This column is response to a recent opinion piece, "God's line manager," written by Frederick W. Gluck, a former Managing Director at McKinsey & Company, on the state of affairs in the Catholic Church. It was published in the Financial Times on 7 May 2005. This response is offered by Leo Linbeck III, President and CEO of Aquinas Corporation, a values-driven, private company based in Houston. He is also Adjunct Professor at the Jones Graduate School of Management at Rice University.

Gluck's essay is shown indented and italicized, while Linbeck's responses are in plain text.

People around the world have been mesmerised by the events surrounding the death of Pope John Paul II and the election of Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, as his successor. Now we wait to see how the new Pope performs in one of the world's most complex and challenging leadership roles. Critically, will he be able to stem the steady decline in the Church's stature, influence and relevance to its faithful that has been evident for at least 30 years?

Frederick Gluck does not even complete one paragraph before he logs his first internal inconsistency. If you are faithful to the Church, how can its stature, influence, and relevance decline to you? After all, if one is faithful to the Church and its teachings, its stature, influence, and relevance must be paramount.

Moreover, Mr. Gluck asserts without evidence (a rhetorical device he uses throughout this essay) that this decline "has been evident for at least 30 years." Evident to whom? Over the past 30 years (particularly under the leadership of Pope John Paul II), the Church's stature, influence, and relevance have dramatically increased - witness all of the recent attention to the papal transition. Moreover, according to the Georgetown University Center for Applied Research on the Apostolate, the number of Catholics worldwide has grown from 653,000,000 in 1970 to more than 1,000,000,000 in 2000 - a 53% increase over 30 years. In the US, the corresponding numbers are 45,300,000 in 1965 and 63,400,000 in 2003 - a 62% increase over a longer time period. Hardly a sign of decline.

Pope Benedict recently alluded to perhaps the most important manifestation of this problem when he spoke of the spread of relativism - the tendency of many Catholics, and others, to reject the notion of an enduring truth and to go their own way when they feel the Church is not in touch with their basic needs.

Reversing this trend is high on the Pope's list of priorities. But to do this he needs a cohesive organisation capable of attracting and managing human and financial resources effectively and efficiently. Unfortunately the evidence is that the governance and management structures he is inheriting are not up to the task.

Mr. Gluck again speaks of evidence that the structure of the Church is not up to the task. This is a bold, provocative proclamation, backed up by no data or evidence. He asserts the existence of evidence, but provides none. Perhaps he will get around to it later...

The Catholic Church's problems are evident in many places around the world. In my own country, the US, I recently looked at the state of the Church from the standpoint of a McKinsey consultant. This is what I found:

By invoking his "authority" as a "McKinsey consultant," it seems only appropriate to put that authority in its proper perspective.

What is McKinsey? McKinsey & Company is the world's premier management consulting firm, specializing in strategy consulting to large public companies. It has an excellent reputation in its field, and has many smart and devoted employees and partners.

However, as described in Business Week, McKinsey consultants were the primary architects of the strategy that drove Enron Corporation into bankruptcy. In fact, the CEO of Enron, who sowed the seeds of its future demise, was a McKinsey consultant before he joined Enron. And Enron is not the only example of colossal strategic failures at McKinsey clients. Global Crossing, Kmart, and Swissair were McKinsey clients who ended up in bankruptcy. GM has been a long-time McKinsey client, a fact that has not prevented the slow and steady decline in its stature, influence, and relevance. McKinsey was the key advisor to HP's Carly Fiorina in the merger with Compaq that is now widely seen as a failure. And so on.

Moreover, McKinsey's core clients are large, for-profit, public companies. Whether any of this capability is relevant to the Catholic Church is certainly worth questioning.

In short, Mr. Gluck's assertion of authority is unconvincing, and any argument he makes will have to stand on its own merits, not on the basis of his former role with McKinsey.

The Church has significant human resources problems. Its ability to recruit has declined dramatically during the past 40 years and the workforce is rapidly aging. It is no longer the first choice of the best and the brightest. In addition, many people have been demoralised by internal conflict and the public scandal over how the Church has handled allegations of sexual abuse.

This assertion of "significant human resources problems" is, again, made without evidence. Let's look at the facts related to his claims one at a time.According to the Georgetown University Center for Applied Research on the Apostolate, the number of priests in the world has remained remarkably stable over the past 30 years, hovering between 405,000 and 420,000. Moreover, the number of graduate level seminarians has climbed from 34,000 in 1980 to 56,000 in 2000. So, if any conclusion can be drawn, it is that recruiting has been improving, not declining, at least on a global basis. And since Mr. Gluck's claims are for the Church as a whole, global metrics are the right metrics to use.

Still, the US may be different (a fact that might still say more about the US than the Church as a whole). A first look at US statistics from the same Georgetown source paints a somewhat different picture than the global data. From 1965 to 2003, the number of priests fell from 59,000 to 44,000. Not a good trend.

But let's look a little deeper. Some comparison with other industries here may be helpful. If we look at labor productivity, as shown in Table B-49 in the Economic Report to the President 2005, we see that in 1965 non-farm labor productivity (output per hour) stood at 62.4 [1992 = 100]. By 2002, this number had grown to 123.8 - about double.

