The Anti-Pope

One thing you can say about the soft-on-Nazism Pope Benedict Ratzinger: he's the Pope, whaddya expect? John Paul II was as close to a "good" pope as you are ever going to get, and he was a cranky, authoritarian, knee-jerk anti-leftist. The whole concept of "Catholic Pope" not to mention "College of Cardinals," is reactionary and outdated. It's like the American Presidency. "Absolute power corrupts absolutely and so eventually you are gong to end up with a government/church run by absolutely corrupt assholes." Though in both the Vatican's and the White House's case, "absolute power," should be glossed to read "absolute lack of accountability." The Papacy was invented for guys like Ratzinger. He's a natural product of his system, and that system needs him. If you don't like it, become a Lutheran or something. If you already are a Lutheran or something, say a prayer of thanks to Martin Luther or someone.

Oddly, or perhaps not so, Pope Ratzinger perfectly illustrates one of the fundamental tenets of Buddhism, the one that says that worldly suffering is wholly a problem of the mind.

Pope Ratzinger cannot, unlike a tornado, fly around in a funnel of wind and blow your house down. The Pope won't invade your body through microscopically air born globules like the flu, or erupt in a Tsunami or a volcano. The Pope can't even send bombers over your town like the President can. One of the Vatican's best kept secrets is that the Pope is nothing but a naked man wearing lots of petticoats and tall hats. Without believers and supporters, the Pope would just be a naked old man.

Of course, if it were all that easy, Samsara, and not Nirvana would be rare and precious.

In times past, people unhappy with the Pope didn't just complain about it--they elected their own popes. Between 1409 and 1417 there were in fact three popes at the same time, each one's followers calling the others "anti-popes."

The third pope had been elected by Church leaders in a botched attempt to depose the other two---altogether between 1378 and 1424, there were two rival popes heading their own sectarian alliances during what is called the "Western Schism." The whole trouble started when a faction of Cardinals fled Rome in 1378 and elected Pope Clement VI in secret while also voting to depose the authoritarian and cranky Urban VI. They ended up with a French pope and Cardinals installed in Avignon and the rival Roman pope in Italy. "France, Scotland, Castile, Aragon, Navarre, Portugal, Denmark, some German states, Norway, and Savoy" backed the French pope while the Italians remained loyal to Urban VI. In 1417 almost everybody concerned agreed to depose all three popes and elected Martin V and the schism was declared healed. The whole French lineage was officially depoped and expunged from the Church History to join the ranks of the anti-popes. There has as yet been no word on whether the legislation is binding in Heaven. (www.Wikipedia.org)

Two of the deposed popes refused to recognize the whole affair and their small groups of followers kept anti-pope lineages in operation until the 1440s.

But there had been anti-popes almost from the beginning of the Church when a dissident faction followed St. Hippolytus as Bishop of Rome for about fifteen years beginning in 217. That early schism was ended when the ruler of Rome, Maximus Thrax, launched an anti-Christian crackdown that had Hippolytus and his rival pope taken to die in state prison mines. Afterwards, the Church reconciled to Hippolytus, if not the other way around.

Other anti-popes appeared here and there, notably during the 11th and 12th centuries when the "Holy Roman Empire" was more or less the German Empire. Various Holy Roman Emperors and would-be emperors made their own popes and would-be popes in attempts to ward off the authority of Rome proper.

And just what is the "Pope" anyway? According to the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen), the Pope is "the Bishop of Rome, who, in virtue of his position as successor of St. Peter, is the chief pastor of the whole Church, the Vicar of Christ upon earth."

According to Wikipedia, in the early days, the Pope was "Vicar of Peter" but was eventually promoted to the more infallible, "Vicar of Christ." There's no word on where the promotion came from or why God hadn't thought of it in the beginning.

