Agree on the unserious people with unserious opinions, but the unserious are hardly a new phenomenon. Those who believe themselves wiser should be careful they are not merely suggesting their own view in place of the others. Pray for the Holy Father and to complete the work placed in front of you.
If you want to influence the behavior of ICE going forward, Recognize that
when public opinion is STRONG, Trump knows he has to back down. It's time to call Congress (202 224 3121) and the White House (202 456 1414) about ICE reform. The next 10 days are critical. Read about the 10 Democratic proposals to curb ICE.
On the subject of giving a diagnosis on the current crisis of papal authority among faithful, can I suggest a starting point?
As someone who has been online on Catholic Internet (if such a thing even exists) since 2011-2, I’ve noticed that social media is a huge factor. Pope Benedict XIV’s resignation came when social media was burgeoning, and anyone can reasonably argue Pope Francis is the first true “social media” pope. And social media since then has exacerbated otherwise legitimate discussion on papal authority by amplifying those once niche voices through algorithms.
On the plus side...my catechumens have asked for an OCIA session on canon law and our Archbishop has agreed to lead it, so maybe our future is brighter.
What the horrific, heretical inversion of salus animarum suprama lex always proves in the end is that once you allow yourself to step outside the Church’s laws and teachings, nothing is guaranteed, anything can be rationalized, and terrible things always happen.
There’s a Latin maxim for that, too, by the way.
Ed, don't leave us hanging. What's the Latin maxim for that?
I tried to cheat and use Gemini AI, here is what is said about you, "Thank you for providing the full context. This is a sharp piece of commentary, likely from Ed Condon at The Pillar, discussing the misinterpretation of Canon Law". It had the wrong answer with, "Corruptio optimi pessima".
We have heard decades old efforts to increase CHARITY decades maybe centuries demands for CHASITY in WOMEN..Virginity Receptivity etc..but not much if ever about CLARITY as in CLARE of Assissi, and CLARE UK Earl of Clare being the reason for the name of CLARE MONT Claifornia schools etc and CLARE MONT New Hampshire. being that CITY on a HILLTOP that gave us some waters flowing down the CONECCTICUT RIVER - into MYSTIC and SAY BROOKE The ENGLISH UK explorers adventurers who gave us WINDSOR CT WINDSOR VERMONT and clearly a link to the WINDSORS of the CASTLE in the UK with the same name ! Pope LEO is bringing us myself in particular CLARITY of speech vision Mission and FUSION -UNITY dispell a CON FUSION with the "OTHER".. than the ONLY ONE HOLY OOH ..la la
She is being poetic and playing with words. If it was all lower case like e.e. cummings (maybe with parenthesis and odd line breaks) -- or if it was sometimes in Capitals -- with Emdashes -- like Emily Dickinson, it would probably be more evident than when it is SOMETIMES ALL CAPS which we are used to.
So basically, the SSPX is saying "I left because I just wasn't being fed." That's a reason to switch parishes, not repeat something that got the founder of your group excommunicated!
As another commenter said earlier this week, they're basically just Protestants with cassocks at this point.
Yes that is the best summary of their MO I’ve ever heard since I learned of them in the early 2000s. If it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck…. It doesn’t matter if the duck puts on a cassock and Roman collar 🤷🏽♀️
This is the same horrific hubristic logic of all the Protestant churches and evangelicals that claim the true Church basically ceased to exist post apostles until Luther/fill in the blank rando guy started their church up with the REAL. WAY.
Really? Only YOU could possibly have stumbled on Gods Divine Plan and no one else? there but for the grace of God go I. 😞
Rather, I was convicted by the damning critique of the work (or lack thereof) some parishes do to save souls.
I reflected on certain parishes I have attended, parishes where: 1) the eucharist is treated as an after thought, 2) there is practically no confession offered and no penitents ever show up anyway (100% communion rate though), 3) the homilies week after week are slapstick, therapeutic feel-good drivel (or even error-laden), and 4) the music, architecture etc. is bland or even secular.
Is a regular parishioner better off there than having no church at all? A 17th century Japanese Catholic who hasn’t seen a priest in decades, clings to his faith, and contemplates the four last things in fear and trembling because of his distance from the Church could easily be better off spiritually than Bob who backslaps his priest at Our Lady of the Suburbs every week and is lulled into a false sense of his own salvation.