So, let's assume for the moment that priestly productivity grew at the same rate as the nation as a whole. Let's also assume the average priest in the US works 2,000 hours per year. In 1965, the number of priest-hours per Catholic was 2.57; by 2003, that number had fallen to 1.38. But if we adjust these numbers for the productivity changes over this period of time, the 2003 number would be 2.74 - in other words, the amount of priestly "output" per Catholic might have actually increased.

If we stop to think for a moment, it is perfectly plausible that priestly productivity has risen. First, there are a number of activities once taken up largely by priests that are now done largely by the laity: education, social work, and various other ministries. Increasing specialization in society enables priests to focus more of their time and attention on their core responsibilities: administering the Sacraments, and serving the Church herself. In addition, it seems that priests are simply working harder than they used to work, leading to greater "priestly output." (Many of my priest friends would certainly agree with this statement.)

Now while this productivity analysis is a somewhat crude, it is substantially more refined than the analysis Mr. Gluck provides. Instead, he simply "reports" what everyone says is "true," and then proceeds to prescribe "solutions" for these "problems."

Finally, his assertions that the Church doesn't attract the "best and the brightest" is again made with no evidence, and flies in the face of known facts. One would expect that in a group of 400,000 or so people, there would be a distribution of talent and capabilities. It is difficult to see how either Pope John Paul II or Pope Benedict XVI could be classified as anything other than the "best and the brightest." I am also certain there are many other people of great talent within the clergy - I am certain because I have met many. As an example, one was in the MBA program at Stanford when I was a student there; I should add that McKinsey heavily recruits Stanford MBAs, so they can't be all that bad.

Many of the clergy (and potential clergy) do not believe that a) celibacy is an essential requirement of the priesthood or b) women should be excluded from the priesthood and other important roles in the Church. And they are frustrated and demoralised by the reluctance of the Church to discuss the issues openly.

It is in this paragraph that we get our first indication that Mr. Gluck may have a different agenda than simply the management and governance of the Church. He picks up on two fashionable criticisms of the Church - celibacy and the male priesthood - and uses them as examples of impediments to attracting the best and the brightest.

But his criticisms are nonsensical, at least as a human resource issue. As the numbers show, seminarians worldwide have been steadily rising. The Church has made no secret of its positions on these issues. So, presumably, these "potential clergy" can have no reason to be frustrated and demoralized. After all, these conditions are part of the job definition. If I apply for and get a job that is inherently dangerous and therefore requires diligence in safety, and find out that I will be required to wear a hard hat, why should I be frustrated and demoralized? And if my supervisors refuse to debate the need for hard hats, or if they discuss the issue with me but find my arguments uncompelling and are therefore unwilling to change - why is this a problem with their position?

No, Mr. Gluck seems to want more than just managerial change. He wants the Church to abandon its tradition and teachings on matters such as celibacy and male priesthood. His approach to these issues, however, is intellectually dishonest. Rather than address them head-on, he instead seeks to create a false "crisis" and then prescribe them as a "solution." This approach, while a classic sales tool for management consultants trying to ply their wares, is out of place in a serious discussion of a centuries-old religious institution.

The Church has serious financial problems. Many of its traditional sources of revenue are drying up, while at the same time costs are rapidly escalating because it can no longer attract high-quality, cheap labour. Also, churches are closing as fewer people attend mass, and maintenance is an ongoing cost. Potential liabilities as a result of the recent sexual abuse scandals are large and growing, and the dismal spectacle of dioceses declaring bankruptcy to protect their assets from legal settlements is further evidence of the problem.

More unsubstantiated assertions by Mr. Gluck. In fact, sources of revenue are not drying up, but rather donations appear to be increasing. According to the Washington Post, donations to the Catholic Church increased 4.9% in 2002, double the rate of inflation, and during the time when the clergy sex scandals were at their height. He also asserts that costs are rapidly escalating, with no data to back it up, only a wild conjecture that the reason is the Church's increasing inability to attract high-quality, cheap labor - again, a counter-factual assertion given the global growth in seminarians.

He then says churches are closing, which is undoubtedly true as there is always change in populations served by parishes - this is sort of like saying businesses are always failing. But what is the extent of these church closings? In 2002, according to the Official Catholic Directory, the number of parishes in the US fell from 19,544 to 19,496 - a net loss of 0.2%. This hardly qualifies as a "significant" trend. Moreover, if the Church were in financial crisis as Mr Gluck claims, wouldn't the closing of churches be a good thing, as it cuts costs? Isn't that what a McKinsey consultant would recommend?

As far as liabilities and bankruptcy related to the sexual abuse scandal are concerned, what other choice does a bishop have when dealing with past sins? Wouldn't a McKinsey consultant recommend using bankruptcy to assure survival of an otherwise viable organization in the face of aggressive lawsuits? What did McKinsey recommend to Philip Morris when it was faced with tobacco litigation? Or Johns Manville when it was faced with asbestos litigation? Or United Airlines when faced with a dramatic change in consumer behavior post 9/11? Should a bishop simply throw up his hands and hand over Church property to the plaintiff's bar without a fight?

