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The current number of the New York Review of Books includes Princeton historian Anthony Grafton’s Machiavellian post of a couple of weeks ago about Pope Benedict and his troubled church. Although he expresses great appreciation for Benedict the theologian, calling him “probably the greatest scholar to rule the church since Innocent III” (and that’s a compliment to Innocent), Grafton doesn’t think much of his handling of pedophile cases prior to becoming pope, nor does he expect him to be able to do what ought to be done to reform the Church.

He does, however, hold out some hope:

But
that is no reason for Catholics–or non-Catholic admirers of the Church,
like
the present writer–to despair. Over the centuries, the central
institutions of
the Church have often worked in counter-productive ways, emphasizing the
powers
and prerogatives of the institution over the spiritual life of the
faithful.
Again and again, Catholics have proved astonishingly resilient and
inventive,
and have come forward to offer what the hierarchical church was not
providing.
Under Innocent III, the Curia crystallized as a
superbly effective institution, intent on rights and revenues, rather
than
tending to the poor and sick who were crowding into Europe’s rapidly
growing
industrial and trading cities.

But
when Francis of Assisi founded an order of men who were willing to give
up all
they had and minister to the urban poor, and Dominic founded a second
one of
men dedicated to preaching the truth and rooting out heresies, Innocent III immediately gave both of them vital
encouragement. Three
centuries later, between 1534 and 1549, a very different pope, the
politician
and aesthete Paul III, offered warm support
when
Ignatius Loyola arrived in Rome with a few tattered followers and a plan
to
preach to former Catholics in Protestant lands and to non-Christians
overseas,
and when St Angela Merici created a new form of religious life for
women.

This is strongly reminiscent of what Machiavelli has to say about the Church at the beginning of Book III of the Discourses on Livy, where he emphasizes the importance of renewal for both republics and religious bodies (which he calls “sects”):

But as to sects, such renewal is also seen to be necessary by
the examples of our religion, which, if it had not been brought back to its
principles by Saint Francis and Saint Dominic, would have been entirely
extinguished: for by their poverty and by their example of the life of Christ,
they brought it back to the minds of men where it had already been extinguished; and
their new orders were so powerful, that they were the reason why the dishonesty
of prelates and the heads of the religion did not ruin her; by still living in poverty and having so much credit with the people through confessions
and preachings, they are able to make them understand that it is evil to
speak evil of the evil, and that it is good to live rendering them obedience, and
if they make errors to leave their punishment to God. And thus these bad [rulers] do as much evil as they can, because they do not fear that punishment
they do not see or believe. This renewal [of Saint Francis and Saint Dominic]
therefore has maintained and still maintains this religion.

Machiavelli, you’ll note, makes Francis and Dominic into enablers of curial corruption. Grafton, more gentle-minded, merely claims that such spiritual renewal makes it possible for Catholics to persevere in their faith. Either way, reform at the top is not in the offing.