Best Practices Award

Kerry Robinson, Executive Director, Leadership Roundtable

Lt. Gen. (Ret) James Dubik, Chair, Leadership Roundtable

Thomas Healey, Partner, Healey Development LLC

June 29–30, 2016

Inn at Penn, Philadelphia, PA leadershiproundtable.org

Rev. Paul Holmes, Distinguished University Professor of Servant Leadership, Seton Hall University

Michael Brough, Director of Strategic Engagement, Leadership Roundtable

KERRY ROBINSON: We honor two individuals who have contributed in extraordinary ways to Leadership Roundtable and offered the Church an invaluable, effective resource, the Toolbox for Pastoral Management. It’s particularly moving to me to be able to honor Fr. Paul Holmes and Tom Healey, two of my heroes. After we present the awards, we will have a discussion with Tom and with Fr. Paul, moderated by Michael Brough, who is responsible for so much that is going well at Leadership Roundtable, and his leadership on the staff daily ensures that we model what we advocate.

First, a story about the Toolbox. When Leadership Roundtable was first created in that sea of distrust and urgency in the Church in the aftermath of the sexual abuse crisis, one of the first things that we realized was that today you can be ordained a priest, and unlike your predecessors a generation ago, have maybe 18 months before you are given a parish or two parishes or three parishes, maybe two of them have schools, and suddenly 18 months after being ordained, you are effectively a CEO of a very complex structure of people and facilities and finances. That would seem fine, except in seminary, you were never given even one course in basic management or finance. What we saw was enormous anxiety setting in for our beloved new pastors. We went to the seminary rectors shortly after we were formed as a Roundtable, and with data laid at their feet, identified this train wreck that we saw coming, and they said, there’s just no room, there’s no room for anything to be added to seminary curriculum. What I love about Leadership Roundtable is we did not let that rejection, that “no,” deter us from doing what was essential, faithful, urgent, and important. We were respectful of the “no”—we didn’t argue with them, we didn’t throw a fit, we weren’t rude, we weren’t chastising—we simply figured out another way to attend to this very important and urgent matter, and that is where Tom Healey and Fr. Paul Holmes came together and created a solution. Perhaps it was to be a temporary solution, but it was a solution that was absolutely necessary, and that was the Toolbox for Pastoral Management.

The Toolbox wasn’t going to give seminarians years of training at the seminary level in finance management and human resources, but it was going to give them six days of an intensive retreat in a very prayerful setting, and while there, they would get a crash course in the basic vocabulary and the elements necessary for any leader of any complex organization, and it would be rendered with incredible care and faith and fidelity and love for our pastors.

I’m going to first honor my friend and colleague Fr. Paul Holmes. What is the best way to describe Fr. Paul? It is simply as the quintessential priest and the very best rendering of that. Fr. Paul loves the priesthood. He is so joyful about the priesthood. He loves the intellectual Catholic life. He loves the pastoral ministry. He loves his brother priests. He is an exquisite homilist, an exquisite teacher, an exquisite healer, and exemplary leader. He is quite simply a loving and lovable friend, and he has made sure that the Toolbox for Pastoral Management has been offered with as close to perfection as is humanly possible because of his love for his brother priests and for our Faith and our Church.

JAMES DUBIK: This is the 2016 Leadership Roundtable Best Practices Award to Fr. Paul Holmes, in recognition for his leadership role in designing and implementing the Toolbox for Pastoral Management, given June 30, 2016.

KERRY ROBINSON: And now a few remarks about Tom Healey. I have known you, Tom, for many years. I can remember my first impressions of you, which have only proven to be absolutely accurate over these years. I was dazzled when I met you because I thought you truly were the paragon of generosity in a comprehensive way. I was amazed first and foremost by how loving you are as a spouse and a father and a grandfather, that you have this wonderfully, loving, rich family life. I marveled at your leadership in your professional life, in finance at Goldman Sachs, and the command and respect that you rightly enjoy. I was absolutely dazzled to discover your civic responsibility, serving as Under Secretary of the Treasury under President Reagan, and then to find out that you also contributed to the academy at Harvard’s Kennedy School. And finally, to see your dedication, your generosity philanthropically, which is not just writing checks, but immersing yourself fully into that which you most care about, the fact that you are an important founding trustee of Leadership Roundtable, one of the architects of everything we have created, and in a particular way, the attentiveness to which you have led us all through the creation of the Toolbox for Pastoral Management.

Tonight we honor you for all of those reasons and for your great friendship to us, to the Roundtable, to the Church. Thank you for being the model that you are.

JAMES DUBIK: This is the 2016 Boisi Award for Catholic Philanthropy to Thomas J. Healey, in recognition for his generosity and strategic investment in the Toolbox for Pastoral Management, given June 30, 2016.