Spiritual Leadership of a Parish Priest: On Being Good and Good At It

One of the most critical Issues facing American Catholicism is the quality of Its priestly leadership. There are many how-to resources on pastoral techniques, but very few on spiritual leadership. The author defines spiritual leadership as the ability to influence people internally to move from where they are to where God wants them to be and pastoral leadership as the ability to skillfully use the rites, rules and rituals of the Church to make that happen. Seminaries spend a lion share of their time emphasizing personal piety, but priests today must not only be good personally, they must be good at what they do.