Trouble Right Here in River (Tiber) City II

Melozzo da Forli: Angel Playing a Lute
The only angels in the Vatican are in the
the art museum

Yesterday’s posting was an interesting article by Philip Pullella and published by Reuters claiming that there is an internal war, or as Pullella puts it “a sinister power struggle”  going on in the Vatican for control of the Catholic Church.  It talks of corruption, intrigue, financial irregularities, prelates backstabbing one another, plots to control the next papal election and even a possible attempt on the pope’s life.  If you have read various entries on this blog—especially about the medieval and renaissance papacies (see entries for  January 15, April 18, June 6, 9, 18,  2011)—you will know as we pray: sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper in saecula saeculorum, or in the vulgar tongue: as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. 

      At the root of the problem seems to be a deep ideological division between Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the current Secretary of State and Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the previous Secretary of State.  (Papal Secretaries of State are more like Prime Ministers in terms of the power they hold; they are not just Foreign Ministers as in our country.) 

     Sodano ran a notoriously corrupt machine when he was in office.  He protected Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, from his accusers who were charging him with sexual abuse of seminarians. In the event the Maciel saga was far more sordid than anyone had ever thought. (see entries for June 2, Sept 22, October 27, 28, 2011)  Not only were the charges of abuse against young men substantiated, but Maciel apparently fathered two illegitimate children.  Maciel threw vast amounts of money at Vatican officials to not only shield himself from investigation but to enhance his reputation and influence.  Cardinal Sodano was a key player in this scheme, protecting the wayward priest even from the reaches of Cardinal Ratzinger (now Benedict XVI) who was one of the few in the Vatican who seemed genuinely interested in cleaning up the sex abuse crisis and restoring the Church’s reputation.  Bertone’s appointment to replace Sodano was seen as an attempt to clean up the Vatican, but as power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, Bertone now seems to be no better than his predecessor. 

      As Benedict has aged word has it that Bertone has eased the reins of power from the pope’s hands into his own.  The debacle surrounding the Vatican’s turning down the re-election of Dr. Lesley-Anne Knight as Executive Secretary of Caritas International (see entry for June 7, 2011) shows just how much power the Holy Father has ceded, willingly or unwillingly, to Cardinal Bertone.  According to Pullella (and common gossip in Rome) Bertone is stacking the College of Cardinals with his cronies as he readies for the next papal election.   He certainly has pushed forward a disproportionate number of his fellow Salesians (the Religious Congregation to which he belongs) to various posts in the hierarchy.  It’s Bertone’s Church these days.  

      I remember when Benedict was elected that a priest being interviewed from Rome by RTE (The Irish National Television Station) referred to the Curia as “That rats’ nest of pezzi grossi monsignors.”  It evoked a reaction from several commentators but to those of us who live in Rome, it was an understatement, almost an euphemism.  We had hoped that the change of regime would sweep it clean.  Benedict, or rather Cardinal Ratzinger, was—for all his harshness—one of the few prelates with an unquestioned integrity.   Nevertheless, I have thought from the get-go that the election of Benedict was a poor choice.  Despite stories to the contrary, he wanted the election and he worked hard to get it.  I was living in Rome during the final years of John Paul’s papacy and one could see then-Cardinal Ratzinger slowly and patiently (and much less conspicuously than Bertone today)  constructing the machine that would carry a conclave in his favor.  I said that Cardinal Ratzinger was a man of integrity and I don’t believe he was seeking the papacy for power but rather that I think he believed that John Paul had taken the Church down some paths that needed to be corrected, if not reversed.   He was painfully aware that John Paul was weak theologically.  He saw John Paul as far too open both to other religions and to other Churches within the Christian fold.  (As a historian, I prefer not to use the theological distinction between “churches” and “ecclesial communities.”  It may be theologically precise, but it’s snotty.)  I think Benedict had some ideas on Liturgical Reform he wanted to implement as well. He seems to have wanted to restore a Pius XII sort of mysterious majesty to the papacy after the grandfatherly John XXIII and John Paul I, the Hamlet Paul VI, and the ol’ soft-shoe John Paul II.   And he was more ready than John Paul to give room—or I should say “even more room” to the “Traditionalists” who rejected Vatican II in an attempt to corral them back into the Petrine fold.  At the same time, I think he wanted to be somewhat less polarizing than John Paul and use a more dialogical model of reconciliation.  Like most academics, Benedict was naïve and I think he achieved very little of his agenda.  The Church is no better off at the end of his regime than it was when he became Pope.  In fact, I think it is considerably worse.  His olive branch to the Traditionalists has been met with only more demands from them.  His rigidity on ecumenism and interreligious dialogue has only isolated Catholicism more at a time when secularism has taken up its holy war against the public face of any and all religion.  His liturgical plans have not materialized (and for that I am grateful).  Instead of austere majesty, the Papacy is just sinking into archaic irrelevance.  And even as a lean and hungry Benedict once stood next to an aging and increasingly ineffective John Paul II, now the lean and hungry Bertone  guides the tremulous hand of Benedict.  The Church deserves better.  I don’t mean the Curia Romana or the Papacy deserve better.  Pullella’s article makes it clear that much as in Catherine of Siena’s day, the Curia Romana and its ambitious officials deserve the stench and fury of the everlasting fires.  I mean the Church—you and me, the People of God—we deserve  better. 

