The Pope Must Google!

Awareness of the new media has reached the very, very, very highest levels. The New York Times reports:

The letter released Thursday in which Pope Benedict XVI admitted that the Vatican had made “mistakes” in handling the case of a Holocaust-denying bishop was unprecedented in its directness, its humanity and its acknowledgment of papal fallibility.

But it also contained two sentences unique in the annals of church history.

“I have been told that consulting the information available on the Internet would have made it possible to perceive the problem early on,” Benedict wrote. “I have learned the lesson that in the future in the Holy See we will have to pay greater attention to that source of news.”

In other words: “Note to the Roman Curia: try Google.”

Note: the pope was not denying the doctrine of papal infallibility, which has a very specific meaning. (Sister Anna Gregory would have wanted me to stress that point.)