I need to think more. But it was a scary thought initially. Being in the Church is necessary but not sufficient. What to make of a parish that not only fails to emphasize this, but perhaps even inculcates the opposite and gives that aforementioned false sense of security?
One thing I will say for traditionalists: their communities make sure you know that God is serious and you better shape up.
Yes, a regular parishioner is better off there - at even the most cringey, lukewarm, baloney-filled parish you can imagine - than outside of the Church. That is the point of the Church, and the efficacy of the Sacraments. A vibrant, reverent, thriving community that challenges us to greater holiness is, of course, even better, but the existence of "Option C is best" doesn't have an impact on the truth of "B is better than A".
I think a logical gap in your assessment is that just because the persecuted Japanese Catholic may very well be spiritually healthier than Bob, does not mean that a) Bob would become holier *if* he was cut off from Sacraments or b) the Japanese Catholic would not be even better off if he did have access to the Sacraments (even under suboptimal circumstances).
Just to be clear, I intentionally played around with the thought of someone who through no conscious choice had no access to the sacraments. I was not contemplating a schismatic or someone willfully skipping Mass.
Is the core of what you're getting at "how does scandal work in the economy of salvation" - like, is it possible for a Christian community to be *so* scandalous that the combined package (Sacraments+scandal) is a net negative for a randomly selected individual (like you said, assuming circumstances that mean they have no personal guilt in not having access to the Sacraments+scandal package)
My instinct is no - that grace & "the impact of scandal" are different kinds of things, so they can't cancel each other out - like asking how many meters cancel out a kilogram. But if I've learned anything about theology, it's that trying to make an analogy is a shortcut to heresy so...
Catholics often accuse Protestants of faith without works - to turn your back on a NO church simply because you find it distasteful (while that church remains in full communion with Rome mind!) is to seriously misunderstand the role of the church and why we are called to be part. I can understand frustration but a church stuck in the 1970s is still a place to start from. Refusing to attend any church for lack of one being trad enough to suit one’s tastes teeters dangerously close to the edge of vanity.
It reminds me of this advice JRR Tolkien gave to his son, and which I often use myself with great benefit:
« I can recommend this as an exercise (alas! only too easy to find opportunity for): make your Communion in circumstances that affront your taste. Choose a snuffling or gabbling priest or a proud and vulgar friar; and a church full of the usual bourgeois crowd, ill-behaved children—from those who yell to those products of Catholic schools who the moment the tabernacle is opened sit back and yawn—open-necked and dirty youths, women in trousers and often with hair both unkempt and uncovered. Go to Communion with them (and pray for them).
It will be just the same (or better than that) as a mass said beautifully by a visibly holy man, and shared by a few devout and decorous people. It could not be worse than the mess of the feeding of the Five Thousand—after which our Lord propounded the feeding that was to come. »
Were you really? I, conversely, was infuriated because he insulted my mother. I forgave him, however.
> Is a regular parishioner better off there than having no church at all?
Yes. It is bigotry (or something; I'm not sure of the right word) to think that a "Bob" at an "Our Lady of the Suburbs" cannot become a saint in the monotony of his pedestrian life exactly as he is called to do. It's easy for us to look down on ordinary people but we have to remind ourselves that we cannot see into their souls. Even if we live with someone in community (which is not what we're talking about - we're talking about fellow parishioners that we are not close to), we might have very little idea of what is actually going on in their interior. God is directing the circumstances of their life. God is exposing them to carefully tuned trials to purify their souls like silver in the furnace. We do not see those trials and we do not see their reactions to them. We see them consuming the Eucharist, and they see us consuming it, and maybe we recoil from the way they did it, like the way I can't stand how one of my kids makes noises when he chews and maybe has his lips open. When I was suffering from a (ridiculous in hindsight) year of "am I, through my own error in youth, in the 'wrong' state of life? should I have been a nun? no one ever told me to consider it, so I didn't, so did I mess up God's plan for me?", post-annulment (in that downward spiral of "what does it mean that I was never married"), envious of what I read in hagiographies and autobiographies where women were being made holy in religious life, ... God said to me: I can crucify you anywhere, you know.
(you have to be in a pretty weird head space to find *that* consoling, heh.)
But, to return to my perplexity about your train of thought: do you imagine that a liturgy you don't like is worse than no liturgy at all? Are you a materialist? (No shame in being brainwashed by our materialist culture, all of us are and have to consciously struggle against it.) Do you think that nothing happens at the holy sacrifice of the Mass that we cannot see?
