Papacy

The Papacy is the central form of leadership within the Roman Catholic Church and refers specifically to the Pope, a person designated as the episcopal successor to St. Peter, who Catholics believe was imbued with a special degree of authority by Jesus Christ himself. The Pope is believed by Roman Catholics to be God's vicar on earth, first and head of all other religious authorities within the Catholic Church.

To simplify things right off the bat: Roman Catholics believe that Jesus, when he formed his 12 Apostles, singled out Peter as being the special 'head' of the Apostles (this will be covered in-depth elsewhere). Roman Catholics ALSO (and this is important) believe that Peter (the first Pope, according to them) traveled to Rome where he made it his own special seat or major church. Thus, the power of Peter, his designation as being head of the Apostles, is transferred only to the ordained leader of the city of Rome.

This is why the city of Rome is so important to Roman Catholics, and why 'Rome' is in their namesake. Roman Catholics are those Christians who believe that the city of Rome represents the divinely-ordained ecclesiastical head of the entire Christian community world-wide. All of that via Peter the Apostle and his successors.

Pope As A Title:
The Title of Pope designates a person as being God's vicar on earth. Officially, according to Canon Law, only a male, of adult age (although this last part has been tested historically, so its dubious as an actual ban) can become Pope.

Most people believe that you have to be Roman Catholic to be Pope, but apparently this is actually a legal technicality. For the truly devout within the Church, God can choose anyone he wants to be the Pope, although he has clearly limited his selection to only adult human males. Should God want to, he could choose a Hindu, Atheist, Muslim or anyone he wants and imbue them with the special authority that comes with being Pope.

This is because accepting the Papacy is more than just taking up a really odd job offer.

In Catholic literature, being ordained as Pope is more than just a secular ritual. It is an actual supernatural event that leaves an 'indelible' mark on the recipient. The person who becomes Pope has actually been changed by God, at least in their soul, and is protected by the Holy Spirit from making errors in judgement regarding faith and morals (and has received special grace to help them lead the entire Church).

To put it bombastically, the Pope is God's mouthpiece in the most literal sense. He has been injected with divine magic that turns him into a special human who cannot err when making statements about certain topics. He also has a nebulous, ever-changing set of superpowers that make him the supreme leader of all of Christianity.

Brief History Of The Papacy:
The First Pope is supposed to be St. Peter, the Head of the Apostles. He was the brashest and the most brazen of the Apostles, and also one of the most prominent. Roman Catholics believe that Peter was designated by Jesus to be the Pope at several intervals during the saga of the New Testament period.

After the death and resurrection of Jesus, Peter (along with the other Apostles) are imbued with special grace at Pentecost. This is supposed to be the culminating event where a small group of Israelite followers go from being mere religious disciples to actual Apostles. They begin preaching the word of God big time, scatter to the four corners of the then known world, and found many churches and diocese along the way.

During all of this, Peter is one of the most industrious, and one of the most respected.

He eventually lands in Rome and there founds the Church/Diocese of Rome. Peter is supposed to have set up a 'chair' in Rome, marking it as his own ecclesiastical center of authority. This cements Rome as being the center of Peter's heritage, and thus binding the position and power of Pope to the city of Rome itself.

Thus, to be Pope, you must be the Bishop of Rome. The two positions are really the same. The Pope of Rome and Bishop of Rome are two sides to the same coin.

To speed things up a bit, Rome (along with several other important cities in the Greco-Roman world) become Bishoprics. That is, the seats of Bishops. Early Christianity had developed a basic organization pattern even by the close of the New Testament writings. Christians gathered together to break break, pray and worship Jesus as the Messiah, and to reinforce bonds of friendship and loyalty to one another.

Of course, even in the nascent Church, factions and theological squabbles arose over questions of dogmatic teaching and whatnot. Thus, the early teachers of the Church, at first the Apostles themselves and their chosen aides, but later their successors (the Bishops), would come together to form councils or meetings where these questions could be debated and answered.

(It should be noted that nascent Christianity was very much an urban religion. Christian religious centers were always the largest and most important cities in the world at the time, and for many decades Christians were mostly packed into the major urban centers.  The term 'pagan' which came to mean non-Christian in later centuries actually comes from an old Roman word for a country-dweller or country bumpkin.)

