You just got to love The Guardian for its breathless coverage of the Catholic Church. You can pretty much read their coverage of the Church to the soundtrack from Jaws. From the story with the headline Pope gives top job to abortion hardliner
The pope handed one of the most powerful jobs in the Vatican to a cardinal who said recently that abortion was wrong, even in cases of rape.
Oh the horror – a bishop that believes in Church teaching!!! Cool though that prefect of the Congregation for Bishops is now a powerful job! Cardinal Marc Quellet is such a mean abortion hardliner for not wanting the execution of an innocent child in the womb for the grave sin of the father.
The prefecture is often regarded as the third most important job in the Vatican administration since its incumbent can prevent even the most gifted priest from rising to a position of leadership in the church. Ouellet has in the past been touted as a successor to Benedict.
They always see things in terms of power. It is never about the fact that he will be serving the Church by helping to choose faithful shepherds who will safeguard the flock. No the lens viewed through is always in terms of power – he can block appointments!! Of course the media always saw then-Cardinal Ratzinger through the same lens as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. They saw him as a man using power, when in fact he would have been quite happy to be able to retire and to live a simple life of reading and writing living with his brother. No forget that – its always about power don’t you know.
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Great. I read the whole article and was looking for the usual ‘priestly celibacy’ and ‘sex abuse scandals’ — favorite bashing tools for just about anything the church does, and…yeah sure enough..there it is right there thrown in for good measure at the last sentence. When the secular press writes about the church, it gets to be typically boring. The common journalistic formula is make an outline on the hierarchy’s oppressive power, sex-abuse, celibacy –and spin as many words around those. Looks the same all the time. Never mind the facts. The editors would love it.
When I took my first trip to Steubenville in 2002 for a conference, I want to Mass at St. Peter’s Church. The priest there as his homily said that, for the dissenting groups, it’s all about power. It made a lot of sense then, and it makes more and more sense the more I hear.