Papal Power Quotes
His response was to being asked whether he could do something with Russian Catholics to help Laval win favor with the Pope, to counter the increasing threat of Nazism. This quotation is often used as an example of Stalin’s disrespect for the Papacy. However, in this case, the Pope was extremely weak politically and some argue spiritually for he did not oppose Hitler and the Nazis very much. Defenders of the Papacy argue that Hitler had overwhelming force and little respect for the Pope, and ironically this was what Stain was referring to. Ironically, another Pope, John Paul, had a major part in bring down the Soviet Union and he had no divisions.
John Ilyitch Sergieff. The power of the leadership of organizations, religious and secular, has long been in contention. There are those who advocate the strong, very powerful executive such as Russia under the Czars and the Roman Catholic Church and those who prefer a weaker leader with very limited power such as the United States and the Russian Orthodox Church.
At the time the Pope had secular, diplomatic relationship with many of the states of Europe:
This quotation illustrates two things. First, the enmity between the Protestants and the Catholic Church which the Lutherans had recently left. See for another anti-Catholic example of the Eastern Orthodox—{635099}. Second, the Muslim Ottoman Turks had recently conquered Constantinople and were very far from Iceland which was safe from their aggression. None the less, the hatred and fear of the Muslims had spread so far and fast in the Christian world, that even Christians who were in no danger prayed to be saved from them. Islamophobia was already well established in the middle of the 15th century.
The letter was written at the behest of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The quotation appears to ratify the Pope’s unlimited power, but in actuality carves out an exception whereby the Pope’s authority might be challenged in the future. Specifically, it claims the Pope has not the authority to alter that which “by the word of God, has eternal validity.” Politically, this position put the pope in a box. By arguing against the proposition, the Pope would have to maintain that he should have the right to alter the word of God that had eternal validity which no pope wanted to state. By not challenging the doctrine, there was an opening by which the pope’s omnipotence could be challenged in the future.
His positions presaged some of those of Protestants in the Reformation. In the great struggle of the time between the Pope and the Emperor, Marsilius was the leading advocate for the emperor’s superiority of authority. The Pope wrote a condemnation of these ideas.
Wycliffe, although a Roman Catholic, was an early reformist. He not only opposed the Pope vis a vis King Edward of England, but he went against church doctrine and printed the first English Bible. He was burned at the stake.