What Makes "Real (?) Catholic T.V." Real Catholic?

And then there’s Michael Voris and “Real Catholic T.V.”  Michael Voris might be a real Catholic but “Real Catholic T.V.” is not really Catholic—at least in any sense that the Catholic Church recognizes.  Let me explain.  What Sister Never Knew and Father Never Told You is not a Catholic Blog.  O sure, it’s author is a Catholic in good standing, very good standing.  But the blog itself: it is neither endorsed nor sponsored by the Catholic Church.  I have no authorization from the Holy See or the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), or a local bishop to produce this blog.  Of course, I wouldn’t want one—nor do I need one.  This blog is about history—not faith or morals.  I make no pretense of doctrinal authenticity in matters of faith and/or morals.  I wouldn’t deliberately lead people astray regarding the Magisterium but even when dealing with matters of faith and/or morals, I will only present them from a historical point of view.  And history falls outside the authority of the Magisterium—which is one reason, by the way, that I went into history and not theology.  But Mr. Voris works very hard to give the (false) impression that he speaks for the Church when in fact he speaks only for himself.  There is no guarantor that he is, in fact, “orthodox” or that he accurately represents the position of the Holy See or the teachings of the Church.  In fact, he is often at odds with the Church in some of the claims that he makes especially on the “flash points” of ecumenism, inter-religious dialogue, sacred worship, canon law, Church authority, and several other topics. No one, at any level of Church authority, has granted Mr. Voris recognition as being an authentic channel of Catholic doctrine.  Mr. Voris, like others such as Father Maciel of the Legionnaires of Christ, Father Fessio, Mother Angelica, the former Father Corappi, and various others, has discovered that a neo-traditionalist message brings considerable financial advantages.  I believe however that unlike Father Fessio and Mother Angelica, Mr. Voris is not acting in (mistaken) good faith but simply establishing himself in a niche in the neo-con market for his own financial and career purposes.  The primary aim of the vortex is to suck money out of the pockets of those who mistakenly believe their support of Mr. Voris is a support of an “authentic” Catholicism.     

