Some are demanding that Pope Benedict and other bishops resign immediately.

That may be a good idea in fact, but…

What we need AT EVERY LEVEL in the church is a new leadership style.

The openness for new wisdom, emerging in the here-and-now Roman Catholic Church, is so absent from our church leadership because the official  leadership model is based on individual authoritarian leaders — cut off from all genuine dialogue. 

Genuine dialogue happens when the authoritarian leader dares to lose grip on his (or her) ideas and allows new ideas and wisdom to emerge within an open and non-judgmental conversation.

Life-giving leadership is about enabling people, groups and organizations to create their own future, to acknowledge the need for change, and to collaborate in the processes of questioning, theorizing and changing. 

This is what we mean by theology: faith, in every age and culture, seeking understanding.

Leadership, based just on the individual perspective of the person in charge, blocks the co-creative process of dialogue and ignores the wisdom that is present in every person engaged in conversation in the community of faith.

 

Yes I do think the pope and other bishops guilty of sexual abuse cover-ups should resign.

And resign at once: pack their bags and move out.

BUT….we will not begin to solve the church’s problems until we shift from an authoritarian leadership model to a dialogical communitarian model….and this at all levels of the church: all the way from the young tyrant parish council president to the old tyrant bishop in Rome.