It had been mocked, it was distrusted. Free pastors and Christian leadership resources for your church ministry and congregation at Crosswalk.com The customer base and the sales force were one. What Constantine had visited on the now flourishing Christian Church centered in Rome was an imperial superiority complex. The message was so convincingly delivered, so well-reasoned, so attractive in the light of the alternatives, that many people who heard it accepted it without proof. There is no conceivable reason why the church has resisted the ordination of female priests. But they were Great. Benedict was popular and learned. The Emperor wanted a capital city all to himself. Nazism and Communism recently carried out the deaths of millions of Christians and Jews, often in most horrible ways. Our editorial voice, always faithful to the teachings of the Church, assists and inspires Catholic clergy and laity. The Vatican's system of interlocking directorates among the Curial cardinals who head the key Congregations (departments), means the pope has to contact only one or two cardinals to know what's happening everywhere. Contemporary or traditional? The Basilica of St. John, right, is the oldest church in Europe and the Cathedral of Rome. Carlo Acutis, who died at 15 in 2006 and was an early adopter of the internet, was beatified over the weekend, putting him on the path to sainthood in the Catholic Church. He put down bandits and was friendly toward Jews of Rome. Many churchgoers believe Christians should completely stay away from alcohol, bars, and anything that has to do with drinking since the Bible condemns drunkenness and instructs Christ-followers to be sober-minded. By mandating celibacy, the church may be, in effect, encouraging aberrant behavior such as pedophilia and physical contact of priests with men and women. Some churches also baptize infants, but see it not as evidence of salvation, but rather as a commitment by the child's family and church body to bring up the child in the fear of the Lord. These are among the most important and problematic aspects of life, and thousands of unmarried men without children are dispensing advise on these matters. The authorities began to recognize, however, that the message could not be contained because, wittingly or not, the organization had developed the perfect survival mechanism: every consumer, every customer for the product, was both recipient and emissary, each new convert became the next proselytizer. Now they feel the house is on shifting sands. This is definitely an issue that tends to spark debate within many churches. (CNS file photo), "Christ Presenting the Keys to Saint Peter," circa 1315-20, Cologne, Germany (Metropolitan Museum of Art), Statue of Pope Leo the Great, Germany (Wikimedia Commons/AnRo002), "View of Lateran, Rome," by Lievin Cruyl, 1672–73 (Metropolitan Museum of Art), Detail of "Pope Benedict XIV" by Pierre Hubert Subleyras, 1746 (Metropolitan Museum of Art), Detail of engraving, "Portrait of Sixtus V," published by Nicolaus van Aelst, circa 1589 (Metropolitan Museum of Art), Tomb of Pope Innocent III, left transept of the Basilica of St. John Latera, Rome, pictured in 2006 (Wikimedia Commons/©Marie-Lan Nguyen/CC-BY 2.5). Is it possible the church’s intransigent attitude toward sexuality is one of the primary reasons for its problems and declining reputation? Constantine's next error was an enormous strategic disaster. Indeed, managerially speaking, the papacy and Church of Rome, post-Constantine, were shaped in major measure by the continuing rivalry with its competitor, the Church in Constantinople (and equally shaped, sadly for the future, by Constantine's ideas of imperial grandeur). The power was unassailable as long as those outside the culture but still beholden to it could be made to believe the culture (i.e. Those who wish to enjoy sexual relations with loved ones before marriage should not be condemned. What is the Christian view on gay marriage? */. Innocent III (1198-1216): Innocent became pope at age 37. Where house-churches and the temples of others had sufficed, Constantine set the tone for the popes by giving them his Lateran palace and creating for them huge imperial basilicas and ornate churches. The Forbes story detailed the tightness and closed nature of the management, as well as AIM's key Vatican advice to its own members: "Full authority for the top men once chosen.". In fact, in 1054, after 700 years, it yielded the Eastern market to Constantinople and contented itself with increasing the papacy's grip on the West. His contemporary, Voltaire, said he "enlightened the Christian world before he began to rule it." It is shameful that women are not treated equally. What happened to the Catholic Church? Go, Not Yet a Donor Subscriber? For much of the time in the early decades, and in many places, no one but other Christians quite knew for sure who was Christian and who was not. The article was headlined: "Managing the Lord's Work.". In this way, an infant baptism is more like a dedication of the child. (Part 1) How the Vatican culture created a church that feels as if it is dying of shame. Photo courtesy: ©Thinkstock/Amber Lane Roberts. That happened once before is you remember. But he’d taken a vow of celibacy. It was outlawed, it was persecuted. Kill one Christian and two seemed to pop up in his or her place. Everything they thought the Catholic Church was seems to be shifting. They wanted to marry. The earliest datable purpose-built Christian meeting place in all of Greece and Macedonia, the Octagon in Philippi, is only from the beginnings of the fourth century, by which time the first churches were also being constructed in