http://www.ewtnnews.com/catholic-news/World.php?id=7089
Not being intimately familiar with the actual, as opposed to theoretical Catholic hierarchy, I'm not certain how big a deal removing 2-3 bishops a month is by modern standards, but I wager it represents a good fraction of the Pope's energies over an extended period of time. I think most of us are going to miss Benedict when he resigns this week.
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Removing a bishop from office is a very big deal; canonically the process can take months. (This is why it's often easier simply to ask them to resign).
Benedict's Papacy was largely interior, so we won't know for some time what fully went on during it. But I suspect, on the basis of things like this, that if there is to be a period of repentance and renewal and regeneration within the Church, that history will mark Benedict as having tilled the soil for it. And, in this respect alone, he will be (hopefully) be remembered far more for his quiet, competent administration of the Church for eight years than for decades' of JPII's showboating.
So 2-3 bishops a month at a sustained rate represents a fairly significant by historical standards housecleaning then.
One could argue then that a likely reason he's resigning is so that a new Pope can carry on the work he's doing without having to face a 10 year backlog of dead wood from a de facto 'dead' Pope?
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