I have met more than one God-fearing, God-loving woman who has wondered the same about religious life. (Hi, I’ve met myself. It seems, anyway. But also, I’ve met others who shared the thought.) I think it’s a good thing to be struck by that line of thinking and that God uses it for good so long as we keep ourselves properly reigned in/don’t buck the angels who persistently drag us out of the ditch and back onto the track we are in fact on.)
Ed is the canon lawyer here, and I am not. But civil lawyers live and die by procedural due process, and those principles are not foreign to canon law — they inform it.
I don’t dispute that Pope Francis, as sovereign of Vatican City State, had the authority to issue the rescripts, nor that rescripts are not “laws” but singular administrative acts. Papal authority is not the central issue.
What matters is what these rescripts did. As I understand them, the four rescripts issued in 2019 and 2020 authorized prosecutors to operate outside the ordinary Vatican City legal framework — including wiretapping, seizure of electronic devices, and bypassing normal reporting channels because senior officials were themselves under investigation. Functionally, they operated as extraordinary search and surveillance authorizations.
The defense often mischaracterizes these as “secret laws.” That label is sloppy. But a narrower and more serious question remains largely unaddressed: whether executive authorizations that materially expand prosecutorial power must be disclosed to the defense before trial, so that evidence derived from them can be challenged in real time.
In most legal systems, even when warrants must remain secret at the moment of execution, they are disclosed pretrial and subjected to adversarial testing. That disclosure is not about limiting sovereign authority; it is about preserving equality of arms.
So unless one is prepared to argue that papal authority places rescripts authorizing wiretaps, seizures, and deviations from ordinary procedure entirely beyond pretrial disclosure, the unavoidable conclusion is that procedural fairness has no operative meaning in Vatican City criminal law.
Yes, but as Ed has been at pains to point out; The Vatican City State is governed by an absolute monarch. In an absolute monarchy the sovereign IS the ultimate arbiter of justice in his/her realm, and it is a tiny one at that. The Vatican City State's entire 'population' is it's own civil service- the Curia, which is extraordinary in any circumstances for even an absolute monarchy. What else could have Pope Francis done? Clearly Becciu and his cohort don't want the gravy train to switch off but they forgot who always had their hand on the tap...
A liberal democratic society's expectations of procedural fairness is fundamentally different to an absolute monarchy's expectations of procedural fairness. You can kind of see Becciu's cunning here in that he knows EXACTLY how power, justice and procedure are supposed to work in an absolute monarchy, which he enjoyed immensely for years and years. Then cries like a big baby to the media who all function on assumptions of liberal democratic values of procedural fairness, about how UNFAIR that it all is that the Pope gets to be exactly what he is; an absolute monarch with every right to run his realm as he sees fit. If he needs to issue special orders to circumvent ordinary chains of command to prosecute someone who is at the top of the chain of command, so be it. It's way better than the alternative, which is a private dressing down and followed by a beheading, for example. Or just ordering him to a monastry in the mountains and stripping him down quietly and turning his name into the Vatican's Voldemort.
God you could write an amazing 'Yes Minister'-style black comedy about this entire fiasco and unlike every other comedy, every dang word of it would be true.
Agree on the unserious people with unserious opinions, but the unserious are hardly a new phenomenon. Those who believe themselves wiser should be careful they are not merely suggesting their own view in place of the others. Pray for the Holy Father and to complete the work placed in front of you.
If you want to influence the behavior of ICE going forward, Recognize that
when public opinion is STRONG, Trump knows he has to back down. It's time to call Congress (202 224 3121) and the White House (202 456 1414) about ICE reform. The next 10 days are critical. Read about the 10 Democratic proposals to curb ICE.
https://kathleenweber.substack.com/p/the-most-important-thing-you-can
Boring…and Pretti (god have mercy on him) is in the running for “Darwin of the year award”.
On the subject of giving a diagnosis on the current crisis of papal authority among faithful, can I suggest a starting point?
As someone who has been online on Catholic Internet (if such a thing even exists) since 2011-2, I’ve noticed that social media is a huge factor. Pope Benedict XIV’s resignation came when social media was burgeoning, and anyone can reasonably argue Pope Francis is the first true “social media” pope. And social media since then has exacerbated otherwise legitimate discussion on papal authority by amplifying those once niche voices through algorithms.