I also found substantial changes in the character of the Church's membership - and its potential membership. People are much better educated and better informed than in the past, and many no longer feel committed to the Church's "product line": its teachings on divorce, birth control, abortion, homosexuality or even regular attendance at mass and Communion.

This paragraph reeks of the arrogance for which elite management consultants are (in)famous. "People are much better educated and better informed" therefore "they no longer feel committed to the Church's... teachings on divorce, birth control, abortion, homosexuality" etc. In other words, smart people don't agree with the Church, and we need the smart people in the "war for talent" (another McKinsey innovation which has proven disastrous for its adopters) so the Church needs to change. The smart people know what's right. The Church can't pull the wool over our eyes like they did "in the past."

Well, I for one, am well-educated (4 degrees, 2 of them Masters, from Notre Dame, University of Texas, and Stanford). And I agree with the Church's teaching. Much of it I came to agree with only after I had studied those teachings in depth. Sound bites are not always sound and conventional wisdom is not always wise.

I have a question for Mr. Gluck: has he even read Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI's encyclical on birth control? Has he read any of Pope John Paul II's writings on the Theology of the Body, or his encyclical Evangelium Vitae? My guess is that he, like most of the "potential membership" of whom he speaks, have not read these encyclicals but have relied on second- and third-hand magazine and newspaper articles, and therefore do not fully understand the Church's teachings or their basis in scripture and tradition.

Instead, dissenters oppose them simply because they don't want to obey and follow them. But, as Mr. Gluck reminds us, the dissenters are smart (certainly smarter than the "worst and dimmest" the Church is stuck with - and since smart people are right, the Church's teachings must be wrong. Is this what passes for serious analysis by a McKinsey consultant?

Finally, after the abuse scandals, many of the faithful no longer trust Church leaders or believe in their infallibility.

At this point, I have to ask: does Mr. Gluck, after the Enron scandal, still trust McKinsey? Or would he say this was simply a failure of a few individuals, not the organization? And how is this different for the Church after the abuse scandals?

The infallibility issue is somewhat different, and as stated it is a straw man. The Church has never claimed infallibility for Church leaders. Whatever infallibility is claimed by the Church is claimed for the Church as an institution, not for its leaders individually.

Unfortunately, these problems seem to be just as serious and widespread in Europe and other parts of the developed world.

In the developing world, recruitment is less of a problem. But there are serious concerns that some of the Church's basic teachings, such as forbidding condoms in areas where Aids is prevalent and condemning birth control in poverty stricken, overpopulated countries, are at odds with people's most basic needs and the fundamental Catholic message of the sanctity of life.

So the Church's biggest problem is recruitment, but that problem is only in the developed world. In the developing world, recruitment is fine. This says more about the state of the developed world, then, than the state of the global Catholic Church.

Now, with regard to AIDS, the Church has two policies prescriptions it has promoted. First and foremost, we need to minister to those with AIDS, and help them in their struggle with that horrible disease. It has been estimated that the Church provides 25% of all HIV/AIDS care given worldwide. Second, to prevent the spreading of AIDS, we must promote a consistent ethic of monogamy and chastity, rooted in the Sacrament of Matrimony - virtuous behavior being the only way to ultimately control the spread of the disease. The Church's position on this issue is actually quite well developed and thoughtful.

Neither of these policies is easy to implement, but you can hardly criticize the Church for behavior it strongly opposes (sexual promiscuity) that is the primary cause of the spread of AIDS.

On the overpopulation issue, Mr. Gluck is once again wrong on the facts. Overpopulation is not inconsistent with the sanctity of life - indeed, on a purely logical level, how can more of something sacred be bad? Rather, it is the "solutions" to overpopulation - abortion, birth control, etc. - that are clearly inconsistent with Catholic teachings. Besides, the very notion of overpopulation is hopelessly ill-defined. What country would he point out as being overpopulated? Japan? Monte Carlo? Or does he simply want to control populations in poorer countries filled with people who are not "the best and the brightest?"

Thus the Church finds itself increasingly vulnerable to the more attractive, less demanding and seemingly more practical claims of a variety of other religions, which do allow condoms, divorce and female priests.

This paragraph espouses yet another theory without basis in fact. The fastest growing religions are not those that are "more attractive" on the issues of condoms, divorce, and female priests. In fact, the data show just the opposite.

According to the 2005 Handbook of American and Canadian Churches, the fastest growing churches are the most orthodox (i.e. the most demanding). The Catholic Church remains the largest Church, and maintains robust growth rates. The "less demanding and seemingly more practical" religions are all stagnant or shrinking: Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and Episcopalians all have pathetic growth rates, or are shrinking.

From the outside this looks like a Church in disarray. However, most of the faithful remain highly committed to the basic message of Christ and they hunger for sure-handed leadership and dramatic changes in the delivery system.

Perhaps "from the outside" the Church looks to be in "disarray." But looks can be deceiving. By almost all measures, the Catholic Church - both in the US and around the world - is in good, even strong demographic condition. Mr. Gluck appears to be practicing the consultant's art of "crisis creation" - make everyone believe the sky is falling so that change can become imperative, change that presumably can only be led by a skilled, elite corps of consultants like himself.

