When Business Management Replaces the Sacred: The Villanova Church Management Apostasy
National Catholic Register reports the death of Charles Zech, the Villanova economics professor who founded and directed the university’s “Center for Church Management” — a program that received the personal endorsement of the antipope Leo XIV in 2025. Zech, who taught at Villanova from 1974 to 2018, authored a dozen books on the subject and argued in widely-circulated white papers that “the old model of operating a Catholic parish won’t work in the 21st century,” advocating instead for the application of secular business management practices to parish life. His death on May 17 at age 79 was met with tributes from family, colleagues, and the conciliar establishment, all celebrating his “remarkable career” and “great work for the Church.” Yet beneath the veneer of pious obituary language lies a far more troubling reality: the systematic reduction of the Mystical Body of Christ to a mere corporation, the substitution of supernatural wisdom with worldly pragmatism, and the quiet but unmistakable apostasy that has consumed every level of the conciliar sect.






