The men in the Politburo

When Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on March 11, 1985 members of the Politburo went out of their way to stress that what the new General Secretary was saying was being misinterpreted.

Four years later Gorbachev travelled to the GDR for the country's 40th anniversary. Erich Honecker was slow to realise that 'Gorbi' was tired with all the nonsense that was going on.

Is that, more or less, what's happening in the Roman Catholic Church right now?

All those faceless men in the 'Politburo' and their 'phylacteries'.

On the fall of the Berlin Wall someone said, anything is now possible.