This is the formation of Church Councils, and the Bishops and Priests. Church Councils occur when the Bishops, the successors to the Apostles, and their chosen aids (usually Priests) come together to discuss important matters related to the overall health and business of the Church. Major cities where the Apostles spent their later years inevitably claim to have special authority derived from said Apostles, thus marking them out as being extra-important to other regional churches.

(In all fairness, this is not entirely unreasonable, or un-pragmatic. If an Apostle, a person who actually spent prolonged amounts of time following Jesus Christ around and being taught by him, where to spend most of his later years teaching in a city, you would thus expect the teachings in that church to be closer to the actual claims of Jesus himself.  A church founded by someone who was taught by someone who was trained by a Bishop later on would probably have had some errors creep into their body of teachings over time.  This way of doing things was meant to safeguard Christianity from having errors creep in, by relying mostly on the oral traditions of those major churches established by Apostles).

According to Roman Catholics, all of this occurs under the watchful and beneficial gaze of the Bishop of Rome, who is regarded even by the other major Bishoprics (Alexandria, Jerusalem, Antioch, etc.) as being first among them. And not just first in a special, prestige sort of way, but first in a very real sense. According to Roman Catholics, only the Pope has the power to censure other Bishops and even defrock them (suspend their status as priests, thus removing their spiritual authority from them).

Fast forward to the fall of the Roman Empire and the near-total collapse of Western Civilization. The Roman Empire, which by then was fully Christianized, was split into two groups, the Western Christians who today we know as the Roman Catholics, and the Eastern Christians who we know as the Orthodox Churches.

The development of the Christianized Roman Empire into these two halves is the first, significant break in Christianity. Where there had been heresies and schisms before, these were usually just regional conflicts, theological disputes or disparaging religious movements. However, the Great Schism leaves Christianity divided in a real and substantial way which will not be seen again until the coming of Martin Luther and his bear-guzzling extravaganza known as the Protestant Reformation.

This 'Great Schism' had a directly effect on the Papacy. According to Roman Catholics, the Eastern Churches (also known as the Orthodox Churches) simply rejected the Papal authority of the Bishop of Rome. They snubbed their noses at his envoys and started doing their own thing.

If you ask the Orthodox, they will tell you that Rome, while being a Bishopric (they have a different word for that, Metropolitan) or seat of an Apostle, does not possess any special authority apart from themselves. The one thing that united all orthodox Churches is simply the rejection of the 'special' authority of the Bishop in Rome, the Papacy itself.

After the Great Schism, Christianity weathered more changes and historical events, but the nature of the Papacy itself remained mostly the same. With the other Bishoprics in the Eastern Churches, this left Rome as the only seat of an Apostle in the Western-half of Christianity. Thus, the Bishop in Rome essentially had an entire half of Christendom all to himself. And he knew it, too.

This is the period where the power and influence of the Pope grew to unprecedented levels. Papal power was used to unseat kings, to command entire nations via threats of divine retribution, and more. Since only the Bishop of Rome could be trusted to have the purest form of Christian faith, later embellishments were added that resulted in the seat of Rome taking on far more power than it originally had.

Of course, like all good parties, it had to come to an end. The Protestant Reformation happened, which now saw Western Christianity divided between the Roman Catholics who looked to the Pope for their temporal religious authority and the Protestants a hodgepodge of different Christian camps whose only common denominator was a rejection of the Papacy.

Fast forward a little more and you have the Age of Sail or the Age of Exploration. This is also the Age of European Colonialism, which sees both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism become the two dominant religious powers in the entire world. Churches to both Roman Catholics and Protestants start springing up all over the place.

This time period is, essentially, the setup to our own current condition. At the dawn of the 20th century, Roman Catholicism, while it had suffered severe loss with both the Great Schism and Protestant Reformation, is a powerhouse of cultural significance. It is the world's largest organized faith tradition and organization, with over 1 billion people adhering to it.

However, by the dawn of the 21st century, the fortunes of Roman Catholicism have switched. Mass attendance is down, the ranks of the Papacy are rife with rebellion, and the church is a known hotbed of corruption and vice...

Miscellaneous:
-The etymology of the word 'Pope' is supposed to come from the Italian for 'papa.' So the Pope is really the 'papa' of all Roman Catholicism. This is probably the best example of clever medieval brand marketing.

-Another title for the Pope is 'Pontiff' (which comes from Pontifex) which is a leftover from the old Roman Imperial era. It means 'path-maker' in its simplest translation.

-