The Catholic Church normally prefers an image of serene and seamless unity, where decisions are reached at the top by prayerful consensus. The current situation is shockingly different. It seems even the Pope’s closest advisers are happy to conduct their disputes in public. Thus Cardinal Walter Kasper’s cautious attempt to find a way forward over the issue of remarried Catholics receiving Communion – a job he was asked to do by Pope Francis himself – is dismissed by Cardinal George Pell, formerly of Sydney, now the Vatican’s financial overlord, as a “counterproductive and futile search for short-term consolations”. He added for good measure: “Healthy communities do not spend most of their energies on peripheral issues”, in which he inc