By Michael Warren Davis, Editor of Crisis Magazine - I thought of (St. John of the Cross) as I read Robert Cardinal Sarah’s new book, The Day is Now Far Spent. It is dedicated to two very different pontiffs: Pope Benedict XVI (a “peerless architect of rebuilding the Church”) and Pope Francis (a “faithful and devoted son of Saint Ignatius”). Yet it is Sarah himself, I think, who lays out the finest blueprint we’re likely to see for ecclesial reform—or perhaps I should say counter-reform… Today, the word “reform” drips with innuendo, just as it did in the time of St. John of the Cross. It signifies a desire to change the permanent teachings of the Church as a solution to institutional corruption. It uses a temporal crisis as an excuse to propagate spiritual errors.