Abstract
With the decline of religious men and women working in religious order-sponsored Catholic secondary schools, the relationship between religious orders and their secondary schools had to transition from ownership of their schools to agreements of sponsorship. Although the president and principal in religious order-sponsored secondary schools have typically shared the responsibility for maintaining the identity of the founding religious order and fostering the school’s spiritual capital, some scholars determined that sustaining the school’s unique charism requires more focused attention. An increasing trend in Catholic secondary-education has found religious order-sponsored schools creating and hiring an executive leader as the school’s Chief Mission Officer (CMO).|The purpose of this qualitative, multi-site case study was to examine the practices and responsibilities of the position of Chief Mission Officer at three religious order sponsored Catholic secondary schools. Focusing on the position of Chief Mission Officer, rather than the person in the position, the aim of this Dissertation in Practice was to create a framework of evidence-based recommendations for Catholic secondary school leaders composed of best practices for enhancing the sustainability of charism transmission in religious order-sponsored Catholic secondary schools through the Chief Mission Officer’s position.|As the themes and patterns of meaning emerged from the data collection and analysis, the researcher became aware of similarities between this present study’s data findings and Cook’s (2015) framework for cultivating charism. The proposed framework does not contradict Cook's framework for cultivating charism. Instead, the framework proposed by the researcher reimagines Cook's original phases and provides the phases a prescribed order before then encompassing Cook's original framework. By completing the first five phases of the proposed framework, a school can create a CMO position unique to the charismatic needs of the school.|Keywords: Charism, sponsorship, religious order, enculturation, formation