Fight!

I just got an e-mail linking me to an article containing a "Feisty defense of Rome against Eastern Orthodoxy!" I guess that's pretty exciting to some people, but come on. This whole medieval "Jesus likes my bishop best" thing is kind of pathetic. Arguing over who gets to wear the pointy hat and write canon laws was relevant back when there was a political power vacuum in Europe and despotic popes were attempting to fill it. But today, the Vatican hierarchy is approaching the relevance of the last of the Western Roman emperors. There's all the pomp and splendor along with the promulgation of endless decrees, doctrines, and laws, but the population is as disinterested as ever in actually listening. People like having a pope--it's nice to have a kindly old man around in a golden robe who appears to represent every virtue a human can exhibit, and when he talks about God being love and calls himself our spiritual father, it does appeal. And for the more spirited among us, arguing over his right to absolute power and jurisdiction gives us that same deep-seated feeling of religious superiority (especially as we imagine that arguing vigorously for his universal power in some way makes us sharers in that power) that it did in 1500, but there is something quaintly medieval about the whole exercise.