Aning Amoah's Leadership Styles and Spiritual Traits of Catholic Priests explore the relationship between leadership styles (transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire) and spiritual traits (self-directedness (SD), cooperativeness (CO), and self-transcendence (ST). The quantitative correlational study sampled 93 catholic priests from Ghana in active ministry. The results showed a statistically significant correlation between transformational leadership and spiritual traits, a nonstatistical correlation between transactional leadership and spiritual trait variables, a negative statistically significant correlation between laissez-faire leadership style with self-directedness and cooperativeness, and a positive statistically significant correlation between laissez-faire leadership style and self-transcendence. Thus, the more catholic priests provide guidance, counseling, teaching, and shepherding among congregation as a transformational leader, the more likely they will be reliable, mature, effective, helpful, compassionate, and spiritual. Contrary, the more catholic priests become laissez-faire leader, the more likely they will be weak, blaming, ineffective, emotionally unstable, lacking internal organizational principles (low SD), self-absorbed, intolerant, critical, revengeful and self-regarding (low CO), and absorbed in what they do, spiritual and capable of adapting to situation of pain and suffering (high ST).

Aning Amoah's Leadership Styles and Spiritual Traits of Catholic Priests explore the relationship between leadership styles (transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire) and spiritual traits (self-directedness (SD), cooperativeness (CO), and self-transcendence (ST). The quantitative correlational study sampled 93 catholic priests from Ghana in active ministry. The results showed a statistically significant correlation between transformational leadership and spiritual traits, a nonstatistical correlation between transactional leadership and spiritual trait variables, a negative statistically significant correlation between laissez-faire leadership style with self-directedness and cooperativeness, and a positive statistically significant correlation between laissez-faire leadership style and self-transcendence. Thus, the more catholic priests provide guidance, counseling, teaching, and shepherding among congregation as a transformational leader, the more likely they will be reliable, mature, effective, helpful, compassionate, and spiritual. Contrary, the more catholic priests become laissez-faire leader, the more likely they will be weak, blaming, ineffective, emotionally unstable, lacking internal organizational principles (low SD), self-absorbed, intolerant, critical, revengeful and self-regarding (low CO), and absorbed in what they do, spiritual and capable of adapting to situation of pain and suffering (high ST).

Catholic priests in the U.S. and around the world are usually silent in discussing their superiors’ leadership relating to the child sexual abuse scandal. This nonfiction book, Priests’ Perceptions of the Leadership Styles of U.S. Catholic Bishops is a representation of rare but unique perspectives of the U.S. Catholic priests’ opinions of the bishops’ leadership styles in handling the child sexual abuse scandal. No other author has ever asked the question of the U.S. Catholic bishops’ leadership styles relating to the child sexual abuse scandal. The child sexual abuse scandal’s quagmire in the Catholic Church constitutes the question of leadership that the author examined in this book from the perspectives of transformational, transactional, charismatic, and servant-leadership styles. The author, Fr. Dr. Aloysius Ndeanaefo, traveled to the various areas within a Midwestern diocese interviewing priests as a way of gaining a deeper understanding of their opinions. Catholic leadership around the world needs to use the findings in this book to facilitate more effective leadership styles when handling and preventing similar future crises while collaborating with the clergy, the religious, the faithful, and the law enforcement officials in creating and sustaining awareness of child abuse prevention policies to avert future harms.

From the age of fourteen until his death at the age of eighty-two, Pope John XXIII kept what he called his 'Journal of a Soul' - the record of his growth in holiness. Elected Pope at the age of seventy-eight he impressed the world with the breadth of his mind but also with his simplicity and his will to be at the service of others. This book covers the full span of his long career from the seminary at Bergamo to his brief but transformative papacy.His journal is a rare and intimate record of the spiritual life of a much-loved figure. As he wrote, 'my soul is in these pages.'

The clergy today faces mounting challenges in an increasingly secular world, where declining prestige makes it more difficult to attract the best and the brightest young Americans to the ministry. As Christian churches dramatically adapt to modern changes, some are asking whether there is a clergy crisis as well. Whatever the future of the clergy, the fate of millions of churchgoers also will be at stake. In Who Shall Lead Them?, prizewinning journalist Larry Witham takes the pulse of both the Protestant and Catholic ministry in America and provides a mixed diagnosis of the calling's health. Drawing on dozens of interviews with clergy, seminarians and laity, and using newly available survey data including the 2000 Census, Witham reveals the trends in a variety of traditions. While evangelicals are finding innovative paths to ministry, the Catholic priesthood faces a severe shortage. In mainline Protestantism, ministry as a second career has become a prominent feature. Ordination ages in the Episcopal and United Methodist churches average in the 40s today. The quest by female clergy to lead from the pulpit, meanwhile, has hit a "stained glass ceiling" as churches still prefer a man as the principal minister. While deeply motivated by the mystery of their "call" to ministry, America's priests, pastors, and ministers are reassessing their roles in a world of new debates on leadership, morality, and the powers of the mass media. Who Shall Lead Them? offers a valuable snapshot of this contemporary clergy drama. It will be required reading for everyone concerned about the rapidly shifting ground of our churches and the health of religion in America.

That lay women and men increasingly serve as leaders of institutional ministries in the Church is nothing new. Yet, until now, these lay leaders have longed for theological resources and formational training to help them in their vocation and ministry. Called and Chosen: Toward a Spirituality for Lay Leaders is designed especially for women and men who, in collaboration with vowed religious and the ordained, shepherd Church ministries and touch the lives of countless people. Written by leading authorities in biblical studies, theology, spirituality, church history, and ecclesial leadership, the book is broken into four parts: Part one invites lay leaders to claim their own call and commitment by reflecting on the Catholic vision of spirituality, vocation, mission and ministry, and the experiences of other leaders. Part two grounds their work in the larger story of our institutional ministries by examining their biblical, theological, and historical roots. Part three probes the work of the Spirit in communities and institutions, against the backdrop of contemporary cultural realities, to help leaders develop the capacity to discern the Spirit's workings. Part four focuses on issues central to the role of a spiritual leader: the spirituality of administration, the task of building community, the use of power and authority and work of forming and mentoring others. Questions at the end of each chapter invite further reflection on the themes explored.

Today, Christianity has become the most popular and fast-growing religion in Ghana. Paradoxically, the Christian Church, in whatever form it has taken, has, for a complexity of reasons, basically remained a weak church with a weak foundation. This book discusses, from a theologico-cultural anthropological perspective, some of the ecclesial and social processes and factors that, the author believes, are responsible for the creation of this paradox in the case of the Ghanaian Catholic Church and demonstrates how they influence the search for a Catholic spiritual tradition in it.