Accountability and Leadership in the Catholic Church: What Needs to be Improved
Brian Dive
(CAMBRIDGE SCHOLARS PUBLISHING, 220 PP, £61.99)

Women, Icons of Christ
PHYLLIS ZAGANO
(PAULIST PRESS, 121 PP, £11.99)
Tablet bookshop price £10.79 • Tel 020 7799 4064

There is a quotation from John Henry Newman at the very start of Brian Dive’s Accountability and Leadership in the Catholic Church that pulled me up short. “The Church,” Newman writes, “consists of men, and it has developed according to the laws under which combinations of men develop.” Even if men is being used as a generic term by a Victorian author, it is telling that Dive chose to quote this.

Those human, rather than divine, laws Newman was writing about are the ecclesiastical problem that Dive discusses here. The Church, he argues, is dysfunctional because of its structure. That structure and management should occur to Dive as the Church’s problems is not surprising, given he has spent decades in business, including being global head of management at Unilever. Many of his points strike home. What is evident throughout Dive’s analysis of all levels of the Catholic Church is that the people – for that, read men – given responsibility have barely been prepared for it. Parish priests may have had intellectual and spiritual education but they run buildings and accounts with little financial acumen. Bishops, too, are not trained to deal with all the personnel, administrative and financial issues involved in keeping the diocesan show on the road. They may enjoy power in their diocesan fiefdoms, but they get precious little support.