For all the supposed immediate jurisdiction of the Pope, if you’d actually look closely at how the Catholic Church has been run at least since the time of Trent, its much closer to the “Pope orders, Cardinals ignore, people do as they please” that Pope Benedict XIV complained about in the 1700’s.
The Pope has relatively little actual ability to enforce.
The rot of apostasy is a result of an attack of the unbaptized upon the Church, and the subterfuge of communists, atheists, and libertines working their way covertly through the monasteries and seminary system in the 1930’s to destroy the Church from within.
“The rot of apostasy is a result of an attack of the unbaptized upon the Church, and the subterfuge of communists, atheists, and libertines working their way covertly through the monasteries and seminary system in the 1930s to destroy the Church from within.”
That wouldn’t surprise me in the least. Now is the time, with the truly magnificent +BXVI, to cut out that rot.