Everything is For Sale in Rome

The Dome of Saint Peter's from the

Vatican Gardens

Saturday evening I was with a group of friends and one friend passed to another Michael Rose’s book Good Bye Good Men (Regency Publishing, 2002).  They saw the questioning look on my face and the one fellow, the one giving the book, asked me what I thought of it.  I had to admit that I don’t think very much of it.  I think Rose had some points but his reliance on anecdote—and anecdotes from anonymous sources—leaves it void of credibility.  One simply cannot check his “facts” and consequently the book is useless except as a piece of polemic and polemic these days in the Church is as common as “cow pies” in a pasture and worth about as much. 
     This is not to say that he is wrong.  It is clear that there is a gay subculture in the Catholic clergy today.  One only has to see the effeminate approach to worship that many of the younger priests embrace to know that there is a critical absence of male role models in clergy formation programs.  (I don’t mean to equate effeminacy with homosexuality, but in the context of the younger clergy and the way they behave on the altar, I mean “camp.”) Where is the strong, loving, and wise male to lead us in public prayer?  I increasingly see brussles lace clad wraiths with manicured fingers delicately holding tulip shaped chalices as they whisper magic words like a sorceress conjuring her magic.  Don’t misunderstand me, this isn’t a liberal swipe at the conservative younger clergy.  The Legionaries of Christ, a most conservative group and one despised by liberals, for whatever other faults they may have present very good masculine men.  That doesn’t guarantee their sexual orientation, of course, but the Legionaries demonstrate that one doesn’t have to be a pansy to be “orthodox.”  And I don’t believe that a gay priest who is committed to celibacy has, by virtue of his sexual orientation, anything less to offer God and the Church than a heterosexual priest who is committed to celibacy.  In fact, if there is one thing I admire about the Legionaries is that they are committed to something other than themselves. I don’t think their commitment is admirable—it is to the Legion, not to the Church or the Gospel, but at least it isn’t the narcissistic ”it’s all about me” pseudo-priesthood that I see today when I hear priests talk about “at my Mass”  or “in my parish.”  It is Christ’s Priesthood; the Church’s Mass, and the people’s parish. 
     I am currently reading Jason Berry’s Render Unto Rome.  It is more interesting and certainly more credible than Good Bye Good Men, but like Rose’s work, flawed.  I am somewhat disappointed in that.  It is much better researched and carefully footnoted which is one advantage Berry has over Rose, but like Rose he starts with his conclusions and then tries to find the “evidence” to support it.  While I suspect Rose’s evidence is mostly made up—being anecdotal and anonymous and fitting just a bit too perfectly to this thesis, Berry’s evidence is far better footnoted, but still the methodology is flawed.   He has an axe to grind and yet I think he is missing some of the real issues.  He talks about the Legionnaires founder, Father Maciel, and his influence pedaling in Rome—throwing around tens of thousands of dollars at a time to buy the favor of high placed prelates but Berry seems to think that Maciel is unique in this.  How much money did Mother Angelica throw around among the key Curial officials?   How much money did it take for some of our red hats to find a head to sit on?  How much money does Christendom College pay out when it invites various Curial officials to come and give a “lecture?”  What sort of a “stipend” does someone like Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos get when he comes to sing a Pontifical High Mass in the “Extraordinary Form” for the Latin Mass Society—I bet it’s more than the ten dollars I give to have a Mass said for my mother.  And those canons at Gricigliano—you can bet that Cardinal Burke isn’t showing up there in return for just a good lunch.   It was true in Luther’s day and it is true today: “everything is for sale in Rome.”  I think Rose is a man without a conscience who exaggerated to the point of libel to prove his point and I think Berry is a man without imagination who naively undershot the fiscal corruption in the Church.  But I haven’t finished his book yet so let’s see.         

Financial Scandals Next to Rock Church???

Will the next set of scandals to rock

the Catholic Church in the United

States be about finances?

