Father Alberto Cutie of Miami has been in the news a lot lately. First, a Spanish language tabloid caught the handsome celebrity priest canoodling with a woman on the beach. Last week he made the mainstream news again when he announced in a press conference that he was changing his affiliation from the Catholic Church, with its rules on celibacy, to the Episcopal Church, where priests are allowed to marry.
Forget for a second that this scene has anything to do with religion. It’s not really what the scene is about, anyway. The scene is about is faith and faithlessness. It is about reputation and disrepute. It is about a tug of war between one’s own personal brand and values, and the brand and values of an organization.
In other words, it is a scene that is completely familiar to anyone who’s ever had to make a career decision that involves profound personal choices. Which means it’s about all of us.
By making his Catholic-to-Episcopal ‘career move,’ Father Cutie (it’s pronounced COO-tee-ay, sorry to disappoint the anthropomasticians among you) went from being a pariah in one organization to a valued member of another. By choosing the person he loves over the organization to which he belonged, Cutie affirmed the bona fides of his personal brand. Known for giving relationship advice to young Spanish-speaking people (he has a radio show and a book on the subject) in South Florida, he gained more cred than he lost. After all, it only makes sense that someone in a relationship giving advice about relationships comes across as more authentic to his audience than someone who’s celibate, or professes to be.
In the Industrial Age, organizations defined the roles of their employees. Those employees, like parts of a big machine, were interchangeable. If your role defines you, then what matters is not who you are, but what you are, i.e. how well you play your role. This explains how the Catholic Church has gotten itself in such a twist, in terms of its brand, with the seemingly-endless public litany of the sexual misdeeds of its clergy. As long as a priest played the role, the Catholic Church overlooked who was playing it. You can be faithful to an organization and still wreak havoc in your community.
Organizations in the Networked World, by contrast, resemble their employees more than their employees resemble them. They are more biological than mechanical. Who you are is more important that what you are. You are only as good to your brand as your are to your community, and it is impossible to uncouple the two.
By changing the game, Father Cutie went from being a faithless priest to a faithful human being–faithful to the woman he loves, the God he believes in and the community he serves. He will likely be a strong addition to the Episcopal team.
Tags: Branding, Catholic, Episcopal, Father Cutie, Florida, Industrial Age, Miami, Networked World, Relationships, Values