In John Allen's latest The Word From Rome we see two things. If you want to get a sweet appointment as a US Ambassador (say in France, Switzerland, or Rome) it helps to give the president several hundred thousand dollars. I realize that practice is very common, and it's not exactly selling federal offices to the highest bidder, but ...
The other thing is just how far to the right the Church has moved under John Paul II, and how thrilled the uber-reactionaries are with Benedict XVI. Allen seems to imply that the difference in the types of reactions that have greeted the appointment of the Archbishop of San Francisco as the new head of the CDF (he'll be the highest ranking American in the history of the Vatican) are partially due to the fact that the secular press just doesn't understand theChurch and that Archbishop Levada's really a moderate in the Church. That's one interpretation, sure. But it also implies that the church has drifted so far to the right under the late pope that at this point even the church's moderate leaders look like scary Dark Ages monsters to many people in the developed world. Since Benedict XVI seems very much interested in the place of the Church in the developed world ... there may be interesting times ahead.
Posted by armand at May 23, 2005 09:15 AM | TrackBack | Posted to Religion