Is the Roman Catholic Church Adrift?

As most people are probably aware, Pope John Paul II is currently quite ill - so ill, in fact, that he is no longer able to take quite as active of a role in governing the Roman Catholic Church as he has in the past. Everyone in the Vatican knows that his days are numbered, even though he may last longer than might be expected. Thus we have a combination of two problems: the "boss" isn't keeping an eye on things, leaving a vacuum in the leadership, while lots of people are trying to get into a good position to influence the election of the next pope. How does this affect the operation of the Vatican?

The Detroit News reports:

Increasingly ... ambitious prelates in the Roman Curia, or the Vatican administration, are carving out turf for themselves, and hard-line conservatives are plainly gaining ground, experts say. The two most powerful men closest to the pope are Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican's secretary of state, and John Paul's personal secretary, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, a fellow Pole who is the gatekeeper to the papal inner sanctum. ... The joke around the Vatican is that the second Polish pontificate has commenced; some observers believe that if Dziwisz makes decisions on his own, as is suspected, he does so only in keeping with what he knows, or thinks, the pope would want.

What many people can forget, or simply fail to realize, is that the Vatican is as much a secular power as it is a church. Politics plays at least as much of a role in what goes on as does theology and religious dogma. Here you will find everything that you might find in any traditional government: turf battles, hunger for power, people who want to be the "power behind the throne," and so forth. The religious aura of the Vatican allows them to project an image that causes people to expect better, but why should they?

This part of the story I found very interesting:

[Cardinal Joseph] Ratzinger lashed out at Islam last week, criticizing what he called its tendency to mix politics and religion.

Now there's the pot calling the kettle black! I won't hold my breath waiting for the Vatican to cease efforts to mix its religious doctrines with politics in nations around the world. On the other hand, maybe mixing politics and religion is only bad when other people do it?

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• Roman Catholicism
• Popes