An interesting profile appeared in the Washington Post yesterday morning.  Jason Berry, a New Orleans based investigative reporter and author of two books (Lead Us Not Into Temptation: Catholic Priests and the Sexual Abuse of Children [Doubleday 1992; University of Illinois, 2000] and Vows of Silence: The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II [Free Press,  2004], has written a third book, Render Unto Rome: the Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church (Crown, 2011).   
      Insiders have been saying for some time that the potential financial scandals in the Catholic Church could be even more devastating to Church credibility than the sexual abuse scandals.  Personally, I find that hard to believe—not because bishops and clergy are innocent of financial improprieties, but only because it is all but impossible to imagine that anything could do more damage to the Church than not only the sexual abuse allegations themselves but the organized and even criminal cover-up of charges orchestrated by Church officials from the Vatican down to the local parishes.   Nevertheless, hold on to your birettas, boys, because once the lid is off the backstairs financial dealings in the Catholic Church we will see the bark of Peter in for bigger waves than it ever knew on the Sea of Galilee.  The gates of hell may not prevail against it, but the Church will be shaken to its foundations.  The sad thing is that unless we get a wise and holy helmsman guiding the bark of Peter, the institutional Church will let scores of millions of followers leave disheartened and disillusioned and go elsewhere rather than make the needed reforms that would require massive shifts in hierarchical power.  Preserving not its moral authority but its power structures has been the first item of agenda of the Institutional Church ever since the moral fervor of the Tridentine Reforms grew cold in the seventeenth century.  Indeed, if the Church in our time is to successfully engage in Reform as it has in some of the periods at which we have been looking in this blog recently, it must make it a priority to differentiate between authority (with which we Catholics believe it has been invested by its Founder) and power (which its Founder told his apostles to eschew). 
     Of course there are those Catholic voices that criticize Berry for turning his investigative skills on the Church to which he belongs and in which he practices.  I must admit that I have not always, or even usually, liked his tone.  But that doesn’t mean that I dismiss him as a “crackpot,” much less a “traitor.” The article in the Post is nor surprise and might be a bit “sensationalistic.” I will be the first to admit that the Washington Post is no friend to Catholicism—nor is that its function.  And  Berry is no boy soprano in the Catholic choir.  The late John Neuhaus labeled Berry a scandalmonger. Many Catholic voices have decried both the Washington Post and Jason Berry.   Former Vatican ambassador Mary Ann Glendon, Learned Hand professor of Law at Harvard and George W. Bush appointee to the President’s Council on Bioethics, attacked Berry for his accusations against Legionnaires of Christ founder, Father Marcial Maciel who had been accused of sexual abuse of seminarians.  William Donahue, head of the Catholic League, has scored Berry for his “yellow journalism.”    Well, Neuhaus, Glendon, and Donahue all backed the wrong horse with Father Maciel; Neuhaus and Glendon out of a gullible institutional loyalty and Donahue out of his consistent thick-headed stupidity and own lack of moral compass.  Like him or not, when Berry and others like him scream “fire” we need to look and see if there is smoke and if there is, we need to put the fire out. 
      And so we had better look and see if the lack of financial transparency in the Catholic Church is problematic (it is, I can assure you) and make the necessary changes without covering up the abuses or defending them as “internal affairs” of the Church that are no one’s business except the local bishop’s.  If bishops act quickly, make changes, put good procedures in place, fire employees (cleric and lay) who have abused the system, this does not have to become a scandal.  I have no objection to sending the Holy See money, even lots of money, if it needs it for its work. I do object to having money sent secretly.  I don’t expect the bishop to live in a hovel or wear rags; I do expect him to have a budgeted salary from which his expenses are paid. And I expect that budget to be commensurate with the salaries of his priests.  I understand that angels don’t come down and pay the bills—it takes money and I am willing to contribute my share but I also expect to be told where that money is going.  And speaking of paying one’s share—that article says that Berry digs deep into his pocket every Sunday and puts three or five dollars into the basket.  I may respect you as a journalist, Jason, but for God’s sake you are a cheap bastard.  The going rate these days is 10%--don’t be a skinflint.  Little old ladies are carrying you, buster—ante up. 

History in the Making: Today's Need for Reformation I

The question of  what happens when the papacy itself needs reformation has created problems for the Church at several periods in history.  We have been looking at the turbid position in which the Church found itself in the tenth century during the so-called “pornacracy” or “rule of whores” when the papacy found itself a pawn in the hands of a ruthless family determined to exploit its wealth and power through the efforts of the notoriously lascivious Marozia and her mother, Theodora.  We will see in one of our next entries that the Emperors Otto I, II, and III came to the rescue and cleaned up the papal act.  And we will also see that there are times that the papacy will lead reform in the Church as typified in the aggressive programs of Gregory VII (11^th century) and Innocent III (13^th century). But there are other times when the Church stagnates because there is no one to call the leadership of the Church to account.    In the fourteenth century there was the Great Schism when the Church found itself divided among three rival claimants to the papacy.  In that situation the Emperor and the bishops tried to resolve the crisis and eventually met with success, at least in narrowing papal claimants to a manageable number, one.  The television series, The Borgias,  has made people aware of to just what depths the papacy sunk in the Renaissance period—and trust me, Alexander VI Borgia was only one of several wicked men to used the papacy to their own and their family’s advantages while leading thoroughly immoral lives.  This was the situation that provoked Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Müntzer and others into the Protestant Reformation.  A papal led Catholic Reform did come about, but too late for the unity of the Church.  The damage had been done, and the papacy reduced to “the Whore of Babylon” in Protestant polemics. There have been other situations in which the lack of a counter-weight to the papacy has left the Church “naked unto her enemies.”  The captivities of Popes Pius VI and Pius VII by Napoleon left the Church with ineffective central leadership for a period of almost twenty years which, due to the relative independence of local bishops in pre-Vatican I era it could survive, but which today would paralyze Church administration.  Indeed, during the Second World
War Pius XII was well aware of the crisis that would befall the Church should he have been taken prisoner by Hitler.  He allegedly had plans to evacuate the papacy to either Lisbon or Dublin and, should that have failed and he been taken captive, had prepared a letter of abdication to be made public upon his arrest. 