It would be helpful if Mr. Gluck based this claim of a crisis on facts and figures, rather than unfounded opinions based on non-existent data. As Donald Rumsfeld is fond of saying, everyone has a right to their own opinion, but not to their own set of facts.

Some of the discontent is undoubtedly caused by the tension between a Church based on belief in an immutable body of dogma, and a laity that is increasingly more confident about its capacity to judge right from wrong and act accordingly. However, I believe another cause of the Church's rapid decline is the badly outdated and grossly inadequate system of governance and management. By modern standards of good management, the Church is set back somewhere in the dark ages.

Mercifully, Mr. Gluck finally decides to drop the "smart people know better than the worst-and-dimmest Church leadership" schtick, and returns to the governance and management issue that is his supposed area of expertise.

As a parting shot on this issue, however, he throws out another unsupported assertion - the "Church's rapid decline." Again, there is no evidence offered of any decline, much less a rapid one - only his confident, "authoritative" statements of "fact." Unfortunately for Mr. Gluck, all the facts are on the other side of this argument. Perhaps that's why he doesn't provide them.

Is it fair to apply these standards to the Church? While it is not a corporation, the Church's financial asset, spending and workforce dwarf those of the largest companies in the world. In the US alone (with about 7 percent of the world's Catholics), the Church has operating expenses of more than $100bn a year, employs more than one million people and controls an investment portfolio (including property) which, while not publicly disclosed, is probably of equally daunting proportions. Scaled up, the church could well be approaching a $1 trillion enterprise worldwide.

So while Pope Benedict might not like to think of himself as a chief executive, he certainly faces many of the same sorts of problems. And his "corporation" is not in good shape. Because of the nature of the Church and the restrictions of canon law he has severe constraints on his flexibility. And it seems highly unlikely that Pope Benedict will be able to bring about the kind of change the Church needs without addressing its many governance and management problems.

The Church is properly judged against the standards given by Jesus Christ to His Apostles and transmitted through the centuries to the current Pope, not by the au courant, modish thinking of a former McKinsey Managing Director. Moreover, the material possessions of the Church - the focus of Mr. Gluck in this section - are irrelevant to its core mission.

"Church as corporation" is the main fallacy of Mr. Gluck's entire argument. The Church is not a for-profit, public company established by men. It is a mission-driven, private organization established by God. Its leader is not a CEO. Its leader is religious leader like, well, the Pope. You know, a man called to lead with humility and sworn to protect the Depositum of Faith.

Again, the claim that the Church has "many governance and management problems" is made with no supporting evidence, save for a few anecdotal failures, failures that could easily be found in any organization composed of human beings, including McKinsey & Company.

The Catholic Church operates as a feudal system with specific geographic areas under the control of a lord (the bishop), who serves at the pleasure of the king (the Pope) and is responsible and accountable only to him. Once appointed, each bishop has nearly absolute power over the operations of the Church in his bailiwick (diocese), subject only to the lightest of oversight from the Pope, unless he attempts to depart dramatically from Church teachings.

Light oversight is necessary because the Pope has thousands of bishops "reporting" directly to him. The Pope has, of course, the Roman Curia in the Vatican available to him as staff. Its members jealously guard their prerogatives and can wield immense power when they perceive that the authority of the Pope is being challenged on matters of faith or morals or even the management of Church affairs. But there is no supervision (at either national or regional level) to monitor or evaluate the day-to-day operations of the Church.

Thus these daily operations are conducted by thousands of bishops who are essentially independent, have received little or no training in management, whose performance is not regularly evaluated and who have the equivalent of lifetime tenure. The same comments more or less apply to the tens of thousands of priests who report to the bishops and are responsible for the individual parishes. As one might expect, some bishops and priests do a good job, others get by, but many struggle.

This approach may be fine when the Church is dealing with articles of faith that are considered unchanging and unchangeable. But it seems cavalier when the extraordinary level of human, financial and physical resources are taken into account.

I'm going to change the pace here, and rather than point out the many substantial factual errors in this section, I'll have a little fun instead. Let's see how this works:

"McKinsey & Co. operates as a feudal system with specific geographic areas under the control of a lord (the Director) who serves at the pleasure of the king (the Managing Director) and is responsible and accountable only to him. Once appointed, each Director has nearly absolute power over the operations of McKinsey in his bailiwick (office), subject only to the lightest of oversight from the Managing Director, unless he attempts to depart dramatically from McKinsey's strategy and culture.

"Light oversight is necessary because the Managing Director has dozens of Directors 'reporting' directly to him. The Managing Director has, of course, a number of Directors who supported his selection and therefore exert a strong influence on the Firm. These Directors jealously guard their prerogatives and can wield immense power when they perceive that the Firm is being challenged on matters of reputation or culture, or even the management of the Firm itself. But there is no supervision (at either national or regional level) to monitor or evaluate the day-to-day operations of the Firm.

"Thus, these daily operations are conducted by hundreds of Directors and Partners who are essentially independent, have received little or no training in theology, philosophy or psychology, whose performance is evaluated in a highly inconsistent and feudal manner, and who are trained to think of themselves a lifetime members of an exclusive club - even when they eventually leave the Firm. The same comments more or less apply to thousands of associates and analysts who report to the Partners and Directors, and who are responsible for individual engagements or clients. As one might expect, some members of the Firm do a good job, others get by, but many struggle.

