There are still those who blame all the woes of the Catholic Church on the media but thankfully those types, who prefer to bury their heads in the sand and point the finger solely at the media, are dwindling as the painful truth becomes glaringly obvious, even to some of those often muddled cardinals at the top of the Vatican. The Vatican for a long time got it wrong on abuse and so did bishops conferences and individual bishops around the world.

And yes, some media have gone too far, especially in trying to jump to conclusions on Pope Benedict's role in cover-ups in Germany and clearly the Vatican was very angry about the recent reporting from the New York Times.

Yet the real battle between the Church and the media has been one of information. As Peggy Noonan - no enemy of the Church - wrote in the Wall Street Journal recently, ''they fought information...and the information won''. She wrote: ''The information came in through the cracks, it came in waves, in newspaper front pages, in books, in news beamed to every satellite dish in Europe and America. The information could not be controlled or stopped. The information was that something very sick was going on in the heart of the Church''.

She continued: ''Once, leaders of the Vatican felt that silence would protect the church. But now anyone who cares about it must come to understand that only speaking, revealing, admitting and changing will save the church''.

The Vatican needs to change. We're not advocating anything radical but just bring in younger generations of priests and nuns and allow them to rise to positions of authority.

There is too much of the Italian way of doing things in the Vatican - it is the centre for a global Church, not an Italian church. Everything closes in the early afternoon in the Vatican and yet if the Church is dealing with China and other parts of the world that are just beginning their day, in the Vatican everyone is gone home. Cardinals leave Vatican departments and are re-assigned as heads of other Church organisations whether they are capable of dispensing their duties or not. One has only to speak to those in the Vatican 'civil service' to hear how these practices are slowing the Church down and impeding her mission in the modern world.

Communications too is an aside and yet modern communications can wreck a Church initiative - think Regensburg or the Bishop Williamson affair - in a matter of hours as the gaffe or faux pas goes around the world.

The Vatican as it is currently structured is not fit for purpose. As George Weigel has said there was a failure in governance in the latter part of John Paul's reign. How could someone like Marcial Maciel fool Popes and cardinals for years? Cardinal Ratzinger wanted control of abuse cases which were being badly handled by the Congregation for the Clergy. Even the Irish bishops were critical of that Congregation for putting road blocks in their way when they tried to get their 1996 Guidelines accepted. Only in 2001 did Cardinal Ratzinger begin to wrestle control over that issue.

In the Vatican, the small few have control over the many, and to be part of that elite few, you have to be 'well got' and hope for eventual admittance. The Pope needs to get rid of the few, and listen to the many.

In a recent piece in the New York Times headlined 'Who can mock this Church?' journalist Nicholas Kristof was overwhelmed by Catholic missionaries in Southern Sudan - ''it's at the grass roots that I find the great soul of the Catholic Church'' he wrote. Describing the individual bravery of missionaries he met he says that unless we are willing to stand up to warlords or endure beatings like those missionaries, then ''we have no right to disparage them or their true Church''.

It doesn't have to be a 'them or us' contest with the media, we have so much good news. What we need is a top level clear out from the Vatican down and let's dump this monarchical system of Church governance, which was never Gospel mandated, so the voice of Jesus can be heard.