Rome. The situation has reached epic proportions as more and more charges are being logged against priests, bishops, cardinals, and more. He declared the Magna Charta invalid, and used the title "Vicar of Christ." Sometimes, as in Syria in 240 A.D., the oldest known example, a house had an inner wall knocked out to provide a greater meeting space, later dubbed a house-church. Those examples include many of the popes and their selected minions. One can simply ignore the facts and keep putting this shadow of greatness into the lineup day after day. Five months later, on June 7, 1985, I wrote the front-page story and co-wrote the front-page editorial in National Catholic Reporter that exposed the nationwide Catholic priest pedophilia crisis. the Church-in-Rome) was the gateway to salvation and heaven. We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. While Pentecostals fully affirm this spiritual gift, other denominations have gone so far as so say that speaking in tongues is offending the Holy Spirit. You can read more about it here. : Become a Member Today! Benedict XIV (1740-58): Lord Macaulay, a 19th-century British historian, said he was the greatest of the popes. (Spain), Saturday of the Twenty-Sixth Week of Ordinary Time, Bl. On the eve of a new papal enclave, the cardinals should focus on the church’s outdated dogma and select a more progressive man (or a women someday) to lead the church out of the dark ages. Not for what it permitted, but for what the Church-in-Rome (pope, College of Cardinals, Curia and senior archbishops and bishops), i.e., the church bureaucracy, fostered: an exclusive Old Boys Club based on a rigid class system. The threat of eternal damnation for an act so natural and so beautiful is destructive. Gregory VII defied the Holy Roman Emperor, who submitted in the snows of Canossa in 1077. Catholics are not permitted to use birth control under any circumstances. "The Church is undergoing a transformation and realigning," Dr Mark Gray, director of CARA Catholic Polls, who co-authored the report, told Christian Today. Can Christians drink alcohol? Some Catholic readers may be dismayed, indeed offended, by the detached and dispassionate manner in which the Catholic Church is discussed in what follows. Will You Support NCR This Election Season? He said that princes, too, wanted to enter heaven, but popes had the keys of the Kingdom. Pedophilia is illegal and unacceptable in society, while the church forbids homosexual and heterosexual activity by priests. The most disgraceful aspect of this sordid side of the church is the cover-up. Discernment is certainly necessary, even among a group of believers in today's culture. In many ways these two papacies were the end of the age–not only because these two popes saw us through the year 2000 but also because they stood for the old Europe and a Catholic Church that was still Eurocentric. He fended off counterpopes. ], Read Part 2: Money, sex and absolute power corrupting absolutely, Send your thoughts and reactions to Letters to the Editor. Even by that time, there was still no generally agreed-on formal organization, though a rudimentary local management structure was coming into general practice: bishop, presbyter (priest), people. Marie Rose Durocher (USA), October 8: Thursday of the Twenty-Seventh Week of Ordinary Time, October 9: Denis and companions; John Leonardi; John Henry Newman, October 10: Saturday of the Twenty-Seventh Week of Ordinary Time, October 11: Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 12: Monday of the Twenty-Eight Week of Ordinary Time, October 13: Tuesday of the Twenty-Eight Week of Ordinary Time, October 16: Hedwig; Margaret Mary Alacoque, October 18: Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 19: Isaac Jogues, John de Brébeuf and companions (USA), October 21: Wednesday of the Twenty-Ninth Week of Ordinary Time, October 25: Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 26: Monday of the Thirtieth Week of Ordinary Time, October 27: Tuesday of the Thirtieth Week of Ordinary Time, October 29: Thursday of the Thirtieth Week of Ordinary Time, October 30: Friday of the Thirtieth Week of Ordinary Time, October 31: Saturday of the Thirtieth Week of Ordinary Time; All Hallows' Eve, Free eBook: The Books of the New Testament. Now we are moving into a new epoch with new currents that are taking us into the 21st century whether we like it or not. This perspective is totally unacceptable in the civilized world. This superiority complex, evident in most of its popes and bishops, has continued down to the present. All rights reserved. However, he wrecked the still fledgling organization by superimposing on it the imperial model and rational organization. Emperor Constantine was Christianity's first celebrity product endorser. "There are places where the Church is growing, and growing strongly, and there are not enough parishes and lots of priests, and then there are places where the population is waning and there are lots of parishes and too few priests." But perhaps nowhere is the controversy surrounding this issue more prevalent than in the Anglican Church. Even worse, why would the church object to birth control in the prevention of disease including AIDS and STDs. —Peter Drucker, Concept of the Corporation, On Jan. 14, 1985, I wrote a four-page, 4,000-word article in Forbes magazine about the management of the Catholic Church, "the world's oldest and largest multinational enterprise." There are two answers: First, Emperor Constantine, and next, the living examples of famed English Catholic Lord Acton's dictum: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

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