Hilary White, will you be my girlfriend? (chastely, of course)

This is an amazing interview. My bolds.

Yes, it seems that the only thing anyone can talk about is the sex abuse scandals, and it is clear that history is being made. Taking the longest possible view, the Church is at last passing out of a phase that started in the 1950s, and with the sex abuse cases, is simply reaping what it has sewn. The result of effectively abandoning the traditional moral strictures in seminary formation is going to be moral chaos in the Church. Two and two still equal four. And now, even despite the attempts by the media to obscure this equation, many more people can see that, so much more clearly than before. The state of moral chaos, the doctrinal and liturgical disaster that is the Church in Belgium, Germany, Austria, France, Britain etc, is now being revealed for the evil that it has been all along. That this did not come about under John Paul II is an indication of Benedict’s new direction and strengths.

Again, taking the long view, I think this period will end up being a positive one for the Church. If the mainstream media has failed to make the connection between their favourite European bishops publicly opposing the Church on homosexuality and condoms and their protection of predatory homosexuals in the priesthood, the lesson is not being lost on those who see the situation with the eyes of the Faith. It will soon occur even to some MSM pundits that it has been the darlings of the “progressive” end of the Church, the poster-boys of the Revolution, who have been the most egregious culprits in covering up for their abusive priests and fellow bishops. The Weaklands, the Mahoneys, the Danneelses.

These scandals will, and indeed have already resulted in many becoming so distressed that they will leave the Church. But it seems obvious that those who have so attached themselves to the anti-Catholic Revolution that they would leave when it is shown to have been a hoax and a scandal, have in fact long since left the practice of the Catholic religion, if they ever had the Faith at all.

In the long term, Cardinal Ratzinger’s famous prediction of a smaller and more faithful Church will certainly come true, as it is demonstrably doing now in Austria, and this is certainly a loss. But I will dare to take Cardinal Ratzinger’s prediction one step further, and say that the new, smaller more faithful Church, will be all the more equipped to rescue their fallen-away fellow citizens, particularly after a period of state persecution.

Perhaps this looks in a worldly sense like a wan hope, but it is the real hope, the theological Hope, that God can bring a far greater good out of the darkness we are now experiencing. Pope Benedict clearly knows this, and he knows what he can and cannot achieve. His actions in the last two or three years, particularly with the outreach to the Anglicans, to the Orthodox and to the SSPX, have made it clear that he anticipates and hopes for this outcome. I have a friend here who likes to say that in five years, Benedict has done more for the true ecumenical cause, that of bringing all Christians back into the fold of Rome, than his predecessor did in nearly three decades. In this alone, Benedict has made extraordinary progress. But his actions have necessarily been preparatory. He is creating a situation in which the Church can begin to heal, a process that will take a long time, and will still be going on long after he is resting in St. Peter’s.

He also seems to know that he is limited in what he can achieve. He knows the Vatican machinery too well to think that he can, as so many of us have daydreamed, simply start firing people. A few heads have rolled, it is true, but although we tend to think of the pope as allpowerful in the temporal sense, we have seen, as in the diocese of Linz, that the “nuclear option” is not as easy to achieve as it might look on paper.

At the same time, Benedict, who knows in more detail than perhaps anyone else in Rome about the doings of these priests, is undertaking a clean-up operation. But he knows the size of the Aegean Stables. Is he willing to divert a whole river to clean it out? I don’t think we have yet seen everything Benedict plans.

We all knew the Revolution could not last. The lack of decisive action against it through the long period of the last pontificate has allowed it to grow complacent and comfortable, but we still knew that its dedication to a certain political ideology and its anti-Catholic shortcomings were going to bring it down eventually. The truth always wins. And the signs are growing, particularly in Europe, that a storm of persecution is brewing, which has always been good for the Church.
But remember that Benedict is of that generation that put all their eggs into the Vatican II basket and is determined to “make the council work”. This despite that 45 years after its close, they are still arguing over what its purpose was. Like nailing Jell-O to the wall. Younger Catholics, those of us that are left in the pews, simply cannot understand this obsession of the last generation with that monumental failure. But for the Ratzinger generation, “The Council” defined Catholicism, and it seems they cannot be convinced to give it a dignified burial.

But we cannot think that a single man, even the pope, even a great pope, could bring about huge sweeping changes for the better. As we have seen in the last few decades, it is a great deal easier to destroy the Church’s traditions with the sweep of a pen, than it will be to restore them. The Vatican is an old and peculiarly Italian institution and it is used to doing things the same way it always has, whether the ruling faction is “conservative” or “liberal”. It is a cliché, perhaps, but true, that the Church takes the centuries-long view, and what is hap-hap-happenin’ to the rest of us in the world is little more to the men Inside the Walls than a momentary distraction over one’s morning cappuccino.