William L. Forst

If Aristotle Ran the Catholic Church: the Present Leadership Problem of the Church William L. Forst

There are a number of great leadership books on the market, but there are not many, if any that have developed the Four Dimensions of Aristotle. There are Liberation and Feminists theologians who develop leadership styles that are built up from the people, or bottom up. I believe this is Jesus servant style of leadership. Whereas the traditional style of leadership begins at the top down. Servant leadership is based on the proper functioning of truth, aesthetics, moral, and spiritual. Traditional leadership is based upon I possessing absolute truth (infallibility). It has the structure of a patriarchy, and thus rules out women as leaders. With infallibility it encourages hard-core co-dependency. The church of the future must function as a global religion. It no longer can be Roman. It will have to respect the pluralistic cultures and religions that make up the world. It cannot do this by leading as though it possess all truth. The Kingdom of God comes to us as a gift and the church has the responsibility to create this gift here on earth. I don''t think the global church can carry out its responsibility with the traditional style leadership.