When he had washed their feet, and taken his garments, and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master; nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. (John 13:12-17)
And he said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves. For which is the greater, one who sits at table, or one who serves? Is it not the one who sits at table? But I am among you as one who serves. (Luke 22:25-27)
Leading by example is the Christian way of leadership. It is the way of giving a sermon without using words. However, historically as the Christian Church saw its bishops as hierarchs, primates, prelates and masters rather than as shepherds and pastors it tended to rely less on the difficult way of leading by example. Leaders were those giving directives and enforcing rules. Pastors became police. The shepherd of old walked in front of the sheep and the sheep followed the shepherd – followed the shepherd’s voice to where the shepherd was going. The pastoral image was one that was more amenable to the notion of leadership by example. As the Church grew in numbers it was tempted to rely on authority and force to keep people in line. Besides, leadership by example can be extremely frustrating because people don’t always know what the leader is modeling, nor what part they are to imitate or how to do what they think they are supposed to do. Any parent of a large family of children who has tried to lead prayer before a meal only by his/her example quickly experiences the downside of not requiring all the children to pay attention.
Early monasticism and the desert fathers had their own ideas about Christian leadership which is sometimes counter-intuitive. But it recognizes that leadership by example doesn’t always succeed and then the leader has to decide what to do. St. Mark the Ascetic offers this advice to those in positions of Christian leadership:
If someone does not obey you when you have told him once, do not argue and try to compel him; but take for yourself the profit which he has thrown away. For forbearance will benefit you more than correcting him.
For St Mark, the Christian leader does not try to compel people to obey and does not threaten or argue with others or try to guilt them into doing things. You tell them once and then it is up to them whether they will act or not. Exasperation is not Christian leadership.
When the evil conduct of one person begins to affect others, you should not show long-suffering; and instead of your own advantage you should seek that of the others, so that they may be saved. For virtue involving many people is more valuable than virtue involving only one. (The Philokalia, Kindle Loc. 4100-4105)
The only time St Mark thinks a Christian leader should not be overly patient is when one person’s evil conduct begins to badly influence others. Then one has to consider how many souls may be lost if the evil person is allowed to go unchecked. So if someone is simply disobeying me, I should ignore that, but if they are trying to lead others in evil, then I have to oppose them. The issue then is not my authority or position, but concern/love for others. If I’m being disrespected, that I am to ignore. Christian leadership is walking a find line – the straight and narrow way of Christ. We sing two hymns during the Bridegroom Matins for Holy Monday which remind us of Christ’s explicit teachings:
“Let your power over your fellow-men be altogether different from the dominion of the Gentiles: their self-willed pride is not the order that I have appointed, but a tyranny. He therefore who would be the first among you, let him be the last of all. Acknowledge Me as Lord, and praise and exalt Me above all forever.”
O Lord, teaching Your disciples to think perfect thoughts, You said to them: “Be not like the Gentiles, who exercise dominion over those who are less strong. But it shall not be so among you, My disciples, for I of mine own will am poor. Let him, then, who is first among you be the minister of all. Let the ruler be as the ruled, and let the first be as the last. For I Myself have come to minister to Adam in his poverty, and to give my life as a ransom for the many who cry aloud to Me: Glory to You.”
Following the Forty Days of 
YOU TAUGHT YOUR DISCIPLES, LORD, TO DESIRE WHAT IS PERFECT, SAYING: BE NOT LIKE THE GENTILES, WHO OPPRESS THE WEAK.
LET YOUR ORDER BE CONTRARY TO THAT OF THE GENTILES, WHO HOLD POWER OVER THEIR FELLOWMEN, FOR SUCH IS NOT MY PORTION, BUT RATHER SELF-APPOINTED TYRANNY. HE, THEN, WHO WOULD BE GREAT AMONG YOU, MUST BE THE SERVANT OF ALL, AND KNOWING THAT I AM THE LORD, HE WILL SING AND EXALT ME THROUGHOUT ALL AGES.
“When you hear the words: ‘Peter do you love me?’ (John 21:15) imagine you are in front of a mirror and looking at yourself. Peter, surely, was a symbol of the Church. Therefore the Lord in asking Peter is asking us too. To show that Peter was a symbol of the Church remember the passage in the Gospel: ‘You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. (Matt. 16:18) Has only one man received those keys? Christ himself explains what they are for: ‘Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.’ (Matt. 18:18) If these words had been said only to Peter, now that he is dead who would ever be able to bind or loose? I make bold to say that all of us have received the keys. We bind and loose. And you also bind and loose. Whoever is bound is separated from your community: he is bound by you. When he is reconciled, however, he is loosed, thanks to you because you are praying for him. We all in fact love our Lord, we are all his members. And when the Lord entrusts his flock to shepherds, the whole number of shepherds is reduced to one individual body, that of the one Shepherd. (cf. John 10:16) Peter is undeniably a shepherd, but without doubt Paul is also is a shepherd. John is a shepherd, Andrews is a shepherd, each Apostle is a shepherd. All the holy bishops are shepherds, without a shadow of a doubt.” (
The series which began with 
The other blog series now available as a PDF considered some of the changes taking place in American law that is causing civil authorities to hold criminally accountable bishops in hierarchical church organizations who fail to do due diligence in pursuing allegations of clergy sexual misconduct against their diocesan clergy. That series began with the blog 
While some are complaining that society’s interest in clergy sexual misconduct amounts to nothing more than secularism trying to invade the church and destroy it, there is a different reality these folks are ignoring. What we face in clergy sexual misconduct is that people in the church have encountered evil in the church, hidden under the guise of clerical leadership. It is abuse at the hands of clergy and then abuse and lies and cover-up from the institutional leadership. This is a failure of the Church itself. If there is an invasion of the church by the world it comes in the form of clergy who engage in abuse and misconduct. We have for reasons inexplicable embraced secrecy and darkness, the devil’s friends, as the very means and methods of dealing with sin. The world is asking us to lead by allowing light to shine on every operation of the Church. However, truthfully, Christ is asking us to do the same to protect His flock. We in the church shouldn’t need the world to tell us to do what is right. Christ has already told us, but if we don’t listen to Him, He will speak to us through the world.
