The Rocky Road to the Top

Until a few weeks ago at least the most globally visible and influential Christian and Muslim were Pope John Paul II and Osama Bin Laden respectively. Whatever else you might think of the two heavyweight monotheisms, this fact is not without its significance.

It's strangely ironic t00. Mohammed thought he had done the necessary to iron out the inconsistencies inherent in Christian thinking about the relationship between spiritual and earthly power, but his descendents couldn't keep the Caliphate going for more than a few centuries after his own death and today Islam notably lacks a 'universal' figurehead representing the majority of the faithful. Instead of a lasting theocratic model, Mohammed's legacy in the political field has been Islamic societies with weakened state authority relative to religious prescriptions.

Strangely, the Bishop of Rome can also thank Mohammed for his unlikely pre-eminence on the world stage. The frenzy of Arab expansionism after the Prophet's death put paid to three of the five main Patriarchates in Christendom - Antioch, Alexandria and most importantly Jerusalem, the see which had enjoyed nominal supremacy up to then. That left just Rome and Constantinople. The descendent of St Peter had a couple of advantages. Some vague references in the Bible to rocks and keys and the lack of a secular legitimacy in the vicinity following the demise of the Roman Empire of the West in the fifth century.

Just to make sure though, the Popes forged a document called The Donation of Constantine which laid the foundations for Vatican independence from any warlords, Kings and Emperors that might want to set up in the Eternal City. In another cunning move, on Christmas Day 800 the Papacy crowned Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor, thus establishing the principle that the most exalted secular authority around was from then on to be a sub-brand of its own.

There was just the small matter of the other Patriarch over on the Bosphorus. In 1054, one year before the accession of the last German Pope Victor II, one of his fight-picking compatriots the Papal legate Cardinal Humbertus, engineered an ugly scene in Byzantium in which the Pope Leo IX and Patriarch Michael slapped each other with tit-for-tat exommunications. Thus began the Great Schism. The Pope's singular position was further underwritten when the Eastern Empire was finally overrun in the sixteenth century and its great churches turned into mosques.
There was much talk last week of the "unbroken line" of Popes since St Peter. This unbroken line includes of course the Borgias and, if the myth be true, the female Pope Joan whose disguise was exposed when she died in childbirth.

As with Ronald Reagan it has been conveniently forgotten that Pope John Paul II's "standing up to communism" involved a simultaneous repression of the "standing up to exploitation and poverty" movement within his own territory.

On Breakfast with Frost yesterday Ken Follett was wringing his hands on behalf of all devoutly Catholic lefties who have recently been rudely disabused of the notion that the Papacy is a kind of otherworldly NGO that will be a natural ally in their quest for an incrementally more equitable world, and one that won't put too many strains on their ability to juggle their two basically incompatible worldviews.