Puddleglum's Pensees

There are two events in this Sunday’s Gospel, events separated by a week.  In the first, the glorified Christ bestows his peace, breathes his Spirit, and sends his disciples to continue his mission: to judge sins to be sins, and to forgive them . In the second, the Lord appears again to the disciples—this time including Thomas—and displays his wounds to show that what had happened the week before really had happened.  Jesus Christ—risen and glorified, conqueror of death itself—really had sent his Advocate, his Spirit, who would bring peace to the hearts of the disciples as they were sent into the world in the same way as the Father had sent the Son into the same world— judge it but not to condemn it, but to save it through suffering .   In our day, marked as it is by unbelief, the second event—the story of Christ’s appearance to Thomas—naturally draws our eye. T he risen Lord points to his wounds to show that the one who had been crucified was, against all odd...

I've been thinking about leading in crises for several years now. In my work as a college professor and later, a parish priest, I have seen crises arise in institutional lives and personal careers. Like you, I have seen crises of major proportion hit corporations large and small. I have watched dumbstruck as huge companies like British Petroleum,  the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway, and of course, United Airlines, make the same mistakes over and over and over again. I have been baffled by politicians who seem incapable of learning from the gaffes of their predecessors. I have seen administrators of small colleges try techniques with a proven failure rate. I have seen bishops and priests flounder over the smallest of matters. I have made these mistakes, too. On rare occasions, I have also seen people rise to the occasion and turn a crisis into an opportunity for growing trust with the public, improving a brand's reception, and even increasing influence. Here are...