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Actually, that was how I felt about JPII. He is known to have simply shrugged off the US as being out of control and beyond hope. JPII, despite our great hopes for him in 1979, did almost nothing to correct things in the Church here and did nothing about the US bishops until almost the very end, when a new nuncio was appointed. That nuncio started giving us some good bishops. But JPII was very much (too much, IMHO) into collegiality and prior to that did nothing in the face of poor performance or even defiance by bishops.

I think Benedict XVI is letting things proceed because they are actually improving, and he only has the opportunity to make changes as the bishops reach retirement age. So he does have some big challenges coming up, such as replacing Egan. Cardinal O’Connor went to the Vatican twice to plead with JPII not to appoint Egan, but JPII did so anyway. It will be interesting to see who BXVI looks to as his replacement.

That said, I haven’t been very impressed by some of his other picks - Wuerl and Neiderauer, for example. I believe the way it works is that the nuncio submits three names, and the Pope picks from among them. Of course, I don’t know who the other names were in either case! Maybe they were even worse...

Actually, that was how I felt about JPII. He is known to have simply shrugged off the US as being out of control and beyond hope. JPII, despite our great hopes for him in 1979, did almost nothing to correct things in the Church here and did nothing about the US bishops until almost the very end, when a new nuncio was appointed. That nuncio started giving us some good bishops. But JPII was very much (too much, IMHO) into collegiality and prior to that did nothing in the face of poor performance or even defiance by bishops.

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Agreed, although the author paints a discouraging picture of Pope Benedict. I didn't see a lot in the article that was encouraging, but perhaps it is simply my own bad attitude today.

Actually, that was how I felt about JPII. He is known to have simply shrugged off the US as being out of control and beyond hope. JPII, despite our great hopes for him in 1979, did almost nothing to correct things in the Church here and did nothing about the US bishops until almost the very end, when a new nuncio was appointed. That nuncio started giving us some good bishops. But JPII was very much (too much, IMHO) into collegiality and prior to that did nothing in the face of poor performance or even defiance by bishops.

Had I posted that, I can think of a half-dozen FR Catholics who'd demand to have my head on a platter.

” Cardinal O’Connor went to the Vatican twice to plead with JPII not to appoint Egan, but JPII did so anyway...”

Wow. Is this written somewhere? Sometimes I wondered if JPII was hogtied by Vatican politics, was busy frying bigger global fish or just was kept out of the info loop.