations. The business and organizational challenges of an institution this size demand that the Church tap into the resources of the laity to identify the best talent, creativity and professional know-how available to help strengthen the Church so that it can better fulfill its mission.

"The Wharton Roundtable Report is an important must-read document for any Catholic interested in helping deal with the serious issues facing the Church in the US," Mr. Boisi said. "If we want our children to pass the Catholic faith on to their own effectively, we must act now. The time has come for Catholic leaders, both lay and cleric, to get serious about working together using our collective capabilities and taking thoughtful accountable action to solve our man-made problems."

For more information on the NLRCM, please visit http://www.NLRCM.org

To download Best Practices of the Church Management Report, please visit http://www.nlrcm.org/pdf/Final%20Report.pdf

Restore All Things in Thomas?

2004-12-11T07:33:00.000-08:00

"Books & Culture: A Christian Review" is an excellent magazine. There is now also available a regular Books & Culture "e-newsletter," and the one I received today included this review, by Eugene McCarraher, of "The Church Confronts Modernity: Catholic Intellectuals and the Progressive Era," by Thomas E. Woods, Jr. Here is the opening:

One of the signature conceits of Catholics who "came of age" during the 1960s is that the Church first directly confronted modernity at the Second VaticanCouncil. ("Coming of age," like "secular city," was a trendy phrase among Christians, tying Boomers' new adulthood to the vogue for Dietrich Bonhoeffer.) Until the aggiornomento, so the tale goes, the American Church was shrouded in neo-scholastic darkness, with its finest minds malnourished by an intellectual diet of all Thomas, all the time. And then came the springtime of Catholics, when "the spirit of Vatican II"—another phrase that's become a hackneyed generational marker—shone through the vaults of this musty medievalism, bathing the sanctuary in the saving light of modern secular culture.

This mythological account of '60s Catholicism is remarkably resilient—testimony, like much of the lore of that decade, to the power and self-regard of the Boomer cohort—and it bears so much truth about Catholic insularity that it still deserves attention, regardless of the smugness it can sanction. Still, it withers in the face of a growing trove of scholarship in history and theology.

Bankruptcy in the Church

2004-11-03T09:01:00.000-08:00

This week the diocese of Tucson became the second to file for bankruptcy, further underscoring the importance and timeliness of Seton Hall Law School's upcoming conference, Bankruptcy in the Religious Non-Profit Context, scheduled for November 5 and featuring a stellar scholarly lineup, including MoJ's own Mark Sargent.

Catholic Church Gets the Wharton School Treatment

2004-10-14T10:00:00.000-07:00

I attended a fascinating conference last month entitled "The Church in America, Leadership Roundtable 2004," sponsored by and held at the Wharton School here in Phildelphia. 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. The group consisted of clerics (bishops, priests and nuns who run church institutions), academics (mostly Catholic university presidents and a few deans), CEOs, and some well known Catholic intellectualswriters/consultants (if that's a category). While it was genuinely fascinating, and one of the most civil Catholic conferences I've attended, it left me with a few qualms.The organizors' assumptions were articulated in terms something like this:

1. The Church in America is on a "burning platform" (a term coined by former GE mogul Jack Welch); it must change or it will gradually fall apart; the status quo is not an option.

2. The key to survival and new growth is a mangerial revolution: the Church must abndon its "feudal" organization and way of doing business and adopt a "performance culture", accountability, modern human resources practices, modern market analysis and communication techniques, and strategic planning. This does not require applying a corporate model or abandoning the dioceses' autonomy; a sophisticated partnership model would be more appropriate.

3. None of that would be possible, however, without a radical expansion of the role of laity not just in parish life, but in leadership (not necessarily sacramental) roles at all levels.

My response to all this was a classic Catholic "Yes, but..." I certainly agree the Church is on a burning platform, that a managerial revolution is needed, particularly with respect to accountability, and recognition of the importance of the laity is not just a matter of necessity because of the disappearance of priests and nuns, but for sound theological reasons. Nevertheless, this analysis, while correct and helpful, overstates the importance of the managerial issues, because it does not explain adequately why the platform is burning. It is burning not just because many bishops have shown themselves to be inept or misguided managers, as the response to the sexual abuse cases has shown. It is burning, first, because the Church's core spiritual message is falling on increasingly deaf ears in a culture profoundly inimical to its beliefs and values, and, second, because Catholics are so divided among themselves about what Catholicism means and what it means to be a good Catholic. We can hire McKinsey or some other high powered business consultant to create a beautiful, well-engineered, gleaming managerial enterprise, but if it is producing the spiritual equivalent of buggy whips, it is still going to fail. My worry is that the Church's problems are of a different order than those that can be addressed by managerial remedies, even very important ones such as greater pastoral and financial accountability.

Of course, I don't want to set up too stark an antithesis here: better management will enable the Church's spiritual message to be conveyed more effectively, and its resources deployed more efficiently and with more credibility. Structural reforms that lend more dignity to the laity's (ESPECIALLY WOMEN"S) vocations and contributions will have a very positive spiritual effect. But, to mix metaphors, we need a wellspring of spiritual renewal to douse the flames on the burning platform.

