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Speaking of John Allen, this is the piece that he posted on 9th January re the Passion - he definitely knows an insider who claims the Pope did say what he said:

"For the moment, controversy surrounds John Paul II’s reported thumbs-up for the film: “It is as it was.”

I reported the pope’s reaction, meaning that John Paul believes the movie is a faithful depiction of the last 12 hours of Christ’s life as described in the New Testament, in a breaking news piece on the NCR web site on Wednesday, Dec. 17, at midday (see Pope likes Gibson's new film). At virtually the same moment, the Wall Street Journal posted a column by Peggy Noonan in which she too quoted the pope, with the same words. Noonan cited the pope’s private aide, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, as the source, relayed to her through the movie’s producer Steve McEveety; my piece quoted an unnamed senior Vatican official. I had not been aware of Noonan’s column, as I presume she was unaware of my report.

The pope’s quote made the rounds of major news agencies, alternately citing the National Catholic Reporter or the Wall Street Journal.

On Dec. 24, however, Catholic News Service quoted two Vatican officials, once again unnamed, to the effect that the pope had made no such remark. “The Holy Father does not comment, does not give judgments on art,” one official said to CNS. “I repeat: There was no declaration, no judgment from the pope.”

Rumors swirled in Rome this week that a major American newspaper would soon carry a piece also suggesting the pope did not make the remark.

One factor fueling the confusion is that Vatican spokesperson Joaquin Navarro-Valls has so far not responded to requests for clarification. Normally, if a major newspaper quotes the pope as saying something he didn’t actually say, Navarro would issue a denial. Initially, therefore, most people took Navarro’s silence as confirmation of the original story. As he remained silent after other news agencies, including the highly respected CNS, issued contradictory reports, uncertainty grew as to what the truth actually is.

In the wake of all this, I went back to the original source of my report, a well-placed Vatican official who is normally a reliable guide to the pope’s mind. The official is adamant that the original story was right — the pope did indeed say, “It is as it was.”

The source added a few details. The pope watched the film in two segments over the evenings of Friday, Dec. 5, and Saturday, Dec. 6. He did so in the company of Dziwisz, his secretary. The two men watched the film, by themselves, in the pope’s private apartment, in the dining room that has a television with a fairly large screen and a VCR. The pope watched the movie on a European-format VHS videocassette. The next day, Dziwisz had a conversation with McEveety and the film’s assistant director, Jan Michelini, in which he relayed John Paul’s reaction, which this source said was accurately quoted in NCR and The Wall Street Journal.

If this is so, why doesn’t Navarro confirm the remark?

One possible explanation, according to Vatican sources, is that some individuals in the papal household were unhappy with the way the movie’s producers seemed to be milking John Paul’s reaction for publicity purposes. Although the pope wanted the people responsible for the film to know he enjoyed it, he didn’t necessarily intend “It is at it was” to end up on posters and newspaper ads. Hence the silence has perhaps been styled to dampen commercial exploitation.

A simpler reason is that the Vatican doesn’t like to comment on matters it perceives as the pope’s private affair. I recall asking a Vatican official a year ago about speculation that John Paul II had been swimming at Castel Gandolfo over the summer, surely not a state secret, and was told: si tratta della vita privata del papa, meaning, "that’s a matter of the private life of the pope."

Unfortunately, this is not like a debate that might have occurred 25 years ago, when the press could ask him about it in the back of the plane on the next trip. Today John Paul II never gets close enough to journalists to take questions. The only way to resolve the matter is an official clarification from Navarro.

In the absence of such a statement, those who don’t want to believe the pope said “It is as it was” are free to deny it, while those eager for a papal seal of approval can continue to assert it. This sort of confusion is not only frustrating, but it feeds images of an aging pope and an out-of-control Vatican bureaucracy, where even the pope’s very words are up for grabs, to be spun by whatever constituency has an agenda."

hey: The leader of them all is the National Catholic Reporter - the most anti-Catholic p.o.s. I've ever seen.

Sink: Nice language.

Well deserved and I am VERY kind to them, too.

NCR's Tom Fox on homo "marriage,"

We who profess a relationship with a Diety must be especially diligent to remind ourselves that no one has the full picture, no one can claim an inside track. Believers and non-believers alike will be better off when humility reins in certainty, when policies are shaped by attempts to understand and offer care to the hurting and insecure.

on priestly celibacy

Our bishops have become cafeteria Catholics. They seem to think we can do without the Eucharist......
The bishops, however, are so resistant to considering optional celibacy that they view Catholics who raise the issue as "having an agenda," implying that those who seek change really, deep down, want to hurt the church, not extend its mission to build the Reign of God.
This is crazy. No, it's worse. It's scandalous. Let me be clear: to place an arbitrary church discipline in the way of the building of Eucharistic-centered Christian communities is offensive to God.

on Church authority

The process reminds me of a statement that the spiritual guru, Edwina Gately, once made, referring to today's Catholic hierarchy. "The God they give us is too small to worship."

on sexual morality

With so many Catholics rejecting an official church teaching, and the pope insisting on it at the same time, questions of authority and its proper role cannot be avoided. As a matter of fact, the authority issue has been connected to the sexuality issue for more than a quarter of a century, raising the importance of trying to sort out and resolve the human sexuality questions.

There is a tradition within Catholicism that speaks of the sensus fidelium. It literally means "sense of the faithful." It means that the faithful, as a whole, have an instinct or "sense" about when a teaching is -- or is not -- in harmony with the true faith. At a minimum, the sensus fidelium has been demanding that the church reconsider its teachings on human sexuality.

Prominent Catholics have made repeated efforts to do just this since the 1968 papal encyclical. Those who have dared enter these waters have more often than not been denigrated by church authorities for setting forth. Connected to any reassessment has been considerable fear and trauma. Theologians who have dared have found their careers thwarted. As a result, as pressure has grown to probe church teachings on sexuality so has the resistance by key authority figures.

As I have said, NCR is the most anti-Catholic p.o.s.