Certainly not a positive history, which I find both embarrassing and pitiful. Hopefully, those days will not make a comeback with future popes, that Francis has stacked the deck with numbers enough to prevent it from rising up once again.
The church in the West became the papal church, and Catholics became papists. The development signified a more exclusively top-down and hierarchical mode of church, in contrast to the more synodal and collegial earlier mode. It went unchallenged until recent times, most notably by the Second Vatican Council and Pope Francis.
Nonetheless, some of the most important and symptomatic steps in the process were the results of direct actions taken by the popes themselves. The popes were in fact the single most important agents in the papalization process. I describe their actions as self-conferred upgrades. Three such papal actions in that regard are the most obvious and the most symptomatic of the great change underway: the claim to have the power to depose secular rulers, the claim to be vicar of Christ and the claim to possess infallible teaching authority.
The move from vicar of Peter to vicar of Christ was not simply new window dressing for the papal office, but a major enhancement of its dignity. It seemed to imbue the papacy almost with divinity. Pope Innocent conferred this upgrade upon himself and, as an almost inevitable consequence, upon his successors for the centuries to come.
How did such a profound revolution in consciousness and practice come about? How did an institution move from the outskirts of awareness, at best, to the defining center? How did Mt. 16:16—"Thou art Peter"—become the canon within the canon for Roman Catholics and become emblematic of their very identity?
(Popes of an earlier time)
for the most part they behaved as essentially local figures, intent on local issues.
The Gregorians set a powerful ideological machine in motion. While even for them the pope was still only "the vicar of Peter," a little over a century later Pope Innocent III designated himself "the vicar of Christ." The title stuck, and is today much better known than the more venerable "servant of the servants of God." As the monarchies of England and France emerged from an amorphous feudalism, the papacy developed a similarly monarchical structure and self-definition. During their residency in Avignon in the 14th century, the popes even led the way in the creation of effective bureaucracy.
The Millennium and the Papalization of Catholicism | America Magazine
The difference between judge and teacher had radical implications. By the early years of the 20th century, the offices of the Roman Curia began issuing instructions at a newly regular pace. Moreover, popes themselves began issuing encyclicals and similar documents with much greater frequency than before and attributing to them ever greater authority. Theologians in turn began more explicitly and frequently basing their arguments on papal documents rather than on a wider range of authoritative sources.
Francis has meanwhile changed the curia’s style from authoritarian to collegial. Curial officials now ask bishops how they can help them rather than telling them what to do. The change implicitly empowers the periphery. In his recent and remarkable apostolic constitution on the reform of the curia, “Praedicate Evangelium” (“Preach the Gospel”), Francis gives institutional form to this and similar changes—signs he seeks to reverse the papalization trajectory of recent history.
How popes became so powerful—and how Pope Francis could reverse the trend | America Magazine
The church in the West became the papal church, and Catholics became papists. The development signified a more exclusively top-down and hierarchical mode of church, in contrast to the more synodal and collegial earlier mode. It went unchallenged until recent times, most notably by the Second Vatican Council and Pope Francis.
Nonetheless, some of the most important and symptomatic steps in the process were the results of direct actions taken by the popes themselves. The popes were in fact the single most important agents in the papalization process. I describe their actions as self-conferred upgrades. Three such papal actions in that regard are the most obvious and the most symptomatic of the great change underway: the claim to have the power to depose secular rulers, the claim to be vicar of Christ and the claim to possess infallible teaching authority.
The move from vicar of Peter to vicar of Christ was not simply new window dressing for the papal office, but a major enhancement of its dignity. It seemed to imbue the papacy almost with divinity. Pope Innocent conferred this upgrade upon himself and, as an almost inevitable consequence, upon his successors for the centuries to come.
How did such a profound revolution in consciousness and practice come about? How did an institution move from the outskirts of awareness, at best, to the defining center? How did Mt. 16:16—"Thou art Peter"—become the canon within the canon for Roman Catholics and become emblematic of their very identity?
(Popes of an earlier time)
for the most part they behaved as essentially local figures, intent on local issues.
The Gregorians set a powerful ideological machine in motion. While even for them the pope was still only "the vicar of Peter," a little over a century later Pope Innocent III designated himself "the vicar of Christ." The title stuck, and is today much better known than the more venerable "servant of the servants of God." As the monarchies of England and France emerged from an amorphous feudalism, the papacy developed a similarly monarchical structure and self-definition. During their residency in Avignon in the 14th century, the popes even led the way in the creation of effective bureaucracy.
The Millennium and the Papalization of Catholicism | America Magazine
The difference between judge and teacher had radical implications. By the early years of the 20th century, the offices of the Roman Curia began issuing instructions at a newly regular pace. Moreover, popes themselves began issuing encyclicals and similar documents with much greater frequency than before and attributing to them ever greater authority. Theologians in turn began more explicitly and frequently basing their arguments on papal documents rather than on a wider range of authoritative sources.
Francis has meanwhile changed the curia’s style from authoritarian to collegial. Curial officials now ask bishops how they can help them rather than telling them what to do. The change implicitly empowers the periphery. In his recent and remarkable apostolic constitution on the reform of the curia, “Praedicate Evangelium” (“Preach the Gospel”), Francis gives institutional form to this and similar changes—signs he seeks to reverse the papalization trajectory of recent history.
How popes became so powerful—and how Pope Francis could reverse the trend | America Magazine
