William Oddies's article reminded me of a story I was told about a conversation with a distinguished academic, a supporter of La Beattie. Now, theology wasn't his field but he was certainly a "liberal", his claim was that the Pope could do anything he wanted to do.
If he chose the Pope could merely sign a document saying women could be ordained priest or bishop before breakfast and after breakfast ordain as many as he wished. In the same way he could change the Church's teaching birth control or abortion, or even the matter for the Eucharist: substituting coke and crisps if he so wished. By the same reasoning, taken to its ultimate extreme, he could add or subtract Persons to the doctrine of the Trinity itself.
Orthodox Catholics are often shocked at the hatred the heterodox have for the person of the Pope, both Pope Benedict and his Blessed predecessor. They seem to have the idea that anything they object to is the personal responsibility of the Pope, that he alone is the brake, holding back their own vision of the Church.
This is the terrifying Spirit of Vatican I that really sees the Church as Pope's personal fiefdom and he as its master rather than its servant and makes his fellow bishops his lackeys or at best or at best merely consultors who may be dispensed with at will, rather than co-workers with the Pope and inheritors with him of Apostolic authority.
If you add a bit of cottage Marxism you can then can start speaking, as Ms Beattie does, of an "official" Magisterium and other legitimate Magisterii which are acceptable alternatives or could at some stage take the place of the official one. Then of course the whole Church is seem as a battleground of acceptable opposing ideologies.
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