The 2,000 Year Ethical History of the
Roman Catholic Popes
Part I: Major Themes and Funny Stories
FUNNY STORIES
Unburied Pope Bodies - When Innocent X died in 1655, his body was stripped naked and left on the bedroom floor. That was normal (yes normal) in his kleptocratic culture but what followed was extreme. None of his relatives (all of whom he had made fabulously wealthy) would spend a penny to bury him. Finally after three weeks, his body was stinking up the tool shed. The Vatican carpenters took up a collection and built a coffin for him. His successor had a lead coffin kept next to his bed. (Maybe he figured that lead was too cheap to steal and too heavy to carry.)
Ballet of the Chesnuts – A banquet was given in Cesare Borgia’s (son of Alexander VI,Part II) apartments when fifty courte-sans were in attendance for the enter-tainment of the banquet guests. After the food was eaten, lamp stands holding lighted candles were placed on the floor and chestnuts strewn about. The clothes of the courtesans were auctioned; then the prostitutes and the guests (and many children) crawled naked among the lamp stands to pick up the chestnuts (with their teeth.) Immediately following the spectacle, members of the clergy and other party guests together engaged in sexual activity with the prostitutes. According to Burchard: "Prizes were offered—for those men who were most successful with the prostitutes." According to William Manchester: "Servants kept score of each man's orgasms, for the pope greatly admired virility and measured a man's machismo by his ejaculative capacity."
The Pornacracy – Papal history from 867 to 999 is commonly called The Pornacracy. Most of the popes during that time were murdered and justly so. They were what we would call organized criminals struggling for the papacy.
Drafting A Hermit – Deadlocked in a Roman family power struggle, the Curia elected Peter (The Hermit of Merone) to be Celestine V. He lived in a cave in the mountains and was terrified when dragged to the city by an army of soldiers and richly dressed cardinals. After five miserable months, the competing families worked out a deal and let him resign. He was assured that he could go back to his cave. In reality he was jailed and murdered. The new pope feared his popularity with millions of Catholics who were hoping for church reform. They still have his skull and the nail they drove into it to kill him
A Female Pope – Now thought to be untrue, for centuries every-one believed in Pope Joan. Her gender was supposedly discovered when she gave birth during a processional. For the next 400 years a special chair (with a hole in the seat and back inclined at 45 degrees) was used to crown new popes. A junior cleric would feel the new Holiness and announce “there are testacies” whereupon the cardinals would respond “God be praised.” (Considering their attitudes towards women, see Attitudes Towards Women below, the thought of a female pope must have terrorized them.) One of two such surviving chairs is still on display (unlabeled) in Rome. Some experts think it was only an ancient Roman toilet or birthing chair used as a throne to immolate the emperors. Maybe it was just a commode for old pontiffs during very long ceremonies or simply to ease papal hemorrhoids? You can’t make this stuff up.
St. Peter’s Skeleton In Tact? –As legend has it, Peter was crucified upside down by driving nails through his feet. The next day his followers could not remove the nails so they just cut his feet off and buried him. Now the Vatican claims it has the skeleton of a 60ish man buried directly under the altar, with no feet.
MAJOR THEMES IN THE RCC’S HISTORY
“Great” Popes - The term “great” (as in Gregory the Great) is used by the Church to identify only two popes. Gregory The Great (540-602) was the only political leader who could bring some order to a chaotic Europe after the Roman empire’s collapse and barbarian invasions. He also sent missionaries to England etc. He is most esteemed for promoting the idea that the RCC is the most important institu-tion in the world and that the pope is its supreme leader. He was personally well behaved, from an old Roman family, educated and had been a civil administrator before becoming a monk. His theology was very simple, maybe Christ like.
“Good” Popes – Everyone ranks John XXIII (Roncalli) as a good pope. He opposed the Pro-Hitler policies of Pius XII (Pascali) and summoned the liberalizing Vatican II counsel. Although all agree that he was “good”, subsequent Popes seem to not much like Vatican II. He was gay, just so you know. That may have been why he was compassionate. He had felt the sting of condemnation, maybe like Jesus.
“Bad” popes are plentiful and for many different reasons. They were of course, creatures of the culture in which they lived. But they were powerful and very influential. They could have helped change the rules of the game. Mostly they just played the same game that got them the job.
As I read it, the big picture, 2,000 years of the Church is this:
Goal: money
Business Model: collect money from poor people,
give it to rich people in exchange for influence,
exchange influence for more money,
rinse and repeat
Daily Activity: struggle among groups to capture the papacy 24/7/365
Motivation to reform: cut off the money flow
(Nothing ever changed the Church’s methods except the loss of revenue caused by the Protestant Reformation.)
Why is the Bishop of Rome Supreme? – Every population center had a bishop, The Pope was just the Bishop of Rome. So why is he the big cheese? Because he is in Rome ! Romans like to assume that they are the center of the world. The very earliest popes asserted their primacy over the other bishops. Not wanting to admit their naked ambition, they claimed that because Peter died in Rome, his power descended to the Bishop of that city. It’s a poor excuse since neither Peter nor Jesus or anyone else ever lived there, Peter was just passing through.
Pope Always Described Benignly - How the popes are described is misleading. Some books elaborate on one pope, others on another. One book will describe a pope in a relatively benign way like quoting Leo X as saying “God gave us the papacy, let us enjoy it.” Another book will tell you what that actually meant to him. “Enjoy it” meant “watching pretty boys be tortured.” Celestine V “later died” means the new pope’s nephew drove a nail through his skull. If you read about them with fresh eyes, most of them make the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted look like school kids.
