An Accountable Church?

Accountability is a quality often demanded of the church and its leaders today, and especially so within the Roman Catholic Church. But how should accountability itself be understood, and how might a more accountable church be achieved? This essay explores these questions from a new angle by offering a detailed ethical analysis of how accountability operates within broad-based community organizing (BBCO), a form of democratic politics with a highly developed theory and practice of accountability in which many churches already participate. In dialogue with BBCO, the essay develops a constructive framework for conceptualizing accountability. It makes a case for understanding accountability principally as a property of reciprocal relationships between persons, and stresses the need to proactively cultivate and sustain relationships of accountability through ongoing democratic practices of accountability. It also highlights the role played by moral authority, power, and virtue in these relationships and practices. The essay concludes by using this framework to propose a new interpretation of the Catholic Church’s accountability crisis. It suggests a more accountable church may only be achieved when the whole people of God begin organizing themselves to build it.