Time to Grow Up

1415

The last time that a pope resigned and went home.

We kind of stand back in awe and think that this is a long time ago and put it out of our minds.  But perhaps one should look back at the history surrounding that resignation.

Della Rovere, Piccolomini, Medici, Caraffa, Costa, Basso, Zeno, and Cibò.  These aren't household names any more, but when you go back and root around dusty books and odd nooks of the internet, you will find a litany of perversion, power-grabbing, lust, simony, and greed that would fit into Washington, Brussels, Moscow, or Beijing without raising an eyebrow.

The church goes through cycles of perversion and restoration.  It is pretty obvious which way it is drifting now.  The moral authority of the church is undermined with every sex scandal and bank failure.  It will need to take strong measures to right itself, but the prissy, well coiffed functionaries that stalk the halls of the Vatican will resist the need to reform in order to cement their perquisites.

More than anything, we here in the US and the other continental-scaled powers should look at the long-term problems of the church.  Perversion, simony, and greed will always accompany centralization of power.  The regard for the poor will wither and progressively be replaced for the demands for Peter's Pence to glorify the center.