<\/a>Source: Real Clear Religion<\/a> | Rod Dreher<\/p>\n Why didn’t the Renaissance popes see what their tolerance for corruption, in themselves and within clerical ranks, threatened to do to the Church — both to believers, and to the institution? The late historian Barbara Tuchman analyzed their self-destructive foolishness this way:<\/p>\n Their three outstanding attitudes — obliviousness to the growing disaffection of constituents, primacy of self-aggrandizement, illusion of invulnerable status — are persistent aspects of folly. While in the case of the Renaissance popes, these were bred in and exaggerated by the surrounding culture, all are independent of time and recurrent in governorship.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In other words, folly of this sort is part of human nature, and it will always afflict governing elites. Wise leaders will be aware of this weakness, and will not only remain vigilant against it, but also act to remedy manifestations of it before they can metastasize into threats against the very viability of the institution.<\/p>\n In Philadelphia, where I live, Catholics are reeling from a recent grand jury report revealing that the archdiocese left in place a shocking number of priests it believed had been credibly accused of abuse — this, even though church officials had previously pledged to have cleaned house. Upon hearing this news, a New York Catholic priest said to me the idea that any diocese would still behave so recklessly after events of the past decade beggars belief. Alas, it probably would have surprised Tuchman not one bit.<\/p>\n In my own church, the Orthodox Church in America, the bishops of the Holy Synod are advancing a vicious, highly politicized dispute with the primate, Metropolitan Jonah. The apparent reason has to do with administrative concerns, but many believe there are deeper ideological issues in play. Whatever the case, having suffered through two successive corrupt Metropolitans who, in Jonah’s words, “raped the church,” the spectacle of the OCA’s governing class (bishops and lay leaders) behaving with indifference to the church’s real interests is sparking deadly despair among many of the faithful.<\/p>\n