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Notes -
Is The Pope Catholic? No Really
Rumors are swirling that Pope Francis will demand the resignation of Joseph Strickland, the popular conservative bishop of Tyler, Texas. He is notable as the only bishop to personally attend the protest against the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence at Dodgers Stadium. Meanwhile, bishops in Germany are now openly blessing same-sex couples in direct violation of Catholic doctrine. A cursory search reveals no disciplinary action against any of these bishops in response. By their fruits you will know them. In rationalist terms, this is called revealed preference.
This would be less of a problem for religions like Mormonism that allow for continuing revelation. Contrary to popular belief, the Pope is not a prophet. He can not walk out onto the balcony of St. Peter's and say, "Sorry guys, just talked to Jesus. The second coming is canceled." He would be immediately recognized as a fraud. He is bound* both by the deposit of faith and the dogmatic pronouncements of the church.
This leads to an interesting Ship of Theseus problem. The Catholic Church has had it's parishioners, officials, and doctrine replaced. Is it still the Catholic Church? It's not even just the gender stuff. Here is Pope Francis participating in a literal pagan ritual. I have seen him apologize for the residential school system, but I have yet to see him apologize for violating the first commandment.
*in theory lol
The oldest institution was no match for the long march through the institutions. Of course, there's a millenium-old solution for those Catholics who care -- schism.
The problem with that is that institutional strength is one of the things that lets you resist modernity. The Catholics have resisted much more effectively than smaller communions. The Church of England. The Evangelical Church in Germany. The various Lutheran churches in Scandinavia. The Presbyterians. The Methodists. I'm not denying that there are genuinely faithful people in all those churches, and those people are much to be honoured, but institutionally they have all put up measurably less of a fight than the Roman Catholic Church.
Of course, there are evangelical churches, and perhaps more importantly, churches in the Global South, but I think the former are more entrapped by a politics, and the latter... well, as time goes by the South becomes more and more like the North.
The advice I would give other Christians is to not put your faith in institutions or in politics. The institution won't save you, and schisming to found a new institution also won't save you. The logic of worldly power isn't going to help you here - on the contrary, that logic seems to be on the side of your enemies. But then, Christianity was always about believing in something hopeless and surprising, that amid all the failure and heresy and the domination of the Ruler of This World, God is doing something in secret, and he will draw impossible triumph out of the very moment of failure.
My advice to Christians is to pray more, and be right with God. Nothing else matters.
It’s not the large institution. It’s specifically the hierarchy and the ability to throw out heretics.
Hierarchy defines both Orthodox and Catholic Christian faith. You obey the person above you. A priest must follow the directions of his Bishop. The Bishop must obey the Archbishop. The Archbishop must obey the pope. The rank above chooses the ranks below more or less. This means that you’d have to obey your authorities for decades to get into a position to go rogue. A priest who teaches abortion is okay will be removed by the bishop and on up the line. So unless you’re willing to keep absolutely silent on a teaching for decades, you can’t rise up the ranks.
Most Protestants don’t really have this. If you want to be a Pastor in a denomination, go to the proper seminary and open a church. Then you can teach anything you please. And any doctrine that the church believes is voted on by pastors. Which offers no protection at all. If a woke pastor decided to vote for gay pastors, it’s only down to getting enough people to vote yes.
The other failsafe is excommunication and anathema. Which is to say that if you’re teaching or doing something bad enough, they’ll throw you out. You’re no longer a member until you repent, confess and then you must never do that again.
Protestantism lacks this. There’s no real procedure for dealing with open heresy. The only power that can be brought in force is the ordinary person leaving.
That’s not strictly true; the archbishop has a few powers over suffragan bishops, but only a few- he maintains a local appeals court and resolves a small number of calendar issues(from a set list of options) and has the right to be an acting successor to a suffragan bishop until the pope appoints one. But they don’t have the power to command their juniors, hence why this is coming from the Vatican and not the archdiocese of San Antonio.
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