"This approach may be fine when the Firm is dealing with an environment that is relatively stable, or when the Firm was small. But it seems cavalier when the extraordinary level of human, financial, and physical resources are taken into account."

But enough of this. The point is made. Mr. Gluck criticizes the Church for using many of the same management practices of McKinsey itself. In the Church, it's called subsidiarity; in McKinsey, it's decentralization. The words are different, but the concept is the same. And, it's a good idea!

Perhaps if Mr. Gluck is so antagonistic to this approach, he should first focus on reforming McKinsey's governance and management structures. Or perhaps they're just fine, and his point is that the Church should be more like a McKinsey client than McKinsey itself. Food for thought...

This feudal approach fails to recognise the massive benefits of scale and scope available to a trillion-dollar enterprise, not only financially but in the way it attracts, deploys, evaluates, motivates and rewards the millions of people who serve it every day. A modern management system would bring many benefits to the Church.

As noted above, in the US alone, the Church controls financial resources comparable with the largest American corporations, all of which are managed by about 200 independently operating bishops. There is a co-ordinating body, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, but it has no authority or responsibility for supervision. This means the Church's resources are managed by very small, highly autonomous units with very little transparency. No modern American enterprise of this size could hope to succeed without strong financial management at all levels of the organisation, under the overall direction of a chief financial officer.

Normally, financial management responsibilities include both the treasury function and the controller function. Different aspects of these jobs are carried out at different levels of the organisation, with the CFO responsible for ensuring sound financial management throughout.

The Church in the US could save billions or even tens of billions of dollars, for example, by using centralised purchasing techniques for such things as transport, telephones, the internet, accounting, computers, stationery, medical supplies, insurance and pension benefits.

In these paragraphs, Mr. Gluck is making a strong case for centralization. But his simplistic analysis betrays complete lack of understanding of how the Church really functions on a practical, day-to-day basis.

Let's take procurement. In my experience, the Church's principle of subsidiarity leads to highly efficient purchasing. The reason for this is that the Church gets a lot of what it needs for free. Rather than putting out a Request for Proposals, priests and bishops often just pick up the phone and ask for something, and it is provided.

Now, centralizing and professionalizing the procurement process might save money on the stuff that is actually bought with money (emphasize might - clergy have a reputation for being extremely parsimonious and hard traders). But in the process, the Church would give up one of its most potent negotiating levers - the personal relationship between a priest and a faithful Catholic, a relationship that has great economic value to the Church precisely because it is profoundly non-economic.

This is the genius behind the Church's policy of subsidiarity, which calls for the control over decisions and resources to be as close to the problem as practical. Not only is it a good idea, it works!

With respect centralizing finance under a CFO, this strong centralized model of financial control is difficult to square with the practice of a decentralized, personal service organization. Does McKinsey have a CFO? If so, does he or she wield this kind of power? For instance, can someone other than an engagement manager at McKinsey call a client to demand that they pay their bills?

And then there is the Church's annual operating expenses of $100bn (including all parishes, diocese schools, hospitals and related services and administration). If we assume that between 20 per cent and 40 per cent of that $100bn is to purchase goods and services, and that a concerted effort to professionalise purchasing at all levels in the organisation could achieve a 15 per cent overall saving (a number frequently used in making such estimates for well managed companies), the Church could save $3bn to $6bn a year.

But no one is responsible for managing this aspect of the Church's operations, so billions of dollars of unnecessary expense are incurred each year. With the use of modern business approaches, it might be possible to improve the bottom line of the Church by 15 per cent, or $15bn out of the total budget. And that is in the US alone. Scale these amounts up to the world level and you're talking real money!

At last, we get some figures! Unfortunately, they are garbage. First of all, "the Church" of Mr. Gluck's imagination is a financial fiction - does he really think the Pope can control all parishes, diocese schools, hospitals, etc.? Does the Church really have a consolidated balance sheet and income statement?

In addition, Mr. Gluck simply throws out a ballpark figure for savings ($3-6 billion per year) with only the scantest support for such a claim. Is there really that much waste in the Catholic Church? Is this supposed to pass for serious analysis? As discussed above, the Church has a culture, structure, and governance that is extremely frugal, and able to convince many people to give for free what others would have to pay for. Mr. Gluck's "analysis" ignores the Church's key strategic advantage.

So, a professionalized procurement approach might get them a better price on stuff they buy, but they'd also end up paying for more stuff. My guess (as good as Mr. Gluck's) is that a centralized procurement would cost the US Church more in aggregate, 15 per cent or $15bn of the total budget. Scale these additional costs up to the world level and you're talking real money!

If we consider human resources, the Catholic Church in the US would rank near the top of the list of the Fortune 500 companies in number of staff. With more than one million employees, it is comparable to Wal-Mart, yet few of its employees are professionally managed. For example, there is no effective performance measurement system at any level. And as we have seen, personnel policies seem to ignore the practical problems of recruiting and retaining priests, and other clergy and lay people are expected in many cases to accept non-competitive wages and limited benefits.