The Pope traces his authority over all of Christendom to Jesus, calling Peter "the Rock" upon which he would build his church. Since Peter was, according to the Roman Catholic hierarchy, first Bishop of Rome, his successors have all of his rights and privileges, plus some. Matthew Fox, who has the uncomfortable honor of having been personally excommunicated by the then Cardinal Ratzinger, Chief Inquisitor, says that the "Rock" statement never happened. (http://www.matthewfox.org/sys-tmpl/htmlpage10/) Of course, a lot of smart people say the historical Jesus never happened either. Believe what ye will is the whole of the law.

But either way, the Pope isn't the only one with lineage.

St. Peter's fellow apostle, St. Mark, was the Bishop of Alexandria, and both the Orthodox Patriarch and Pope of Alexandria and All Africa, and the Pope of the Coptic Church, trace their authority back to him, while the Eastern Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople (Istanbul) traces its lineage to St. Andrew the fishing Apostle. The far roaming and doubting St. Thomas established a church on the West Coast of India with its own lineage and the Syriac Orthodox Church has its own line of succession stretching back to St. Peter himself from before he became Bishop of Rome. There are no lack of legitimate "apostolic" Papal alternatives. Who knows why this unhealthy obsession with "Rome?"

The Liberal Catholic Church, and its forbear the Old Catholic Church are "non Roman," grown out of the Old Dutch Catholic Church. These churches and their relatives maintain their own Apostolic Catholic tradition outside of Rome's control. In 1145, according to the Old Catholic Church's website, Pope Eugene III granted the "Cathedral Chapter of Utrect," in the Netherlands the right to fill its own Bishop vacancies. And "the autonomous character of the Ancient Catholic Church in the Netherlands was further demonstrated" in 1520, when Pope Leo X conceded that the Bishop of Utrecht was beyond the authority of Rome in matters of church law. By 1724 the Old Roman Catholic Church of Holland was a completely independent body. In general it rejects Papal Infallibility and Clerical Celibacy. Some offshoots, like the Liberal Catholic Church, permit the ordination of both men and women. Other branches have in their time given refuge to theosophists and Gnostics, old school Masons, and other free thinkers.

There are several mutually exclusive "Sedevanticist" Popes around, who have excommunicated the Roman Popes back to Pope John XXIII in 1958. The Sedevanticists declare that Holy Mass is only holy when given in Latin and since approving the mass in "vulgar" tongues the popes broke their contract with God. Having been excommunicated, the Roman Popes can't very well be popes and the Sedevanticist popes have stepped in to fill the breach.

The whole pope racket took on a new dimension in the 1960s when the Discordians began handing out pope cards declaring their bearers "genuine and authorized pope of discordia," and elucidating that "A Pope is someone who is not under the authority of the authorities." (http://www.ology.org/principia/)

No list of popes would be complete without Pope Joan, the woman pope. Disguised as a young man named John, the English girl who later became Pope dazzled Rome with her learning when she showed up in the company of her clandestine lover. Joan, who called herself John of Maines was chosen Pope in 855 and ruled for two years, seven months and four days.

The story says that she got pregnant (a very unpopish thing to do) and went into premature labor during the commotion and press of an Easter procession. The outraged crown had her "dragged feet-first by a horse through the streets of Rome" and later stoned her to death.

Pope Joan, or Joahanna, was accepted as a factual part of Catholic Church history until the Sixteenth Century when "after the awakening of historical criticism...historians began to deny the existence of the popess" (Catholic Encyclopedia).

In an interesting historical tie in, the Pope immediately following Pope Joan was also a Pope Benedict: Benedict III. He ruled only long enough to make sure that "John VIII" was erased from the history books so that later on, "historical criticism" could come along and finish the job. (Another John VIII became Pope in 872).

It may be that today's world needs an anti-pope, or perhaps, in keeping with the times, "A Shadow Vatican," that could declare condoms "all right with God" and hand out "Bull" about some of the other pressing issues of our day. To make sure there isn't any confusion, the Shadow Vatican could be headed by Pope Joan II.

--Troy Skeels, www.babylonunwound.blogspot.com