In the last few years, we've seen a tragic reality: male leaders in the Catholic world who circled around their colleagues and protected them after they had committed crimes against children. That same male-dominated hierarchy has, in recent months, been putting pressure on—and even making institutional threats against—the nuns who do so much to help children, the poor, the outcasts, and the excluded. My sense is that you have a growing number of Catholics who feel the nuns better represent what they think of as truly Catholic than the male officials who hold positions of power. You might say the choice for Catholics—as it is for Evangelicals and Mainliners and everyone, really—is between the love of power and the power of love. It's between a kind of institutional mindset that wants to conserve power and a missional mindset that wants to love and serve and give. That's the real choice that we're all making, I think. It's the choice presented by Jesus when he said nobody can serve two masters, and when he decided not to consider equality with God—religious status, religious power, religious advantage—as something to be grasped, but instead, opened his hand, let it go, and poured out himself in service.
There's institutional authority on the one hand. In Catholicism, it's conferred by all-male Apostolic Succession. In Mainline Protestantism, it's earned through institutional submission. In Evangelicalism, it's procured through numerical success—whether in big churches, big book sales, big TV and radio constituencies, or whatever.
On the other hand, there's moral authority. And that can't be conferred, earned, or procured. It can only be given as a gift when people see Christ-like character, Christ-like service, Christ-like love. Without that, as Paul said, we're all just a lot of noise.
That's what I hope both of these books will contribute to—a rethinking of power and authority and popularity, and a rediscovery of and refocus upon the precious few things that really matter.
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