The Roman Mob was a huge influence in church history. Mobs of Romans routinely broke into the Vatican and threatened (killed some, beat many, blinded one) the popes. The popes usually avoided Rome as much as possible. They mostly lived in villas in the suburbs, some moving around to present a moving target.
Like our Astroturf PAC’s today, those mobs pretended to be the people but were probably organized by interest groups for self serving purposes. Powerful families (not the pope’s or his allies) were probably behind most mob attacks. Struggles between families went on for centuries. First there were just the Roman families struggling to capture the papacy, then Italian families, later kings struggling with internal and external competitors, then French Cardinals vs. Spanish Cardinals, etc. Today who are they? I don’t know, let’s think about it.
Power Struggles for the Papacy Lead To Deadlocks – The power struggles in the Curia were/are often so intense that they beame deadlocked. Usually they elected a “place-holder” pope who will keep it running until the competing groups could fight it out. Such place-holder popes were often benign, non-affiliated cardinals. Because of this, more “Christian” people sometimes got the job. When that happened they frequently died quickly. In fact, being old and sick is an important qualification for such popes. During Roncallii’s papacy there was a joke in Rome, “how did a Christian get to be pope?” But even then, there were always…
Personality Changes - It was not uncommon for men to have radical personality changes upon being made pope. Sixtus IV was elected as a simple, Franciscan believer in church reform. The next day he was a spendthrift selling arch-bishoprics to 8 year old boys. Urban VI (1378) went from a mild mannered bureaucrat to a physically violent paranoid. (He became so unpopular that his election was voided, which can’t be done and another pope appointed. That created the 40 year long Western Schism.) Pius IX went from being politically liberal (lifting papal prohibitions on railroads, gas lighting, free elections) to denouncing “modernism” in all it specifics. (He was beatified in 2000.)
Doctrinal Purity and Killing Heretics – When groups differed with it over theology (Arianism, Jansenism, Catharism, etc.) the Vatican would declare them heretics and kill them. For example Christ’s Nature: Human and divine, only divine, both but inseparable, coexistent with God, created by God, etc. Occasionally it will change its own doctrines and then demand complete belief in that. It seems more like a power trip than a matter of importance. It seems exactly like a power trip. Burning 190 Catharist men, women and children at the stake, one pope reported that “it was a holocaust and very pleasing to God.”
Reform movements inside the church have always existed and been common. Orders and monasteries created networks of communities trying to live more Christ-like lives. When they urged Rome to reform itself, the Vatican would have none of it. When the same motives inspired groups which did not criticize the hierarchy and promised to obey the pope (Franciscans), they would be embraced.
Infallibility is fun to ponder and very telling about the Church’s priorities. Passed at Vatican I in 1870, it officially states that the Pope is unable to err when he makes Ex Cathedra statements about faith and morals. It literally means that (1) no “Christians” may discuss the matter thereafter and (2) no later pope can change it. The issue was ramroded through by Pius IX (Pio Nono) over much discord. (“Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” was coined to describe him.) Several theologians were excommunicated and 1/4 of the Cardinals were forced to publicly lie about their personal convictions. Probably because of that, it has been used officially very little since (twice.) Apparently it is infallibly true that (1) Mary was born without original sin and (2) ascended directly to heaven. Just so you know. Christ has not been so honored.
Vision for the World – Its vision of an ideal world has been stated very clearly.
1. all nations should be ruled by hereditary monarchs
2. all nations should be officially Roman Catholic
3. only Roman Catholicism should be tolerated within them
4. all nations should support and protect the Vatican with the military
Ex-president Teddy Roosevelt was scheduled to meet the Pope in Rome when Pius XI declared democracy a grave error. Offended, Teddy canceled the meeting.
Their Terror of Bolshevism, Communism and Socialism – Their terror of the political left has been a gigantic influence on the Church in the 20th Century. Pius XI brought Mussolini to power in Italy by suppressing the Catholic Socialist Party. Pius XII sided with Hitler over Stalin and helped Hitler come to power by sup-pressing German Catholic opposition. He supported Spain’s Generalissimo Franco even though Franco executed thousands of priests and nuns. More recently John Paul II closed down the “liberation theology” movement in Latin America. You could say that it was because Marx was an atheist but I think not. The real reason for their fear of the left is that socialism suggests a reallocation of wealth. The idea of taking money from the rich to feed poor people terrifies the very rich Church.
The Church Values Itself - The thing beneath the surface that is hard for someone like me to grasp is what they value. They value the organization itself. The Roman Catholic Church itself, the organization is the thing. The religion, the people in it, the people it supposedly serves, all that is secondary to the protection and promotion of the church. The church itself is only an idea, it does not really exist, but the Church itself is what it’s all about for these guys.
Was that not exactly what Jesus was complaining about?
There is no evidence that the Church leaders are any different today than they have ever been. You can hear hints of it if you listen. Benedict noted recently that the child abuse scandal is just about making money, suing the Church. Apparently he cannot imagine anyone actually caring about protecting children. Spooky!
Some More Funny Stories
The Cult of Peter - St. Peter’s Basilica is standing literally over the grave of Pete himself. A tomb over his grave were maintained by local Christians until Constantine adopted Christianity and built the first church on that site. During the Renaissance the original church was demolished, the surrounding graves were collapsed and the current church was built over them. Archeological digs find layers of Christian and pagan cemeteries on that spot. It is upon their identification with Peter that the supremacy of the RCC is based.
The Cult of the Virgin Mary – The whole virgin Mary thing has been formalized by the RCC only recently. Not mentioned in the scriptures or practiced in the early church, the adoration of the Virgin began in 5th Century Syria and became very popular. Only in the late 1800’s did the RCC declare her born without original sin, a perpetual virgin (although the mother of several children) and so pure that she rose directly to heaven upon her death.