By now we've all heard that the pope said that back in the '70s people didn't know that adults sexing children was a problem. Or maybe he said that the women's liberation movement coupled with moral relativism prevented people from understanding the absolute evil of pedophilia. This former Catholic says "whatever".
Follow me below the fold for why.
When gunpowder came to Western Europe, the last vestiges of the Old Republic had long been swept away. The emperors of Rome kept the Senate around to rubberstamp their edicts, but a thousand years after Rome had been sacked a few times, it was over. There were no emperors, but there was still the Roman Pontiff, who held theoretically infinite authority over Christian Europe.
The pope crowned the kings, who delegated authority to the barons and dukes and marquees and earls and so on, in the feudal system. Of course, the pope didn't really have that much authority. He held dominion over the papal states in central Italy, including Rome itself, but other than that the Church was essentially the United Nations, maintaining the balance of power and sometimes preventing wars or starting crusades. Meanwhile, the kings had authority over their barons only inasmuch as the barons let them: when the king of England wanted more taxes, the barons made him sign the Magna Carta. If a king didn't like what his underlings were doing, what could he do about it? Raise an army of knights, and besiege the castle. It wasn't very effective, and could only be done with the approval of the other barons.
Gunpowder changed that. Canons would put an end to hiding in the castles. Instead of an army of well-trained knights, the king just needed to round up a few peasants and spend a few weeks teaching them to point a gun. Fear kept the barons in line: fear of fully armed and operational peasant armies, backed by cannon.
"Do not be too proud of this new technological terror you've constructed," said the Pope, "[it] is insignificant compared to the power of the Lord". But it was not to be. The newly minted monarchs took his spiritual authority, his papal states shrunk to nothing more than the city, and when Rome was taken to be the capital of a united Italy, he was left with only his independence in the Holy See.
So now, we see some newspapers saying that the Pope made excuses for the scandal in his Christmas speech, while others take the side of the Church in the culture wars. Over this scandal, the Church has lost the tacit immunity to prosecution that its priests enjoyed, another loss in the long decline of the Church's authority. All the Church can do is continue to fight culture wars, which have in many cases long been lost: up until very recently, the Church was trying to tell AIDS victims not to use condoms. Catholics aren't supposed to use contraceptives, or get abortions, or be gay, but individual Catholics have their own opinions about these issues instead of blindly agreeing with the Church.
The Church could have remade itself as a force for good. It could have argued against the crassness of the last decade and proclaimed that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of god, that blessed are the poor for they shall inherit the Earth. It didn't. It fought culture wars and will die as an institution fighting culture wars because the popes are too busy imagining themselves like the popes of old who had real political authority and groveling at the feet of rich donors to take any kind of stand like Jesus.
For their part, the newspapers report what the popes say in a neener-neener tone like it's a new thing that the popes don't have any authority. It isn't, these are the last ravings of a dying institution, and it's not funny, it's sad.