There are many aspects of Catholicism that set it apart from the rest of Christianity. One of these is its loyalty to the papacy. Catholics believe that the Pope in Rome stands in a direct line that can be traced back to the apostle Peter, and that he has unparalleled spiritual and teaching authority. In certain matters of faith and morals, the Pope speaks infallibly—that is to say, without error.
“You are Peter and on this rock I will build my church.”
Matthew 16
The hierarchical system of Church government was established by Christianity in CE 160. Up to then, the various Christian communities had enjoyed considerable autonomy, with the result that there was both an absence of clear leadership and frequent disputes over doctrine. To tackle this, the early Church gradually adopted a set-up consisting of a number of clerical layers (archbishops, bishops, priests, deacons), who were governed by the Pope. They in turn wielded authority over the people, who were known as the laity.
Theory and practice In the early years of the Christian Church, the authority of the papacy was something that existed more in theory than in practice. It was not until the middle years of the fifth century, during the papacy of Leo the Great, that the writ of the Pope as Bishop of Rome and successor to St. Peter prevailed to any significant extent in Europe. Leo achieved this authority by his personal dedication and example, combined with a successful missionary strategy and alliances with powerful kings and princes.
Leo I (440–461) is one of only two popes in history to be accorded the title “the Great.” He is best remembered for his insistence on the supreme authority of the papacy in the Church. “He hammered home the identity of the papacy with Peter,” writes the Cambridge ecclesiastical historian Eamon Duffy. “Leo’s sense of this identity was almost mythical. Leo, though an “unworthy heir,” was the inheritor of all Peter’s prerogatives.” In applying vigorously and ruthlessly this vision of the papacy, Leo moved Christianity from a system of largely autonomous prelates and bishops, widely scattered about the lands of the old Roman Empire, to a hierarchical model of government with the Pope at the top. A skilled orator and diplomat, he was also a man of great courage. In 452, he confronted Attila the Hun, who was laying waste to northern Italy and preparing to head south toward Rome, and persuaded him to withdraw.
Thereafter there were periods of supreme papal power, and other periods—as in the Dark Ages of the ninth century—when Rome and the papacy fell into disarray. Though Catholicism continues to cling to the notion of an apostolic succession that links every one of St. Peter’s 260-plus successors back through him to Jesus, the reality is that libertines, frauds and even, legend has it, a woman disguised as a man have held the office. The Church, however, teaches that the failings of individual popes should not detract from the authority of the post. It should also be remembered that many popes have been men of great intellect, humility, spirituality and moral courage, truly worthy of St. Peter’s mantle.
“The Papacy is not other than the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire.”
Thomas Hobbes, 1651
Papal elections In the Church’s first millennium, popes were often elected by popular acclaim—either by the clerics surrounding them, or by the people of Rome. Secular rulers also sometimes played a role, as part of the crucial relationship between Church and state. From 1059 onward, the system that still exists today began to be established. Popes are now chosen in a series of secret ballots by the Church’s cardinals from among their number. Almost 80 percent of those men who have so far sat on the throne of St. Peter have been Italians, and 38 percent Romans. However, with an ever-larger proportion of cardinal electors now coming from the developing world, it is thought to be only a matter of time before one of their number becomes pope, and thus a symbol of what is now geographically a universal church.
Infallibility The claim to supreme, God-given authority has been made by and of popes through the ages and lies at the very core of Catholicism. What the Pope teaches, it is said, should not be contradicted or ignored by any member of the Church. The tradition that the papacy preserves the truth of the apostles was first enshrined in 519 in the Formula of Hormisdas, named after the pope who, together with the Roman Emperor Justin, endorsed it.
Over the following centuries there was a long-running debate within the Church about papal infallibility, but it was only in the nineteenth century—at precisely the time when the Pope’s temporal power was at its lowest ebb, with the loss of the Papal States in 1870 during the push toward the reunification of Italy—that the claim of the Pope to speak without error on some questions in the spiritual domain was endorsed by a meeting of the cardinals in Rome. Since that time, only one papal statement—the declaration in 1950 that Jesus’s mother Mary had risen body and soul to heaven, an event known as the Assumption—has been deemed infallible.
Excommunication
In medieval times—when the Inquisition was at the height of its powers, working often through torture and capital punishment to keep Catholics in line with papal teaching—excommunication was used frequently in response to dissent. Post-Reformation, though, the Council of Trent sought to curb such excesses, ordering that excommunication only be invoked with “sobriety and great circumspection.” The rulebook of the Catholic Church, the Code of Canon Law, includes in its list of sins risking excommunication: apostasy, heresy, schism, desecration of the Eucharist, physical violence against the Pope and procurement of a completed abortion.
Through the workings of his civil service in the Vatican (the curia), the network of local archbishops and bishops around the globe, and priests in parishes, the Pope retains the power to discipline individual Catholics—sometimes by exclusion from the sacraments—and in rare cases to expel them from the Church, in a process known as excommunication. It is stressed, however, that since to be ejected from the Church you must first have joined it through baptism, the door always remains open after excommunication for repentance and readmittance.
the condensed idea
The Pope runs Catholicism
| timeline | |
|---|---|
| CE 64 | St. Peter executed |
| 160 | Hierarchy established |
| 440 | Leo the Great extends rule |
| 1870 | Pope declared infallible |