On the plus side...my catechumens have asked for an OCIA session on canon law and our Archbishop has agreed to lead it, so maybe our future is brighter.
What the horrific, heretical inversion of salus animarum suprama lex always proves in the end is that once you allow yourself to step outside the Church’s laws and teachings, nothing is guaranteed, anything can be rationalized, and terrible things always happen.
There’s a Latin maxim for that, too, by the way.
Ed, don't leave us hanging. What's the Latin maxim for that?
Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus.
I audibly gasped when I read that last line and realized what Latin maxim you were going for. Quite the zinger. *Golf clap*
I tried to cheat and use Gemini AI, here is what is said about you, "Thank you for providing the full context. This is a sharp piece of commentary, likely from Ed Condon at The Pillar, discussing the misinterpretation of Canon Law". It had the wrong answer with, "Corruptio optimi pessima".
With props to Microsoft Copilot, here are a few more that might be appropriate:
Lex dubia non obligat. “An uncertain law does not bind.”
Ubi non est ordo, ibi est confusio. “Where there is no order, there is confusion.”
Quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur. “Whatever is received is received according to the mode of the receiver.”
(I’m so glad you asked!)
Same!
I second the request for the Latin maxim, instruct the ignorant!
I couldn't be happier to see this fine analysis wrapped up with an excellent pick from the Beastie Boys. Well done.
We have heard decades old efforts to increase CHARITY decades maybe centuries demands for CHASITY in WOMEN..Virginity Receptivity etc..but not much if ever about CLARITY as in CLARE of Assissi, and CLARE UK Earl of Clare being the reason for the name of CLARE MONT Claifornia schools etc and CLARE MONT New Hampshire. being that CITY on a HILLTOP that gave us some waters flowing down the CONECCTICUT RIVER - into MYSTIC and SAY BROOKE The ENGLISH UK explorers adventurers who gave us WINDSOR CT WINDSOR VERMONT and clearly a link to the WINDSORS of the CASTLE in the UK with the same name ! Pope LEO is bringing us myself in particular CLARITY of speech vision Mission and FUSION -UNITY dispell a CON FUSION with the "OTHER".. than the ONLY ONE HOLY OOH ..la la
huh?
I don't think it's charitable to make that speculation in a public way on this website.
I'd suggest praying for all Pillar readers, indeed, but refraining from speculation like that.
She is being poetic and playing with words. If it was all lower case like e.e. cummings (maybe with parenthesis and odd line breaks) -- or if it was sometimes in Capitals -- with Emdashes -- like Emily Dickinson, it would probably be more evident than when it is SOMETIMES ALL CAPS which we are used to.
I'm not sure it's just the capitalization that is throwing us for a loop. But maybe we should all just let this comment go.
Oh man, flipping canon tables in the Temple courtyard Ed is my new favorite Ed! 👏🏽
That last bit was excellently explained and really solidified my impressions and understanding of how protestant the whole SSpx leadership truly is. 😒
So basically, the SSPX is saying "I left because I just wasn't being fed." That's a reason to switch parishes, not repeat something that got the founder of your group excommunicated!
As another commenter said earlier this week, they're basically just Protestants with cassocks at this point.
Yes that is the best summary of their MO I’ve ever heard since I learned of them in the early 2000s. If it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck…. It doesn’t matter if the duck puts on a cassock and Roman collar 🤷🏽♀️
hey, thanks Michael! That was me!
I’m really not sure what kind of loving God would allow that the vast majority of people would not be able to find salvation at their local parish.
RIGHT?!!
This is the same horrific hubristic logic of all the Protestant churches and evangelicals that claim the true Church basically ceased to exist post apostles until Luther/fill in the blank rando guy started their church up with the REAL. WAY.
Really? Only YOU could possibly have stumbled on Gods Divine Plan and no one else? there but for the grace of God go I. 😞
Heterodox Catholicism, whether right or left, by saying “I’m right; the Church is wrong,” is essentially just another form of Protestantism
Amen. Two sides of exact same coin.
Excellent analysis of the SSPX/Pagliarani drama. You just got yourself a paid subscription from me. Thank you, Ed.
Cardinal Becciu's defense team:
I can't stand it, I know you planned it
I'm-a set it straight, this Watergate
But I can't stand rockin' when I'm in this place
Because I feel disgrace because you're all in my face
But make no mistakes and switch up my channel
I'm Buddy Rich when I fly off the handle
What could it be, it's a mirage
You're scheming on a thing, that's sabotage
I did not catch Donatism in the interview.