And it is not the world attacking the church – the church is being attacked from within, from its leadership which does not resist its own passions and temptations. People who are or were in the Church and members of the Church have been abused by institutional leadership. This is not the world attacking the church, though perhaps Satan, but we have men in the church who are willing to be agents of evil.
That is what is so sick about clergy sexual abuse. As St. Paul said when one member of the Body suffers, all suffer (1 Corinthians 12:26). Sexual abuse in the church is a sickness that affects the entire Body. And even if there is but one case of sexual abuse in the Church, the entire Body suffers.
We are trying to cure the illness, not just cope with it. We have to work in the Church, as another friend noted, to remove any opportunity for the responsible leadership to make future excuses about what happened. We don’t need excuses. We need to allow the light of Christ to shine into every corner of the Church and into every heart of our church members to expose sin and evil wherever it may be and to perform the healing which is necessary for the church to be the Church.
This is the 2nd blog in this series dealing with the effort of the state to hold a Roman Catholic bishop legally accountable for failing to follow church procedure in dealing with the sexual misconduct of a clergyman as reported in the NY TIMES on 14 October 2011, 
Though the bishop did turn over the photos to the police, the bishop waited 5 months to do so. Not only following the law, but doing so ASAP is critical. Church officials are often slow to react to allegations, sometimes because the accused is a friend or well known and they find it hard to believe that their acquaintance could do such a thing. This is where having a clear PSP demanding the investigation of all allegations, regardless of who the accuser or the alleged perpetrator is, is so essential.
Exactly what I mentioned in point 1) above. Hierarchy tends to trust its clergy against their parishioners. Many clergy rely on this for helping them deal with parish problems. Some clergy do foolish and damaging things and then expect the bishop to cover their backs. But clear PSPs can help the bishops make better pastoral decisions, if they themselves are enforcing the PSPs and ensuring compliance with the rules by their clergy, by diocesan staff, and by themselves.
When the NY TIMES reported the story, 
The change occurring now in U.S. law which holds bishops accountable for the misbehavior (and sometimes criminal misbehavior) of their clergy is forcing churches to acknowledge that trying to deal with clergy misconduct through internally secret methods is unacceptable. If we are going to protect our children and the vulnerable and fragile members of our flocks, then we have to much more publicly deal with clergy abuse and misconduct especially through defrocking the clergy guilty of misconduct and abuse. In a sense the new laws are going to force churches to live up to the Church’s supposedly high standards of moral conduct for its clergy.
PSPs regarding sexual misconduct are undergoing intense scrutiny and serious change in our country. People are angry and no longer willing to tolerate what they view as incompetence, negligence, or under reacting by church authorities in cases involving sexual misconduct in the church. The mood in the country, which is now in law and in the courts, is that the church cannot passively wait for the civil authorities to deal with crime in the church. The expectation is for the church to actively and aggressively investigate allegations and proactively root out offenders. This means when warning signs are noticed – the clergyman may not even have broken a law YET – the church is going to be expected to deal firmly with that clergyman, removing them from office in order to protecti children, the vulnerable, and the fragile. Church leaders are going to have to monitor their clergy more than currently is being done. For example the background check that Oxford Documents does – looking at credit history, all brushes with the law, driving record – may have to become standard fare in the Church. Many church denominations already have acknowledged that sexually misbehaving clergy often have troubles in many areas of their lives – their marriages, their credit, frequent moves, relational troubles with parishioners, bad driving records, etc. There are warning signs which the courts are going to start demanding churches pay attention to in the lives of their clergy. [Some denominational officials say they have in fact come to recognize that sexually misbehaving clergy frequently have credit problems – they run up huge porn bills on their computers, they have expensive sexual dalliances with prostitutes or have to pay off people to keep them silent or are being black mailed. If the state comes to recognize these as legitimate warning signs of future sexual misconduct, the church is going to have to pay attention to these things in its clergy.]
I read with interest Fr. Alex Rentel’s “A Comparison of the Liturgical Rite of Ordination and the Canonical Act of Deposition” in the 
That is a pretty high standard for ordination. But note, he says such sexual sins are impediments to ordination but not to becoming canonized as a saint. The criterion for becoming a saint are different than from becoming a priest. Fr. Rentel notes from the canons:
Cyril of Alexandria around 442AD says “that a bishop cannot simply retire to avoid scandal and canonical punishment. Rather, Cyril says… ‘if they are unworthy, do not let them leave by retiring, rather let them be judged for [their] actions.'” (p 44)
Fraternized 