It is unlikely that a pope today would be taken prisoner by a political leader, but that does not mean that the popes exercise their authority unimpeded.  The final years of the papacies of Pius XII and John Paul II presented some troubling questions over who was truly overseeing the Church at the time.   Much has been made of the influence of Mother Pasqualina Lehnert, the major-domo of Pius XII.  This German nun, often termed La Popessa, had organized Pius’ household for over forty years, beginning during his term as Papal Nuncio (ambassador) to Bavaria in 1917.  Always a strong influence on Pius, after his serious health decline of 1954 she had almost total control of access to him.  No one, even the Dean of the College of Cardinals—at that time the Vatican’s number 2 officer (Pius, serving as his own Secretary of State)—could have access to the pope unless she permitted it.  For the last four years of his life, all papers passed through her to the pope.  While the situation was never as grave as her detractors portrayed it—with her exercising papal authority in Pius’ name—it did create serious administrative issues and all but stalled Church administration.  Cardinals, bishops, and prominent laity found they could do an end-run around the Vatican bureaucracy by going directly to Mother Pasqualina.    In fact, the very first act of Eugène Tisserant as Cardinal Dean upon the death of Pius was to banish Mother Pasqualina from the Vatican—allegedly told to move out, bag and baggage, that very day. 

The situation toward the end of the pontificate of John Paul II was different.  There was no La Popessa here, no single person of influence.  Yet it was clear that the pope was increasingly incapacitated by the 1990’s.  Curial officials made use of the lack of oversight to expand their own powers and influence, often squabbling in rivalry with others over who had jurisdiction in particular instances. Stanislaw Dziwisz, John Paul’s chief private secretary, like Mother Pasqualina had total control of access to the Pope, and allegedly, unlike Mother Pasqualina “sold” that access—getting individuals access to private audiences or attendance at the Pope’s morning mass in his private chapel for sums up to $50,000.   Dziwisz was closely tied to Father Marcial Maciel, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, who was accused by numerous former seminarians of having sexually abused them.  Despite the number and credibility of allegations, neither Maciel nor the Legion of Christ were never held to accountability during the pontificate of John Paul, one of the most serious flaws in his papacy.   Only in the current pontificate have the charges of sexual and financial impropriety been duly investigated and been found to be even more outrageous than previously charged.   Another case in which John Paul’s incapacity resulted in the Curial “old boy” network triumphing over good judgment was the nomination of Cardinal Bernard Law, the disgraced archbishop of Boston, to a cushy position in Rome.  Law’s arrogance in defending clergy credibly accused of sexual abuse is what brought down the wrath of Americans—Catholic and non-Catholic alike—on the American Episcopate.  While the majority of American Catholics still seem to have great confidence in the clergy, particularly their own parish clergy, the American bishops have largely become shepherds without sheep.  The Catholic Church in America is prone to this problem in any event as our Protestant culture predisposes us to see the Church congregationally—that is to identify Church primarily with the local congregation to which we belong.  In fact, American Catholics tend to see the Church on two tiers: there is “the Church”—i.e. Rome; and there is their church—that is the parish community to which they belong.  Bishops seem only sort of middle-men; local agents of the central authority as it were.  If the American Catholic knew how much of his Sunday collection-plate dollar went to the bishop, he would be very unhappy.  But what little credibility bishops have in America has been all but destroyed in the sex-abuse crisis where so many bishops have not dealt effectively with pedophile clergy.  Cardinal Bernard Law, the former Archbishop of Boston, is the poster boy for bad bishops.  It was not the protecting of accused clergy that did him in—it was the unmitigated arrogance with which he defended himself and his indefensible policies.  Finally forced to resign just to quiet the outrage, he was rescued from serving retired nuns as their chaplain in rural Maryland and installed in the palatial quarters of the Archpriest of the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major in Rome.  And then, despite these being said to be the most luxurious cardinalatial apartments in the Eternal City, he undertook to renovate and expand his suites.  This is part of an old-boy system in Rome where they take care of their own.    It is not that they don’t care about the public-relations aspect of the Church; they honestly don’t understand that in today’s world they are being held accountable and their failure to be responsible seriously undermines the credibility of the Church and indeed dichotomy of what the Church teaches and how so many of its leaders function undermines the credibility of the Gospel itself in as that it reduces, or at least appears to reduce, the Gospel to snake-oil whose sale is only meant to enrich those who “sell” it. 