Rather, I was convicted by the damning critique of the work (or lack thereof) some parishes do to save souls.
I reflected on certain parishes I have attended, parishes where: 1) the eucharist is treated as an after thought, 2) there is practically no confession offered and no penitents ever show up anyway (100% communion rate though), 3) the homilies week after week are slapstick, therapeutic feel-good drivel (or even error-laden), and 4) the music, architecture etc. is bland or even secular.
Is a regular parishioner better off there than having no church at all? A 17th century Japanese Catholic who hasn’t seen a priest in decades, clings to his faith, and contemplates the four last things in fear and trembling because of his distance from the Church could easily be better off spiritually than Bob who backslaps his priest at Our Lady of the Suburbs every week and is lulled into a false sense of his own salvation.
I need to think more. But it was a scary thought initially. Being in the Church is necessary but not sufficient. What to make of a parish that not only fails to emphasize this, but perhaps even inculcates the opposite and gives that aforementioned false sense of security?
One thing I will say for traditionalists: their communities make sure you know that God is serious and you better shape up.
There’s not much point doing liturgy and preaching rightly, if one is not in full communion with the Church and Peter.
Right, which is the obvious critique of SSPX and their untenable position.
I am just saying, their critique cannot be so easily brushed off as mere Donatism.
Yes, a regular parishioner is better off there - at even the most cringey, lukewarm, baloney-filled parish you can imagine - than outside of the Church. That is the point of the Church, and the efficacy of the Sacraments. A vibrant, reverent, thriving community that challenges us to greater holiness is, of course, even better, but the existence of "Option C is best" doesn't have an impact on the truth of "B is better than A".
I think a logical gap in your assessment is that just because the persecuted Japanese Catholic may very well be spiritually healthier than Bob, does not mean that a) Bob would become holier *if* he was cut off from Sacraments or b) the Japanese Catholic would not be even better off if he did have access to the Sacraments (even under suboptimal circumstances).
Just to be clear, I intentionally played around with the thought of someone who through no conscious choice had no access to the sacraments. I was not contemplating a schismatic or someone willfully skipping Mass.
Is the core of what you're getting at "how does scandal work in the economy of salvation" - like, is it possible for a Christian community to be *so* scandalous that the combined package (Sacraments+scandal) is a net negative for a randomly selected individual (like you said, assuming circumstances that mean they have no personal guilt in not having access to the Sacraments+scandal package)
My instinct is no - that grace & "the impact of scandal" are different kinds of things, so they can't cancel each other out - like asking how many meters cancel out a kilogram. But if I've learned anything about theology, it's that trying to make an analogy is a shortcut to heresy so...
Catholics often accuse Protestants of faith without works - to turn your back on a NO church simply because you find it distasteful (while that church remains in full communion with Rome mind!) is to seriously misunderstand the role of the church and why we are called to be part. I can understand frustration but a church stuck in the 1970s is still a place to start from. Refusing to attend any church for lack of one being trad enough to suit one’s tastes teeters dangerously close to the edge of vanity.
It reminds me of this advice JRR Tolkien gave to his son, and which I often use myself with great benefit:
« I can recommend this as an exercise (alas! only too easy to find opportunity for): make your Communion in circumstances that affront your taste. Choose a snuffling or gabbling priest or a proud and vulgar friar; and a church full of the usual bourgeois crowd, ill-behaved children—from those who yell to those products of Catholic schools who the moment the tabernacle is opened sit back and yawn—open-necked and dirty youths, women in trousers and often with hair both unkempt and uncovered. Go to Communion with them (and pray for them).
It will be just the same (or better than that) as a mass said beautifully by a visibly holy man, and shared by a few devout and decorous people. It could not be worse than the mess of the feeding of the Five Thousand—after which our Lord propounded the feeding that was to come. »
> Rather, I was convicted by the damning critique
Were you really? I, conversely, was infuriated because he insulted my mother. I forgave him, however.
> Is a regular parishioner better off there than having no church at all?
