http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle ... story.html (http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/pope-benedict-xvis-leaked-documents-show-fractured-vatican-full-of-rivalries/2013/02/16/23ce0280-76c2-11e2-8f84-3e4b513b1a13_story.html)
QuoteVATICAN CITY — Guests at the going-away party for Carlo Maria Viganò couldn't understand why the archbishop looked so forlorn. Pope Benedict XVI had appointed Viganò ambassador to the United States, a plum post where he would settle into a stately mansion on Massachusetts Avenue, across the street from the vice president's residence.
"He went through the ordeal making it very clear he was unhappy with it," said one former ambassador to the Vatican, who attended the Vatican Gardens ceremony in the late summer of 2011. "And we just couldn't figure out, us outsiders and non-Italians, what was going on."
When he became Pope, many considered Benedict to be much more conservative than his predecessor John Paul II. Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. interviewed Benedict — then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — nearly 30 years ago and now reflects on the Pope's legacy.
There was no such confusion within Vatican walls. Benedict had installed Viganò to enact a series of reforms within the Vatican. But some of Rome's highest-ranking cardinals undercut the efforts and hastened Viganò's exile to the United States.
Viganò's plight and other unflattering machinations would soon become public in an unprecedented leak of the pontiff's personal correspondence. Much of the media — and the Vatican — focused on the source of the shocking security breach. Largely lost were the revelations contained in the letters themselves — tales of rivalry and betrayal, and allegations of corruption and systemic dysfunction that infused the inner workings of the Holy See and the eight-year papacy of Benedict XVI. Last week, he announced that he will become the first pope in nearly 600 years to resign.
The next pope may bring with him an invigorating connection to the Southern Hemisphere, a media magnetism or better leadership skills than the shy and cerebral Benedict. But whoever he may be, the 266th pope will inherit a gerontocracy obsessed with turf and Italian politics, uninterested in basic management practices and hostile to reforms.
VatiLeaks, as the scandal came to be known, dragged the fusty institution into the wild WikiLeaks era. It exposed the church bureaucracy's entrenched opposition to Benedict's fledgling effort to carve out a legacy as a reformer against the backdrop of a global child sex abuse scandal and the continued dwindling of his flock.
Where's Guido Sarducci when you need him? He'd figure this shit out. How funny. Centuries old institution nothing but a hot pocket of political infighting.
Good, maybe it will end up like the Pyramids finally.
Read the whole article. It reads like a John LeCarre spy novel.
If Hitchens were here, he'd say that once this is settled, they'll be ready to be infallible all over again.
P.S. -- Guido Sarducci -- classic reference.
Internal fissures, outside pressures ... looking forward to the next tawdry revelation. One day ... one day ....
Does anyone really expect any change with the new pope? I know each will have different views, but as the pope is god's chosen one, how do you get completely different pope's back to back like that?
The Catholic Church has had internal conflicts since way before Constantine. If you think they are having internal conflicts now then maybe you guys should brush up on the history of the Middle Ages...this is nothing compared to what went on with the Church back then.
Watch "The Borgias" on Showtime to get a good idea of the infighting back in the Renaissance period. Back then it was assassinations, torture and war. Now it is political backstabbing and cronyism.
Quote from: "Bobby_Ouroborus"The Catholic Church has had internal conflicts since way before Constantine. If you think they are having internal conflicts now then maybe you guys should brush up on the history of the Middle Ages...this is nothing compared to what went on with the Church back then.
Yeah, but back then, they didn't have tales of priests raping altar-boys making the rounds on international media to an audience of billions.
I think the current era is qualitatively different from those internecine struggles.
Wasn't there also something in there about illicit male butt sex among Vatican officials?
What's that old saying about vermin exposed to the light?
Quote from: "stromboli"What's that old saying about vermin exposed to the light?
A related sentiment which I'm fond of: "Sunlight is the best disinfectant."
Can we start a campaign to get Guido Sarducci beatified?
Quote from: "Thumpalumpacus"Internal fissures, outside pressures ... looking forward to the next tawdry revelation. One day ... one day ....
Yea "50 Shades Of Alter Boys"
Quote from: "stromboli"Watch "The Borgias" on Showtime to get a good idea of the infighting back in the Renaissance period. Back then it was assassinations, torture and war. Now it is political backstabbing and cronyism.
AHHhhhh ! I was just thinking OMG - The Borgias! Get out of my head Strom!
:shock:
With the recent shenanigans of the pedo priests and their protectors, it would be hard not to be reminded of the popes of the late middle ages.
Quote from: "Thumpalumpacus"Quote from: "Bobby_Ouroborus"The Catholic Church has had internal conflicts since way before Constantine. If you think they are having internal conflicts now then maybe you guys should brush up on the history of the Middle Ages...this is nothing compared to what went on with the Church back then.
Yeah, but back then, they didn't have tales of priests raping altar-boys making the rounds on international media to an audience of billions.
I think the current era is qualitatively different from those internecine struggles.
Believe me they had priest raping not just boys but anything that moved and people knew. Don't believe me...read the Decameron
I'm not really that surprised, or, rather, am only surprised that so many documents and opinions from within the Vatican have been made available recently.
But that said, the Vatican is like the ultimate old boys club. For nearly 2 thousand years it has existed as members only hegemony with the laity being promised much but never actually seeing the inner-workings of the beast.
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And the Vatican has had absolute power over its worshipers for generations.
Quote from: "Bobby_Ouroborus"Quote from: "Thumpalumpacus"Quote from: "Bobby_Ouroborus"The Catholic Church has had internal conflicts since way before Constantine. If you think they are having internal conflicts now then maybe you guys should brush up on the history of the Middle Ages...this is nothing compared to what went on with the Church back then.
Yeah, but back then, they didn't have tales of priests raping altar-boys making the rounds on international media to an audience of billions.
I think the current era is qualitatively different from those internecine struggles.
Believe me they had priest raping not just boys but anything that moved and people knew. Don't believe me...read the Decameron
That wasn't my point; I know the same crimes were being committed.
My point was that in a media environment where the arrest of a molester-priest in one diocese can be read of, world-wide, within minutes by hundreds of millions of lay Catholics, there is a qualitative difference in the effects such scandals will have upon the Church. They have no way of squelching these sorts of stories, as they have in centuries past ... and that has had, and will continue to have, a direct financial effect on the Church.