The result is hugely expensive in financial and human terms, and limits the career and personal development of all members of the Church's workforce - both clerical and lay. It also makes planning and executing any reform programme extremely difficult, if not impossible. No organisation of comparable size to the Church could survive in today's world without an effective human resources office, headed by a chief personnel officer responsible for everything from recruitment and training to career planning and compensation. These responsibilities are normally carried out at different levels, with policy making at the top and execution further down. The corporate levels are responsible for the quality of human resources management throughout the organisation.

There are a number of overly broad, and therefore certainly false, statements in these paragraphs. I know for a fact that a number of religious orders and dioceses conduct regular career planning meetings with their clergy. Most religious also have spiritual advisors, who also serve as a sort of mentor for their "career" development (by the way, Mr. Gluck, it's called a "vocation," not a "career"). Many parishes manage their lay staff in a professional manner. Could there be room for improvement? No doubt. But you also have to keep in mind a very important fact: Most people who work for the Church do so because they see it as their vocation, not their job. They are committed to the values and principles of the Church, and this provides a strong cultural framework in the vast majority of situations. Of course, not every priest is a great manager - neither is every manager of a McDonalds restaurant, or every CEO, or every McKinsey consultant. But the Church does a pretty amazing job of making the whole thing work. And its human resources, governance, and management systems are largely responsible for its workability.

On the other hand, Mr. Gluck's "solution" for the "problems" he sees is more centralization: a corporate staff with a chief personnel officer, a chief financial officer, a who-knows-how-many-more "C" level executives. (For some reason, I am beginning to believe that if the Church has such a CPO, Mr. Gluck would be critical of that structure as well if the Church maintained a celibate, male priesthood; but he'd probably drop his call for a CPO if they Church changed its doctrines.)

But where is the evidence of a crisis? To be sure, the sexual abuse scandal was a terrible tragedy and failure of some responsible clerics; but it is important to remember that the failure was not lack of a system of values, or a failure of the system of values, but rather the lack of adherence to that system. That system is rooted in the teachings of the Catholic Church, and the departure from that system was driven by the very kind of "professional staff" Mr. Gluck seeks to create and empower.

One of the hallmarks of the modern, well designed and well managed enterprise is the ability to make decisions in a timely way, responding to needs and conditions right across the organisation. Making such decisions depends on good information and requires systems for measuring and tracking performance. Developing and implementing such systems is largely the province of the corporate finance and human resources departments, which the Church lacks.

The ability to deal with problems before they get out of control also depends on a clearly defined decision-making process, as well as on effective leaders who are willing to make tough decisions. More often than not, these problems are personnel decisions that can be made only by a responsible general manager. Unfortunately, very little of this kind of process or leadership exists either within the dioceses, at the national level, or in Rome.

There is no systematic review of clergy performance and probably very little review of lay people involved in the ministry or administration of the Church. (Two important exceptions in the US are Church hospitals and colleges, which have independent boards and must compete with secular institutions for patients, students and staff.)

The shortcomings of the Church leadership's approach to handling personnel problems were highlighted by the painful consequences of the failure in the US to deal with the sexual misconduct allegations quickly and decisively.

What would we think if the retail banking division of a financial conglomerate discovered that 5 per cent of its tellers were embezzling money and simply moved them from branch to branch without acknowledging the problem to their customers, exposing the offenders to the justice system or even informing the employees' new supervisors of their history? And what would we think of a corporate management or board that failed to take action for many years, either out of neglect or by simply being unaware? Shades of Enron?

The idea that the Church doesn't make decisions in a timely way is just flat wrong. Let's take an important example: the forgiveness of sins through the Sacrament of Reconciliation. This sacrament is performed millions of times each day, at the discretion of thousands of priests, with little or no intervention from Rome. Often, this Sacrament involves extremely difficult and complex situations, and its administration is generally handled with grace and sensitivity.

On other decisions, centuries may pass before a final call is made on an important issue in Catholic doctrine. But that does not mean the decision is not timely. Mr. Gluck seems to forget that the Church is a perpetual institution, and what he calls timely may not be the appropriate time in the eyes of God.

To make his case of the Church's poor decision making capabilities, Mr. Gluck focuses on the sexual abuse scandal. Of course, this was a failure of some Church leaders - of that fact there can be no argument. However, it hardly qualifies as a system-wide failure. The vast majority of dioceses and parishes were completely untouched by the scandal - other than the collateral damage inflicted by the "feeding frenzy" in the press.

Ironically, and contra Mr. Gluck's main thrust, the dioceses most impacted by the scandals appear to have been those that were most "open-minded" or "progressive." Dioceses with a strong orthodox culture rarely had problems with serial sexual abuse, which appears to have been more common in dioceses that abandoned orthodox Catholicism for the modern secular society.

Mr. Gluck's example of the bank tellers is also highly misleading. First, no one has seriously alleged that 5 percent of the clergy were involved in serial sexual abuse or its cover-up. The true number is lower (although even one such crime is a tragedy). , over a 52 year period only 4 percent were even accused of abuse, or 4,400 priests. Of these, only about 700 (less than 1%) could be characterized as serial abusers - the kind Mr. Gluck tries to paint as the norm.

