In a remarkably frank briefing during the Second Synod for Europe in the Vatican in October last year, the Scottish Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, Archbishop Keith O'Brien, admitted that when bishops get together in Rome these days the question of "the next pope" recurs frequently during private, informal conversations.
That remark did not meet with Vatican approval, reportedly incurring the displeasure of the president of the Synod of Bishops, Belgian Cardinal Jan Schotte. Yet Archbishop O'Brien was only telling us what we already know.
Like it or not - and some Curia figures will go out of their way to tell you they do not like the expression at all - the reign of John Paul II on the seat of Peter is now in an "end-of-pontificate" phase. The 80-year-old Pope's all-too-obvious physical frailty has prompted much speculation both about his successor and the agenda that successor might bring to his evangelical mission.
While the ghoulish nature of such speculation may seem offensive to some, it is both inevitable and legitimate. As far back as November 1994, in his Apostolic Letter, Tertio Millennio Adveniente, Pope John Paul himself invited those of good will to reflect on the future:
"On the threshold of the new millennium, Christians need to place themselves humbly before the Lord and examine themselves on the responsibility which they, too, have for the evils of our day. The present age, together with much light, also presents not a few shadows."
In such a context, Vatican commentators are busy these days watching for outward signs of inner tendencies. one Cardinal's "declaration" is weighed against another's "pastoral letter" as if both represented election programmes.
Recent events, such as the beatification of the anti-Semite, anti-modernist Pope Pius IX and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's hardline declaration, Dominus Iesus, reasserting that the Catholic Church is "the single Church of Christ", have been seen not just as isolated events which have their rhyme and reason within church life but also as attempts to indicate the Catholic Church's way forward into the new millennium.
That impression also seemed to be confirmed this week when Australia's Cardinal Edward Cassidy went out of his way in Portugal to play down the seemingly hardline aspects of Dominus Iesus and reaffirm the Vatican's commitment to ecumenism.
In effect, in a highly-unusual public spat, Cardinal Cassidy appeared to "contradict" one of the most influential members of his Curia peer group, German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
To the outsider this seems like something more than just a clash of ideas on how best to handle ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue. It looks much like a clash between a "liberal" wing of the church, keen to leave all lines of communication open, and a "traditionalist" wing, more concerned about the reaffirmation of the "true and eternal" faith than about dialogue with the "present age" of "much light . . [and] not a few shadows".
Senior Curia figures, inevitably, reject such analysis, claiming that media commentators consistently put two and two together to make 22. Cardinals Cassidy and Ratzinger, they claim, have not been sending mixed signals to the outside world this month.
Rather, they have both been merely promoting and following their specific briefs. Cardinal Cassidy is president of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, while Cardinal Ratzinger is the No 1 man at CDF, the old Holy Office and, as such, is the Vatican's "watchdog of orthodoxy".
One senior Curia figure suggested to The Irish Times this week that the media's insistence on interpreting the form rather than the content of Vatican documents and events led to wrong conclusions.
"There are no factions in here, not like the media would like to portray it. People are getting on with their business, church business . . . God be with the days when things were not so closely examined, when people were not thinking about the successor . . . In those days, the pope would be elected and six months into the job before many of the faithful would know anything about it."
Put simply, some senior Curia figures believe the criteria of transparency and accountability, fundamental to a healthy democracy, have nothing to do with analysis of church affairs. Put another way, if you try to assess events within the Holy See using the same criteria as apply to the election of a US president then you will get it all wrong.
In a sense, however, senior Curia figures have to say and believe this, just like they have to believe that the pope is elected in Conclave, not by cardinals alone but rather by cardinals guided by the Holy Spirit. The fact that bishops and cardinals, however, spend time thinking and wondering about the next pope would suggest that some of them feel the Holy Spirit needs all the help it can get.
While Curia figures see the concomitant beatifications earlier this month of two apparently very different popes, John XXIII and Pius IX, as proof that "holiness" cannot be measured by a socio-political yardstick, outsiders see it as nothing less than a balancing act between "liberal" and "traditionalist" forces in the Curia, in particular, and the Catholic Church at large.
Likewise, when the Cardinal of Milan, the Jesuit Carlo Maria Martini, was publicly downplayed by Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi of Genoa at last year's Europe Synod for having called for more "collegiality" in church affairs, this could have been seen as just a clerical tiff.
In all probability, it was more likely to have been a clash between one of the most influential and "liberal" cardinal-electors and one of the candidates for pope most favoured by conservatives. Church business may well be ongoing, as the man from the Curia says, but so, too, is the ill-defined and barely perceptible struggle to define the "job description", if not the identity, of the next pope.