Ping!
Many people are just beginning to feel the impact of the departure of BXVI and understand the reasons for it. I think the last story that Moynihan recounts (about the altar girls) was probably indicative of what Ratzinger experienced as Pope, as well: the post-Vatican II-empowered curia simply ignored him. The princelings in the Curia were so used to doing whatever they wanted (a habit established under JPII, who essentially just gave up trying to control them and went traveling instead) that this did not change when BXVI became Pope, and by then the entire authority structure was so undermined that there was not any way to control them or even any way to punish them, because the rest of them would simply refuse to carry out anything he asked for. And of course this was accompanied by a relentless campaign (from inside the Vatican itself) to ridicule and diminish BXVI in the press and before the world.
I heard a homily by a well known Spanish priest, Fr Santiago Martin, today in which he said that we shouldn’t regard BXVI as having “retired,” as if he had gone off to a tranquil life on a Caribbean beach somewhere, but as having been martyred. He no longer had the strength to fight, and essentially they killed him. But his martyrdom was a sign and a cry that called attention to the truth, and I think many people suddenly see what bad shape the Church is in and how many evil enemies of the Truth have made their nest right over the Tomb of St Peter.
Seeing the plotting and treachery of the Italian cardinals this week has been like watching a particularly bizarre opera plot being played out. You honestly didn’t think that people actually did things like this in real life, or certainly hadn’t done so at least since the Middle Ages. All we need now are a few poisonings and somebody stabbing somebody through the curtains with a dagger...
God forbid, things are so strange now that I shouldn’t even joke about this.