Soren wrote on Oct 18
th, 2009 at 8:56am:
organised religion is primarily concerned with social and political organisation is erroneous.
Well, religious primates give a bloody good impression of that being their churches’ primary concern.
However, these primates (Popes, Ayatollahs, Dalai Lamas et al) have a daunting task ahead of them upon their ascension… being the personification of god on earth can’t be easy (
) and probably lends credence to the age old story of cardinals at a Papal electoral conclave praying not to be chosen.
But then there is the darkly comedic story of Cardinal Montalto who became Pope Sixtus V. A stooped and wizened old man at his election and chosen for that reason – to be a harmless caretaker pope until a more suitable candidate was considered more ready to ascend. However, upon his election, as the story goes, he physically straightened, threw away his crutches and stood to accept his ascension, raising his arms up declaring, “Now I am Caesar”. For the five years of his Papacy, he worked like a man possessed, reasserting the political authority of The Vatican with a vengeance in his attempt to single-handedly reverse the reformation. They included executing thousands of heretics without mercy, reversing the poverty of the Vatican by any means available including the selling of Church offices, demanding the complete and undivided loyalty of European heads of state to the Pope by the real threat of excommunication, war and guaranteed execution when defeated… and, his most bizarre enterprise, personally rewriting the Latin Vulgate.
What keeps the Vatican in check today is the terminal decline of Christianity as a world religious socio-political force through the rise of secularism and education of the masses.
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