Yes. It is bigotry (or something; I'm not sure of the right word) to think that a "Bob" at an "Our Lady of the Suburbs" cannot become a saint in the monotony of his pedestrian life exactly as he is called to do. It's easy for us to look down on ordinary people but we have to remind ourselves that we cannot see into their souls. Even if we live with someone in community (which is not what we're talking about - we're talking about fellow parishioners that we are not close to), we might have very little idea of what is actually going on in their interior. God is directing the circumstances of their life. God is exposing them to carefully tuned trials to purify their souls like silver in the furnace. We do not see those trials and we do not see their reactions to them. We see them consuming the Eucharist, and they see us consuming it, and maybe we recoil from the way they did it, like the way I can't stand how one of my kids makes noises when he chews and maybe has his lips open. When I was suffering from a (ridiculous in hindsight) year of "am I, through my own error in youth, in the 'wrong' state of life? should I have been a nun? no one ever told me to consider it, so I didn't, so did I mess up God's plan for me?", post-annulment (in that downward spiral of "what does it mean that I was never married"), envious of what I read in hagiographies and autobiographies where women were being made holy in religious life, ... God said to me: I can crucify you anywhere, you know.
(you have to be in a pretty weird head space to find *that* consoling, heh.)
But, to return to my perplexity about your train of thought: do you imagine that a liturgy you don't like is worse than no liturgy at all? Are you a materialist? (No shame in being brainwashed by our materialist culture, all of us are and have to consciously struggle against it.) Do you think that nothing happens at the holy sacrifice of the Mass that we cannot see?
I have met more than one God-fearing, God-loving woman who has wondered the same about religious life. (Hi, I’ve met myself. It seems, anyway. But also, I’ve met others who shared the thought.) I think it’s a good thing to be struck by that line of thinking and that God uses it for good so long as we keep ourselves properly reigned in/don’t buck the angels who persistently drag us out of the ditch and back onto the track we are in fact on.)
Ed, excellent analysis!
⸻
Ed is the canon lawyer here, and I am not. But civil lawyers live and die by procedural due process, and those principles are not foreign to canon law — they inform it.
I don’t dispute that Pope Francis, as sovereign of Vatican City State, had the authority to issue the rescripts, nor that rescripts are not “laws” but singular administrative acts. Papal authority is not the central issue.
What matters is what these rescripts did. As I understand them, the four rescripts issued in 2019 and 2020 authorized prosecutors to operate outside the ordinary Vatican City legal framework — including wiretapping, seizure of electronic devices, and bypassing normal reporting channels because senior officials were themselves under investigation. Functionally, they operated as extraordinary search and surveillance authorizations.
The defense often mischaracterizes these as “secret laws.” That label is sloppy. But a narrower and more serious question remains largely unaddressed: whether executive authorizations that materially expand prosecutorial power must be disclosed to the defense before trial, so that evidence derived from them can be challenged in real time.
In most legal systems, even when warrants must remain secret at the moment of execution, they are disclosed pretrial and subjected to adversarial testing. That disclosure is not about limiting sovereign authority; it is about preserving equality of arms.
So unless one is prepared to argue that papal authority places rescripts authorizing wiretaps, seizures, and deviations from ordinary procedure entirely beyond pretrial disclosure, the unavoidable conclusion is that procedural fairness has no operative meaning in Vatican City criminal law.
Yes, but as Ed has been at pains to point out; The Vatican City State is governed by an absolute monarch. In an absolute monarchy the sovereign IS the ultimate arbiter of justice in his/her realm, and it is a tiny one at that. The Vatican City State's entire 'population' is it's own civil service- the Curia, which is extraordinary in any circumstances for even an absolute monarchy. What else could have Pope Francis done? Clearly Becciu and his cohort don't want the gravy train to switch off but they forgot who always had their hand on the tap...
A liberal democratic society's expectations of procedural fairness is fundamentally different to an absolute monarchy's expectations of procedural fairness. You can kind of see Becciu's cunning here in that he knows EXACTLY how power, justice and procedure are supposed to work in an absolute monarchy, which he enjoyed immensely for years and years. Then cries like a big baby to the media who all function on assumptions of liberal democratic values of procedural fairness, about how UNFAIR that it all is that the Pope gets to be exactly what he is; an absolute monarch with every right to run his realm as he sees fit. If he needs to issue special orders to circumvent ordinary chains of command to prosecute someone who is at the top of the chain of command, so be it. It's way better than the alternative, which is a private dressing down and followed by a beheading, for example. Or just ordering him to a monastry in the mountains and stripping him down quietly and turning his name into the Vatican's Voldemort.
God you could write an amazing 'Yes Minister'-style black comedy about this entire fiasco and unlike every other comedy, every dang word of it would be true.