Behind the large green doors of the building, to the left of St Peter's, officials, mainly priests, are busy with different kinds of 'cleaning processes', some of which critics would argue are also bringing us back several hundred years.
The big issue for the CDF is and has been cleaning up the mess and confusion and sheer chaos that emerged around child protection and child abuse by clergy throughout the Catholic world.
Our own nuncio, Archbishop Charles Brown, was one of the most respected officials in the CDF and was responsible for some of the most sensitive files.
The CDF's best-known prosecutor of abusing priests, Msgr Scicluna, is going home to Malta, having as many would see it, done a good job.
In fact, he was known as the scourge of priests who abused, even if it did take the church years to get its act together.
These are just two of the generally good and dedicated priests who, as officials, serve their church with loyalty, faith and conviction.
So what is less comprehensible is why these and other CDF officials feel such urgent need to hound liberal ageing Irish priests such as Redemptorist Fr Tony Flannery and, among others, Fr Brian D'Arcy.
For decades liberal clerics in Ireland have published their views and debated publicly, and in Fr D'Arcy's case had a head-to-head discussion with Cardinal Daly live on 'The Late Late Show'.
There was no silencing Fr D'Arcy afterwards.
Fr Flannery and others hope for a church that is open to married and women priests; want a re-evaluation of the teaching on contraception and a more sensitive teaching on homosexuality.
Of course, those in the CDF would say that if we want to evangelise Irish people and tell them about the good things that the church teaches, then we have to have our priests on the same page.
But that is an old church way of looking at this.
Would it not be better to take on the liberal priests and instead of silencing them, offer counter arguments, as St Paul says, but in love?
I'm not seeing the church St Paul spoke of and I'm certainly not feeling the love, but I am seeing a well-meaning group of clerical lawyers and officials locked away in a Vatican cocoon creating a climate of fear among elderly clergy in Ireland.
They have, by virtue of 30 or 40 years ministering in the priesthood, earned the right to disagree with me or you or even an official in the CDF who, looking out on St Peter's Colonnade, wishes complicated Irish Catholics could be as easily cleaned up for a speedy return to a time of supposed certainty.
Garry O'Sullivan is managing director of The Irish Catholic