After the PR disaster, what does the future hold for Pope Benedict?

The night before Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunications on Richard Williamson and the other SSPX bishops, I emailed a friend in Rome who has close links to the papal household. I said: "You do know how awful this is going to look, don't you?" And he replied: "I know, but it's too late."

Today, Tom Heneghan of Reuters published a round-up of press reaction to the SSPX, and I'm beginning to regret saying that the Pope's design for the reunion of Catholic Christianity was going according to plan. Things hang in the balance.

Benedict has achieved wonders reintegrating the pre-Vatican II liturgy into the life of the Church. The celebration of the Tridentine Mass, while far from the norm, is becoming an everyday event. Moreover, the Lefebvrists are moving back towards the institutional Church - and they are, despite their trademark hauteur, ready to make significant concessions regarding Vatican II. Meanwhile, traditionalist Anglicans are being drawn to Rome by the promise of a personal prelature that would protect them from liberal RC bishops.

But the Williamson fiasco - the utter, utter incompetence of the Vatican communications service in failing to anticipate the outcry, and the sluggish response afterwards - has given Benedict's enemies the opportunity they have been waiting for since the day his name was proclaimed from the balcony of St Peter's.

Make no mistake: far from being deeply offended by the lifting of the excommunications, many liberals are delighted that the entire traditionalist movement has been tainted by the supposed "rehabilitation" of a Holocaust denier. Other, less extreme, liberals are meanwhile quietly content to sit back and watch "the Ratzinger project" unravel.

Given that traditionalist Catholics are prone to paranoia, it's amazing how naive the Pope and his advisers sometimes appear. The SSPX car-crash was an illustration of that naivety; and so, I fear, will be the appointment of the next Archbishop of Westminster.

The Church in England and Wales may not be a priority for the Holy Father, but in terms of marshalling opinion against the Benedictine liturgical and ecclesial reforms it punches above its weight. I hate to admit it, but The Tablet is widely read among English-speaking liberals, and its Rome correspondent, Bobbie Mickens, is an effective propagandist against the policies of this papacy. Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor has done nothing to implement those policies: he and his bishops offered only the most grudging support for the Pope during this recent crisis, in sharp contrast to the wonderfully illuminating statement by Cardinal O'Malley of Boston.

A leading Australian traditionalist rang me this morning. He was worried that lots of his fellow traddies were behaving as if the SSPX debacle was all got up by the media. It wasn't. Although I think the Pope was right to lift the excommunications, he walked right into a trap - and, as we speak, he is still caught in it. German Pope "rehabilitates" Holocaust denier, then (as we learned this week) promotes an Austrian cleric who thinks Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for immorality in New Orleans. You couldn't make it up; they didn't have to.

Read More