Second, the response of "management" to the crisis was hardly uniform. Again, most bishops responded appropriately when faced with this situation. This is not to say that there shouldn't be more training in this area. But it is inappropriate to blame the entire hierarchy, or the structure of the Church, for a handful of mistakes. After all, would you call for a radical overhaul of McKinsey simply because of their intimate association with the Enron debacle?

With no established guidelines for behaviour or rigorously enforced sanctions for misbehaviour, the Church's problems festered over many years, damaged many innocents, ruined untold lives and led to the disgrace and downfall of many well intentioned people. These people were asked to handle situations for which they were untrained and where sensible procedures to deal with personnel problems had not been developed or promulgated. If there had been a nationwide professional personnel function in place, with regular performance reviews, good reporting and record-keeping at both diocesan and national level, decisive action could have been taken much sooner.

I suppose 2000 years of teachings doesn't satisfy Mr. Gluck's definition of "established guidelines" and a long tradition of excommunication and censure doesn't qualify as "sanctions."

The cry for more training is hard to argue with. But like most of these sorts of cries, they are responses to failures after the fact. The idea that a "professional personnel function" would have changed the outcome of the scandal is, at best, debatable. After all, most of these situations were mishandled because the bishops in question relied too much on "experts" like psychologists and lawyers to make the decision. And since when did having a professional personnel function or sophisticated business leadership eliminate personnel problems of a sexual nature?

We now know how the sexual abuse crisis in the US - and similar problems in other countries - was mismanaged. It is sobering to imagine what a critical assessment of the Church's overall performance in managing its human, financial and physical resources might reveal.

Everyday, people perform "a critical assessment of the Church's overall performance." People come into and leave the Church - they "vote with their feet." And yet, the Church continues to grow, not just globally, but in the US. Mr. Gluck continues to ignore facts in an attempt to push a "reform" agenda.

The Church needs to consider its structures and processes for day-to-day operation. Normally an organisation of its size would have a number of executives with authority and responsibility for supervising the operating divisions. Given the dual nature of the Church's activities - propagating the faith and managing a very large enterprise - some type of parallel structure might well be appropriate. This is a problem that needs serious study and must be approached with a great deal of circumspection. But the need to bring a much higher level of efficiency and effectiveness to all of the Church's activities can no longer be ignored.

This analysis of the Church's structure is surprisingly superficial for a former McKinsey consultant. Mr. Gluck's argument seems to be "most big organizations have lots of executives who can run things, therefore the Church needs lots of executives who can run things." No consideration for the unique mission and history of the Church; no appreciation for the accumulated wisdom of the Church through much more serious crises; no understanding of the commitment by its members to a time-tested human resources and cultural development system; no apparent awareness that many people do not act simply as rational, profit-maximizers, but often as altruists; and no acknowledgement of the possibility of a sacred depositum of faith which must be respected and understood before proposing a development.

Adding to the complexity of the managerial problems facing the Church are the intertwined problems of conflict resolution and communications. Large segments of the faithful (both clergy and laity) are concerned that the Church's approach to assessing some of the explosive issues dividing it are too exclusionary and opaque, and that resolutions are not clearly communicated. For example, many feel that the Church's position on policies such as priestly celibacy and excluding women from the priesthood denies them the access to the spiritual guidance, comfort and care that they desire. They believe these are not moral issues and could be a way to revitalise the priesthood.

There are others who feel that the Church's stand on issues such as premarital sex and divorce are anachronistic and should be more openly discussed and articulately defended. And others feel that the issues of birth control and homosexuality, though clearly of fundamental moral importance, have not been aired sufficiently by the Church for people to feel comfortable with the stated policies, especially when deviations from them appear to be tolerated by significant parts of the hierarchy.

Drawing the line between articles of faith and mere rules can be tricky. Remember when it was a sin for Catholics to eat meat on Friday? For many people, being called on to observe rules that seem to violate their experience and common sense can severely test their faith, particularly if violations are winked at and open discussion and dissent are forbidden. It is hoped that Pope Benedict can find ways to resolve these issues and communicate the results effectively. In my view, this managerial process will be as important as the resolutions themselves.

Here, near the end of his essay, Mr. Gluck finally comes clean with his primary entreaty: the Church should abandon its traditional teachings on the celibate, male priesthood, abortion, premarital sex, birth control, and homosexual behavior. Mr. Gluck finds the Church, in turns, exclusionary, opaque, unfeeling, anachronistic, vague, and, remarkably, both too strict and too tolerant

So Mr. Gluck, in the final analysis, is just another Modernist who believes the Church has got to get with the program. All of this icky old-world thinking is just squaresville, baby. Time to get with the times, get hip, get groovy, and start sa-winging.

It is almost impossible to take such a shallow, uninformed, and ignorant position seriously. There have been many serious debates about all of these issues for centuries. Doctrines have been developed and enriched by such arguments. Clarity and nuance have been added as a result of this progress. As Cardinal Newman put it, "Great ideas do in opposition grow."

But Mr. Gluck is not engaging in a serious debate here. His approach is of a kind with a high school teenager. "Hey, all the really cool people agree with me - you want to be cool right? - so you gotta agree too - don't let the man keep you down - the times, they are a changin' - if you want to be like us, right?"

