In the history books, Benedict’s essay is likely to warrant no more than a footnote. The episode, however, is a perfect storm, and a microcosm of everything that is wrong in the Church today: factionalism, whataboutery, binary thinking, reductivism—all present in the commentariat and at work within a governing apparatus that is dysfunctional at every level and captained in the main by men who—when they are not wicked—are cowardly incompetents.