The papacy of John Paul II is one of the most paradoxical papacies in the history of the Church.  As one commentator for the BBC said, echoing Charles Dickens, when John Paul lay dying: it was the best of times; it was the worst of times.   John Paul’s policies gave the coup de grace to European communism and provided the restoration of democracy in the countries of Eastern Europe.  His internal policies in the Church were another matter with an ever deepening gap between progressives and conservatives.  This division was only aggravated as he aged and gradually lost power to the curial machine which took on a life of its own.

It was hoped that the election of a curial cardinal to the papacy would bring the curia and its various bureaucrats back under control.  Popes like Pius XII and Paul VI who had curial experience usually knew how to keep the Curia working for them rather than trying to run the Church their way in spite of the pope.  Popes whose previous experience had been as residential archbishops—popes like John XXIII and John Paul II—had more difficulty in managing the politics of the Curia.  So Joseph Ratzinger, having spent so many years in Rome as Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, should have been able to bring the Curia back under papal control, but experience is showing that he can’t.  The recent controversy where Cardinal Bertone, the papal Secretary of State, blocked the nomination of Dr. Lesley-Anne Knight for a second term as General Secretary of Caritas Internationalis is one example of how the papal hands are tied.  Dr. Knight’s election to her first term met with a hostile reception in certain Vatican circles, apparently for no other reason than she was a woman.  The papal audience at which she and the rest of the executive committee were to be presented to Pope Benedict all but turned into a brawl when some Vatican monsignore just refused to believe that such an important person might possibly be a woman and tried to remove her from her reserved seat and force her to the back of the hall in the Apostolic Palace where the reception was being held.   It took a cadre of Caritas officials to put a protective ring around Dr. Knight in order for her to keep her assigned place.  Similar episodes have been reported at ecumenical welcomes when women bishops from various Protestant groups have been due to be presented to the pope.  Curial officials have long memories and before this year’s General Assembly of Caritas, Caritas was notified that the Vatican would not approve a second term for Dr. Knight.  When Cardinal  Rodriguez-Maradiaga, the president of Caritas Internationalis went to intervene with Pope Benedict the Pope supposedly threw his hands up in the air and said that he had no say in the matter.  It was beyond his power.  The decision had been made.  Incidentally, Bertone is one of six members of his religious congregation, the Salesians of Don Bosco, in the College of Cardinals.  ,    

The reputation of the Curia is far from good in other ways beyond their internal bickering and jockeying for power.  While Italians tend to take a more jaundiced eye than we Americans about the weaknesses of human nature—after all can you imagaine an American politician getting away with what Sylvio Berlascone gets away with?—and while most clerical misconduct goes unnoted in the press, it is not unknown to see a story in the Roman newspapers about some low-level Vatican official who has been caught picking up a transvestite prostitute or having sex in a public park.  A 1998 double murder/suicide involving two officers in the Swiss Guards, attributed to the one officer’s being refused a promotion, is rumored to involve a homosexual relationship between the two guards.  Vatican immorality may not be at the extravagance of the Borgia’s Banquet of the Chestnuts, but the Curia certainly aren’t the angelic choirs either and there seems to be no one to whom anyone is accountable.   

It would be good to think that a Gregory VII or an Innocent III could reform the Church from within but although Vatican II has brought many changes, and I believe changes for the good, it has not brought genuine reform or renewal.  A weakness of the current structure of Church leadership is that there is no person or group who has the authority to call the Church leadership to realign itself to the demands of the Gospel.