It was not compelling in high school. It is embarrassing to see such an argument coming from an adult.

In a word, the Church is in crisis and, most certainly, in a managerial crisis. It will not be able to give effective leadership to either the faithful or the clergy until it acknowledges the immense challenge of leading and managing a worldwide organisation and rejects its addiction to a feudal system that was developed when most people were uneducated, life was local, and communications were extremely primitive.

Solving these problems will not be easy. The Church is an enormously large and complicated enterprise by any standard and most of its people are untrained (and possibly uninterested) in management. There are also the complications of canon law and tradition. But the difficulty of the task is no excuse for ducking it.

Throughout his essay, Mr. Gluck has used assertion, innuendo, and virtually no data to construct a false "crisis." This is classic management consultant tradecraft: create a "crisis," and then exploit that "crisis" to push change, much of which is not really related to the "crisis" at all, but is attractive to the consultant's paymaster.

And while Mr. Gluck seems sincere in his desire to help, his prescriptions are the work of a dilettante. Perhaps if he conducted more fact-based research and used those facts to form his opinions - in other words, if he behaved more like a true McKinsey consultant - he might come to different conclusions. But even if his conclusions did not change, it would be easier to take him and his concerns seriously.

If there is a crisis in the Church, it is one that comes from its clash with Modernism. The Church, with its emphasis on holiness, salvation, evangelization, and tradition, is a profoundly counter-cultural institution, given that modern culture is built on profanity, consumption, selfishness, and an ignorance of and lack of respect for history. That is the true crisis today, especially in the American church.

Mr. Gluck's analysis does nothing to address this true crisis; in fact, it aids and abets those who seek to undermine the foundations of the Church, which stands as one of consistent and firm bulwarks against the hegemony of Modernism. In this respect, Mr. Gluck's essay is more likely to damage the Church than help it.

The most important thing is for the Pope to recognise that the Church is seriously under-managed and that this is a crippling handicap in today's world. Once he has reached that point there are several things he can do to initiate the necessary changes.

He can make it clear to all Church members that there is no conflict between the Church's mission and good management and that he expects the people at all levels to manage their resources professionally and effectively.

So we come to Mr. Gluck's recommended program to address the "crisis" that doesn't exist.

Still, it's hard to argue with this first one. The Church has always called for resources to be managed in the most efficient manner possible, consistent with the values of the Church.

He can talk to people he trusts, who have experience in managing large-scale industrial and commercial enterprises.

I assume by "people...who have experience in managing large-scale industrial and commercial enterprises" he means himself and others like him. Of course, he has yet to make an argument for why he should be endowed with such trust, or why his experience has any relevance to the Church today. Indeed, most of this essay is evidence to the contrary.

He can start systematically searching for examples of best practice in management in the Church and encourage their proliferation.

Another one that is hard to argue with. Maybe something like this is what Mr. Gluck has in mind.

He can begin thinking with his colleagues and others about some of the more difficult organisational issues, such as how to professionalise the management of the Church and capitalise on its economies of scale - without undermining the autonomy of his bishops.

Again, a good idea. Something like this may be what he's talking about.

He can begin to think of the differences between the more and less developed regions of the world and how that should affect his organisational approach and strategy for bringing about change.

Great idea. How about something like this? Or this?

He can undertake a serious study of the problem of building an effective general management structure within the Church.

Wow, this is really turning into a huge consulting job! It might be nice, in the formal proposal, to provide a more accurate description of the current structure.

This is not a short-term project and will require some real attitudinal changes in the Church and years, if not decades, to bring it to fruition. But it is essential if the Church is going to be successful in reversing the long-term decline in its stature, influence and relevance.

Pope Benedict has an extraordinary record of defending the faith and gaining the confidence of his colleagues. He has spent decades defending the faith against the spread of relativism and knows the issues better than anyone. He could be the ideal person to bring the governance and management structure of the Church to a level of quality consistent with the sublime power and beauty of the basic message it espouses.

In the final analysis, Mr. Gluck has succeeded in penning an essay in which he uses virtually no data to discern a major "crisis," and in response to that "crisis" issues a series of platitudinous recommendations and calls for more study. Perhaps this approach makes sense in Mr. Gluck's world: it has been said that it takes a scientist three point to discern a trend, an engineer two, and a management consultant only one. The only problem in this case is that Mr. Gluck appears to be ignorant of the facts, and therefore uses his one point to draw a trend that is contradicted by most all of the other facts.

If Mr. Gluck and his compatriots on the National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management in the US were serious, they would first do their homework on the real state of the global Catholic Church, rather than relying on newspaper and magazine articles, TV shows, and pop books like the Da Vinci Code for their information and perspectives.

If they do this, I am confident they will discover an institution that, while flawed in many respects, is the most remarkable organization in the history of the world. It has lasted almost 2,000 years, through innumerable (true) crises, wars, famines, and disasters, and has preserved and developed its God-given depositum of faith in a manner befitting a Church that is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.

And if the Church does decide to engage them in a dialogue, I would encourage Mr. Gluck to pay close attention. He may learn a few things.