"Wrongful Life" lawsuits

2004-09-12T18:47:00.000-07:00

Last week Los Angeles Times included this story, "If Only We'd Known," about two parents who are filing a "wrongful life" lawsuit because "they were denied the opportunity to decide whether to abort the pregnancy, something they would have weighed had they known the child would be born with a disabling defect that can result in paralysis, profound learning disabilities and fluid on the brain." The articles notes, among other things, that "the rise in wrongful-life suits and the threat of legal responsibility for a child's defects puts obstetricians in the uncomfortable position of recommending, if not insisting on, abortion when there is the slightest doubt, said one physician." (Note: The LA Times requires registration).

Body, Soul, and Moral Anthropology in Today's Times

2004-09-10T21:43:00.000-07:00

Last week's New York Times featured a short piece by Yale's Paul Bloom on, among other things, "the great conflict between science and religion in the last century"; "the conclusion that our souls are flesh"; our "mistaken" "common-sense dualis[m]"; and the "scientific view of mental life."

Bloom's opening paragraph is consonant with many of the discussions we've had here on MOJ:

What people think about many of the big issues that will be discussed in the next two months - like gay marriage, stem-cell research and the role of religion in public life - is intimately related to their views on human nature. And while there may be differences between Republicans and Democrats, one fundamental assumption is accepted by almost everyone. This would be reassuring - if science didn't tell us that this assumption is mistaken.

In Bloom's view, most people today -- and, in particular, religious people -- embrace a comforting but indefensible "dualism", believing that "bodies and souls [are] separate." Bloom quotes the President's Council on Bioethics report of December 2003, "Being Human": "We have both corporeal and noncorporeal aspects. We are embodied spirits and inspirited bodies (or, if you will, embodied minds and minded bodies)."

This is all wrong, says Bloom. "The qualities of mental life that we associate with souls are purely corporeal; they emerge from biochemical processes in the brain. . . . As the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker points out, the qualities that we are most interested in from a moral standpoint - consciousness and the capacity to experience pain - result from brain processes that emerge gradually in both development and evolution. There is no moment at which a soulless body becomes an ensouled one, and so scientific research cannot provide objective answers to the questions that matter the most to us."

The correct view of mental life, Bloom insists, can only overpower religion:

The conclusion that our souls are flesh is profoundly troubling to many, as it clashes with the notion that the soul survives the death of the body. It is a much harder pill to swallow than evolution, then, and might be impossible to reconcile with many religious views. Pope John Paul II was clear about this, conceding our bodies may have evolved, but that theories which "consider the spirit as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter, are incompatible with the truth about man."

This clash is not going to be easily resolved. The great conflict between science and religion in the last century was over evolutionary biology. In this century, it will be over psychology, and the stakes are nothing less than our souls.

Bloom is right in this, I think: The stakes are very high.

Campus Connection

2004-09-03T18:59:00.000-07:00

The campus ministry of Catholic Relief Services has put together an effective website called Campus Connection to help students, faculty, and staff engage the world around them.

Creating a Pro-Parent Society

2004-09-01T10:02:00.000-07:00

We hear a lot in the media about the legal viability of certain family structures, but significantly less about the practical viability of family structures, traditional or otherwise. Yale law prof Anne Alstott has made available sample chapters of her book, No Exit: What Parents Owe Their Children and What Society Owes Parents. It certainly should be of interest to those concerned with facilitating a concept of parenting based on single-minded devotion and care. Here's the abstract (link courtesy of Larry Solum's Legal Theory blog):

America's public policies have not kept pace with our rising standards for child-rearing. Child-rearing was once an economic bargain for parents who received a little worker and a retirement policy with each child. But thanks to technological and social change, parenthood has become a uniquely costly pursuit: we expect parents to protect their children's developmental chances, even at the expense of their own opportunities. Today, parenthood requires a decades-long restructuring of one's economic and personal life. Society expects parents to provide the continuity of care that is critical for children's development. Put succinctly, we tell parents Do Not Exit, and the great majority of parents - especially mothers - comply.

But the economic costs of this No Exit obligation are enormous, and borne primarily by mothers. In every income class, mothers work less, earn less, and achieve less (in economic terms) than childless women and than men. Mothers interrupt their working lives at high rates, and as a consequence, they enter middle- and old-age with less financial independence.

The libertarian reply is, essentially, So what? Mothers know - or ought to know - what they are getting into, and they should plan for the economic burdens of parenthood by saving, marrying, or remaining childless if need be. On this view, it is unfair to ask the childless to subsidize their peers who choose parenthood.

This book aims to demonstrate that the libertarian assertion of equality between parents and nonparents is superficial, because it overlooks the child in the picture. Once we recognize the social importance of parents' No Exit duty, we can begin to understand society's special obligation to parents.

The book also proposes a set of public policies that would offer practical assistance to modern families. Caretaker resource accounts would provide parents with $5,000 per year, to be used for child care, parents' own education, or retirement savings. For the average family, this program would mark a major new commitment of resources that could improve parents' own economic fortunes. At the same time, the program would permit parental choice, leaving it up to individuals to decide whether to stay in the workforce or take time out or in part-time work. Moreover, the initiative would direct resources to individuals, avoiding the partiality and potential side-effects of some family-friendly workplace initiatives.

Another set of policies, termed life-planning insurance, would enrich the resources offered to parents of special needs children - a group for whom the No Exit obligation is especially costly. Today, public policy underwrites special education and health care for children with disabilities - but largely ignores the economic plight of their parents, who often find their own working lives permanently disrupted.