Wow, Joe, you certainly made me do a bit of work that time! I thought I could just skim back through your posts and find the right one, but found myself staring at a list of 13,000-odd messages, with no clue about where to start. Fortunately a search for "Ratzinger" came up with what I'd half-remembered - buried in the "Obit: the old me" thread, where I'd never have found it.

This is what you said then: "Hey, Peter - Ratzinger's upper management. So is the Pope. Have you ever met a sincere person in upper mangement? I suppose there are some, but they're rare. Don't judge the rest of Catholics on what their chief executives do. Chief executives are necessary evils - but, oftentimes, they ARE evil."

That struck me at the time as pretty strong. Maybe it was stronger than you'd intended. But I apologise if it's me that's read more into it than you intended.

To digress, I've just read an impressive biog of our friend Stepinac, "Triple Myth" by Stella Alexander (1987). It concludes that he was not without fault, was generally well intentioned, but was lacking a worldview. Not exactly fighting his corner, but more persuasive than stuff I've read that WAS fighting his corner.