Indeed these deviants are a shame to those of faith.
Here is the problem: since the Catholic church is the first church from which all Christian churches sprung....what affects it, will affect all........to a greater or lesser degree. That much sould be obvious.
Cardinals? According to one Catholic seer: "the red hats have fallen (Cardinals)......and also the purple(Bishops)".
Yes, Cardinals indeed have great authority. But like JUdas, they have sold their Lord for 30 pieces of silver.
All those who believe in and love the Lord Jesus Christ must pray.......and pray hard. All of us....Catholics, Baptists, evangelicals........all must pray and do penance for their lives, as we all have sinned. The Sinless One alone can and will help us.
I can only say: AMEN!
Once again you are on the money Thor. So goes the Church, so goes the world.
Don't mis-apprehend the nature of authority in the Church. It's not like General Motors, where a VP can fire a Manager, who could fire a Supervisor, who could fire a staff associate.
When you come right down to it, Cardinals and Bishops are exactly the same in their scope of responsibilities--they are responsible for a particular 'territory,' period.
Only the Pope can "fire" someone, although it's not done often, and NEVER has been done often. Easy to see why: Christ not only selected Judas, He did NOT fire him.
Later on, it took a lot for some notorious heretics to 'get fired,'--usually it was after fairly lengthy exchanges of letters wherein it became clear that the heretic would not recant.
Luther wasn't fired--he quit.
We could go on. The answer is likely somewhere in CSLewis' essay on the problem of evil...