Some in the entourage end up in key jobs; others operate as a kind of shadow cabinet, vetting choices and enforcing doctrine.
Cardinal Gerhard Müller, who now heads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican body responsible for enforcing doctrine, said in a 2002 interview that "it would be a real discrimination of woman if she is considered as apt for the diaconate, but not for the [priesthood] or [as a bishop]".
But after a seemingly endless series of scandals, the 85-year-old who so ably enforced doctrine for his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, seemingly came to understand that only a new pope, one with far greater energies than he, could lead a global church and clean house inside the hierarchy at its helm.
As head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican department that enforces doctrinal orthodoxy, he sensibly delegated managerial work.Admittedly, John Paul liked to bypass bureaucracy and bequeathed a mess to his successor.
He said gay Catholics were particularly distressed in 1999 when the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a Vatican group whose members enforce church doctrine, silenced Sister Jeannine Gramick and the Rev. Robert Nugent of New Ways Ministry, an organization in Maryland that ministers to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Catholics.
So much, in fact, that instead of figuring out how to enforce the doctrine, the General Assembly could end up debating the policy's validity all over again, even though about 150 world leaders already endorsed it in 2005.
In a recent speech, China's justice minister warned lawyers that their primary duty was to support the Communist Party and promote a "harmonious society," and said that party minders would be sent to law firms to enforce that doctrine.
Now hospitals and nursing homes have no choice but to enforce Catholic doctrine universally over patient wishes.
God forbid (pardon the reference) that the State should enforce church doctrines under penalty of the criminal law.
