All The Pope's Men

I love The Tablet, a British journal that considers itself a "paper of progressive, but responsible Catholic thinking, a place where orthodoxy is at home but ideas are welcome." It always has something thought-provoking to say about the trends and reforms in the church.

Came across this great review of John Allen's book "All the Pope’s Men: The inside story of how the Vatican really thinks."

An excerpt: "Allen's 'top ten Vatican values' are instructive. Authority is an expression of community and tradition: the assumption of the Curia is that 'power ennobles, because it flows from Holy Orders and draws on the grace of the Sacrament' - which is also, incidentally, the main reason it is not particularly women, but lay people in general, who fall far below the top rungs of decision-making. But few believe that ordination inoculates a man from being naïve, stubborn or simply wrong; the Pope's fiercest critics, he points out, are just down the corridor from him.

"He is also particularly good on the bella figura, the importance which the Vatican no less than Italians attach to keeping up appearances. This means steering clear of embarrassments and disagreements, which can result in a failure to face up honestly to problems (not least the sex abuse crisis). But it is also an attitude that life is a kind of art, and that efficiency and results are not the only goods. Beauty beats speed; formality trumps directness; the law's ideal must be upheld - even if privately those who fail to meet it will be compassionately dealt with."

"The Vatican sees itself as cosmopolitan ('officials have to think not just how something will play in Peoria, but in Pretoria and Peking and São Paulo') and objective, proud to be above the fray of local passions and insulated from lobbies and cultural pressures. Vatican officials do not see themselves as imperialists imposing their will on local Churches, but as defenders of the 'simple faithful' against avant-garde theologians, experimental liturgists, or bishops who believe themselves above canon law. Which helps to explain - although Allen does not mention it - why the Vatican takes seriously objections from self-appointed orthodoxy police in dioceses: not because it helps the Vatican to impose a line on local Churches but because it believes it is defending the 'simple faithful'. But sticking up for the little guys is selective, he observes. 'Since in general most Vatican officials tend to be theological conservatives, the populism of the Holy See tilts to the right.'"