When the church reformer Martin Luther nailed 95 theses to the door of a Cathedral in Wittenberg Germany in 1517 he got the ball rolling on reforming the Catholic Church so far as to evolve a splinter movement between the reformed protesters and the imperial papal line that entertained select doctrinal inaccuracies and errors including the concept of papal infallibility. Today the problem of an imperial papal approach to Christianity persists though in a dampened down criterion.
Pope Francis of Argentina inherited the Argentine social environment of General Galtieri and the neo-Fascist expansionism of the junta that disappeared so many civilians. His approach was to demure during the neo-fasist era of the junta, yet the hard social-political environment was formative and may influence his idea of sending Latinos illegal across U.S. borders as being a good thing, at least for the imperial goals such as exist, of the Catholic Church leadership.
Protestants do not agree in a special role or divine mission for the pope. All Christians are equally without merit intrinsically and are saved only through the grace of God and the salvific intercession of the Lord Jesus Christ. Protestant Christian s have a more personal, direct approach to the Lord for-themselves without the intermediation of clerics within hierarchical structures. Martin Luther wrote that all Christians are priests. Modern reform minded protestants support the continuing de-imperialization of the clergy such that a priesthood of believers in a more egalitarian, less hierarchical ecclesiastic form is a desirable direction to evolve. A Christian church composed of priests would provide a great evangelical boost. Christian should not be pew-sitting subjects of an imperial proxy leader.
As the imperial goals of the Catholic Church tend to move in an opposite direction that personal, individual democracy and relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, one finds odd circumstances such as that of the Pope at the U.S.-Mexican border arguing for support for illegal alien entry into the United States. Imperials tend toward trampling on the rights of ordinary people; in that case the lawful citizens of the United States, in furtherance of imperial goals such as an Argentine-directed invasion of the United States in order to politically transform the United States into a Catholic despotism under the sway of the Pope. One cannot have democratic, deterministic environmental reform politics within capitalism very while while fighting a two-front or ten-front battle against loose imperial external forces trampling on national political self-determination.
Imagine that Catholic leadership was competent and even smart about the political structures and workings of all of the world's nations, and more, that they agreed and supported the national politics and mechanics of every nation (the church politics in such a case would have implicit contradictions). If the imperial papal policies tried to manipulate the politics of a nation externally and internally it would tend to be an unknown force interfering with the mechanisms and effectiveness of operations of the body politic of that nation. It would be like an external source of waves directed toward a distant calm body with waves sent from the body's political center to coordinate politics nationally. The external waves would interfere with the national waves and create chaos and discord.
At a certain point in history societies may benefit from an extra, neutral institutional structure to support the education and organization of illiterate, poor masses; especially if the government is repressive. Yet as history evolves to a higher level of cultural progress the extra-imperial structure may retard progress. It should adapt.
Martin Luther's movement of reform was an historical adaptation as European society advanced even unto the printing press. Consider top-down programming and its implicit limits. It may be adapted and upgraded. Turned on it's side top-down programming reads from left to right. It may grow more vertical shafts and roots like a cedar tree knocked on its side by high wind. New vertical and horizontal programmatic logic nodes may network to communicate and democratize; times change and imperial structures may implicitly corrupt in new environments.
Consider the theological absurdity of God limiting his direct interactions through one human who would then apply God's will through his human filter deforming the instructions. God can relate directly to anyone and may in fact pre-destined the entire course of human events. There are many theological absurdities one might wish to investigate in the designation of one human as the primary agent of God on Earth. It seems unwise to do so.
Wisdom may be found within expert knowledge applied interdisciplinarily such that one may know or have a good idea what a good course of events or action is to take after recognizing what the situation is. Some have wisdom about investing on Wall Street, some have wisdom about the world ecosystem, and some have wisdom about the Bible; how few though have political wisdom.
The Catholic leader may view the world through imperial lenses; rose colored glass tinted toward the blood of the lamb, yet mistake the imperial goals as a kind of kingdom of God annexation tool. It is reasonable for the imperial paradigm to add a few communist party appointed bishops in China here and a few million illegal alien Catholics to a protestant country there to increase the realm of the kingdom of God under the Pope. The problem of course is that the world’s politics are secular and the imperial papacy becomes political and secular itself adapting its position too often to worldly trends instead of looking toward divine theological concerns. The same Pope who supported illegal immigration also refused to take a position against homosexuality “who am I to judge” at a critical time in the political currents for an apparently political reason of not taking a Biblical stand in an enfiladed political position. The imperial interests of Catholic leadership may take entirely political forms; the Hapsburg Empire wasn’t an ecclesiastical organization.
Martin Luther’s protestant movement stimulated political revolt from the Hapsburg Catholic empire as well. Unfortunately bureaucracies promote people quite often that rise to their level of incompetence. Experts at theology may be criminally incompetent at understanding world politics, national politics and the sort of balances that are socially and politically require to get an environmental movement going that works well with reformed capitalism, free enterprise and democracy. Not only might the Pope be incompetent, most protestants involved in U.S. politics may be equally incompetent at non-theological matters and some theological matters too including eschatology. Sadly, that is the way of the world.
