An exercise in raw intellectual vandalism has been underway in Rome since July 23: what was originally known as the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Marriage and the Family has been peremptorily but systematically stripped of its most distinguished faculty, and its core courses in fundamental moral theology have been cancelled. Concurrently, academics known to be opposed to the teaching of Humanae Vitae on the appropriate means of regulating fertility and the teaching of Veritatis Splendor on intrinsically evil acts are being appointed to teach at the reconfigured Institute, which is housed at the Pontifical Lateran University – the pope’s own institution of higher learning. Sixteen hundred nine years after the first Vandal sack of Rime, they’re at it again, although this time the chief vandal wearswas no mere donnybrook among intellectuals; it had real consequences in the life of the Catholic Church.

It led to the development of the international theological quarterly, Communio, as a counterpoint to the ultra-progressive Concilium. It led to the establishment of Ignatius Press and the great renewal of Anglophone theology influenced by Henri de Lubac and Hans Urs von Balthasar. It led to battles for the control of faculty slots in theology departments around the world. And, after a decade and a half of contention, it led to the election of Karol Wojtyła, who as John Paul II would appoint Joseph Ratzinger as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Resistance to the magisterium of John Paul II (a magisterium that was influenced, of course, by then-Cardinal