[markomalley]

My guess is that administrative styles are coming under scrutiny. Last year's "removal", our very own Archbishop Raymond Burke, was a lightning rod on pro-life issues, but the general consensus around here is that he was Peter Principled up for reasons of job performance in the administrative arena. Now that he's been gone for a bit, the stories from the Chancery on leadership style are surfacing and they aren't pretty - from holding grudges, to denying promotions to men who are truly worthy, to really BAD personnel moves to fiscal irresponsibility. Get a couple drinks in the right people and all sorts of stuff comes out. My guess is Martino is more of the same.

With all of the "deep background" leaks that came out during the Bush Administration, I have grown very suspicious of details that "emerge" like that, particularly if those details come out from unnamed sources (don't know if you have them first-hand from people you personally know and trust or if the rumour mill is running -- you know, "I heard from a friend of a friend from a priest who worked in the prefect's office and was really in the know"). Not much difference between a chancery and a governmental agency, if you think about it.

[Desdemona]

Well, my sources are: one employee of the Chancery who is in a position to know the part about holding grudges (which I believe considering who hasn't been promoted); two employees of the Cathedral - and these are the ones I REALLY believe - that have physical evidence; my own observation after four and a half years of Burke reign; a few priests and the state in which he left the archdiocese when he left. Basically, we're broke. Rigali has us WAY in the black and Burke was the one who closed parishes. There's a lot more behind the scenes than is known. We won't get into the PR nightmares that had nothing to do with orthodoxy or church teaching. Yeah, StL was a test and he failed.