Prayer for Leadership

Joan Chittister’s “Prayer for Leadership” inspires me today (Thursday, February 6, 2020). She begins,

Give us, O God,
leaders whose hearts are large enough
to match the breadth of our own souls
and give us souls strong enough
to follow leaders of vision and wisdom.

This prayer puts in context not only our national politics, but also our church politics. While we’re not going to get the opportunity to vote for church leaders anytime soon, we certainly have the right to think about whose leadership we value.

I hate to gloat, but here’s the headline of Robert Mickens’ most recent “Letter from Rome” in La Croix International:

“The shadow pontificate is drawing to a close.” Mickens notes Francis’s patience in not discharging his – and Benedict’s – secretary, Georg Ganswein – until now. But, under the guise of reassigning job responsibilities, Ganswein is on administrative leave and assisting only the former Pope, who may be drawing close to his final reward. Mickens dispels all the illusions in the movie The Two Popes. He provides the kind of detail that seems like too much gossip even to me, amusing as it is. Joshua McElwee in NCR provides different details, more measured.

But I just want to say that I can never imagine Francis venting about Ganswein’s role in the sorry book Cardinal Sarah supposedly co-authored with Benedict. His heart is large enough, he has vision and wisdom enough, to allow a respectful departure of a problem employee (if Archbishops are indeed employees).

Somewhat less circumspect have been the comments after the first meeting of the delegates participating in the German Synodal Path. To refresh your memory, “The process was launched on Dec. 1 and over the next two years some 230 bishops and lay delegates will engage in dialogue around four main themes — power in the Church, priestly celibacy, the place of women and sexuality.” Everyone wore civilian clothes and was seated alphabetically. The “most constructive debates” were about the place of women, specifically about placing them in leadership. We Are Church, a lay-led group affiliated with WOC and other church renewal groups, saw the meeting as a “hopeful beginning that, however, also gave a hint of the obstacles.” According to the CNS report, they said “The reform issues were now clearly laid out.”

The less-benign comments of Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki of Cologne were quoted in every article I read about the assembly. He said “his great fear was justified, that a Protestant parliament would be instituted in the way this event was conceived and constituted.” Think meetinghouse vs. basilica, congregational vs. kyriarchal. In contrast, Karin Kortmann, vice-president of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK) welcomed the “space without hierarchy.” She is one of the co-presidents of the assembly, along with Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich, president of the German Bishops’ Conference, and Thomas Sternberg, the ZdK president. Marx’s response to Woelki: “Why should ‘Protestant’ be a dirty word?” Sternberg’s: “Do you want synodality, as the pope asks, or a model for the organization of the Church in the 19th century?” Leaders with the breadth of our souls and souls strong enough to follow the vision.

This week, religion was inserted in American national debates in unimaginable ways. Would that these church leaders could be models of how to behave in situations when there is conflict. 

Give us, O God,
leaders whose hearts are large enough
to match the breadth of our own souls
and give us souls strong enough
to follow leaders of vision and wisdom.