Curial Reform, Where Art Thou?

From Damian Thompson:

I wrote: “Unfortunately for the Pope, his enemies inside the Church, who include members of the College of Cardinals, are happy for him to take the rap. Ratzinger was never ‘one of the boys’, the ‘magic circle’ of bishops who covered for each other, and now he is paying for it.”

The world’s cardinals (”they” – CMOC) may have elected Joseph Ratzinger pope by a large majority, but the Vatican is stuffed with curial officials, some of high rank, who resent the fact that Benedict has always been his own man. He has an inner circle, of course, but it’s small – and it’s not made up of canapé-chomping ecumenical back-slappers. Also, even some “conservative” curial officials from the JPII era are horribly snooty about the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, and resent its liberation by this great pontiff.

So when the media stitched up the Pope over these Munich allegations, there wasn’t too much support from Vatican II-obsessed Roman Monsignori. Or their grey-shirted English muckers.