The Huffington Post is hosting at this time a video discussion by Jacob Soboron, Laura Mangan, Paul Raushenbush, and Roberta Lavin, on the future of the Catholic Church along these lines:
Huge institutions, struggling with corruption and suffering historic crises of legitimacy, are becoming all too commonplace these days. Could the same fate befall the largest Christian denomination in the world?Commentary. The Vatican is not the Church: it is the headquarters of the Church but by itself, not "the Church." It is the sovereign territory where the Roman See is located, but it's not by itself the Roman See. If we have learned anything from history, is that the Roman See survived the Roman Empire, the Barbarian invasions, and it survived a whole slew of medieval "bad popes" and incidents and accidents down to the Borgias and the Renaissance, and the loss of the Papal States in the 19th century. It still stands.
Recently, Catholics -- including Chris Matthews -- have worried that the power of government could destroy the authority of the Church. At a time when institutional corruption worldwide has become a strong source of disillusionment and anger, concerns are growing that the Vatican is in danger of losing its own authority.
With a host of scandals and no hope of a bailout, the Vatican is working to regain its footing by showing a willingness to play by modern rules. For example, the Holy See has hired a Fox News correspondent to run its communications shop.
Is a more corporate approach the Catholic Church's silver bullet?
Can the Vatican right its ship without radically reforming its power structure, or is it time for sweeping change at the top?
What happens to religion if churches are perceived as just as corrupt as big institutions in the secular world?
Whatever is going on now doesn't compare to what the Roman See has survived in 2,000 years of history. Therefore, yes, the Vatican, the Roman See, and the entire Church will survive. Whether the Pope reorganizes the Vatican, is another thing, but the relationship between him and the Church, and the very structure of the Church will remain and that, unchanged, for this is the very structure that has survived 2,000 years of attacks from within and from without, and every single scandal therein.