The terms "Papacy" and "Roman Catholic Church" are often used interchangeably. But actually, we should make a distinction in our thinking, if not in our public utterances, between the Roman Catholic Church in the middle ages as a religious system, and the Papacy as a religio-political power. The distinction need not be made invariably. It disappears during the reign of powerful medieval popes, and almost completely after the Reformation. The distinction should not be exaggerated, but it is there. It would be as unhistorical to exaggerate such a distinction as to ignore it. But there is a distinction to be made, and it is briefly presented here as an appeal for historical accuracy and to solicit attention to details.
Both the Roman Catholic Church and the Papacy as the supreme governing office of the church are products of a historical development. It is impossible to fix a definite date for the emergence of the Roman Catholic Church, but it was clearly in existence by 350 A. D. The Papacy as such cannot be so clearly seen until a little later, but we know that by 538 A. D. the Papacy was established and was functioning politically.
The Papacy is the governing body of the Roman Catholic Church, and consists of the pope, the cardinals, and the papal curia. The cardinalate is not a separate rank, but a function. The word comes from the Latin cardis, meaning "hinge," and the cardinals, whether deacons, priests, or bishops, are in fact "hinges" connecting the Papacy with the church. The papal curia is that collection of officers and bureaus through which the Papacy operates, parallel to the headquarters staff of any great Protestant denomination. In addition, there are the envoys of the pope to governments outside Vatican City and the apostolic delegates sent to the Roman Catholic churches in countries beyond Italy.
The general historic fact that gives us the best evidence of a distinction between the Papacy and the Roman Catholic Church is this : There were times after the establishment of the Papacy when the Roman Catholic Church functioned almost entirely without a pope, and there were regions in Western Europe in which for years the Papacy was locally ignored. These were usually manifestations of an effort to maintain local religious independence, and to resist encroachment of papal control upon the church. Nevertheless they reveal the distinction suggested.
Roman Character of Western Catholicism
In what sense, we must ask, was the 'Western Catholic Church Roman ? It was Roman, first of all, because in pursuance of the theories of Irenaeus and Cyprian, the church in Rome was the only one in the west that could with even a show of justice claim apostolic origin, and hence the apostolic succession of its bishops. The claims of Marseilles and of Paris in this regard never received serious consideration, and the claims of Milan to headship were not based on strict apostolicity. The Roman church claimed for its bishops an unbroken succession from Peter down, and hence to Rome the Western churches came to look for guidance regarding apostolic belief and practice. The pope was first of all bishop of the city and see of Rome, and was only able in the early years of the Papacy gradually to force upon the Western Church his claim to be patriarch and primate of the entire church in the west. The unique claim of the pope to apostolicity was the basis for his pretensions, and accounts for the willingness of the churches of the west to look to Rome.
Secondly, the churches of the west were Roman because of the missionary service of the church in Rome. From the time of Pope Fabian, about 239 A. D., many of the churches of Western Europe were founded by missionaries sent from Rome or commissioned by Rome. The seven missionaries sent to Gaul in the third century, some of the churches founded in central and northern Gaul and along the Rhine River in the fourth and fifth centuries, the expedition of the monk Augustine to England under Gregory the Great, and the work of Boniface in Germany in the eighth century, are cases in point.
Thirdly, the ritual used in Rome was a model for the churches in Western Europe. There were times and places in which the Roman ritual was not followed, especially where missionaries from Ireland and Scotland, with their distinctive practices, had established on the Continent centers of Celtic influence, as at Luxeuil in France, Saint Gall in Switzerland, and Bobbio in north Italy. The Bohemian church in the ninth century, and the Polish church in the tenth, were considered Roman Catholic when they adopted the Latin language and the Roman ritual. In general, Rome was looked to as the mother church, the source of theological teaching, the example in ritual, and, to a steadily increasing degree, as the seat of authority.
It was over the last point, authority, that dispute arose, and it was in terms of this dispute that the distinction between Papacy and Roman Catholic Church was maintained. For example, the church in France has always been definitely Roman Catholic, and in spite of some heresies and irregularities, was generally orthodox in belief and particular in ritual. Yet under the Merovingian kings, from about 5oo to 750 A. D., the Papacy in Gaul was almost ignored. There were some appeals to Rome and some enforcement of papal decrees in Gaul. But the Papacy was not much noticed or felt. Charlemagne, who, although emperor of the revived Roman Empire in the west, was primarily king of the Franks, controlled the pope politically while he (Charlemagne) reformed and regulated the Roman Catholic Church in France.
The Dispute Over Authority
From the eleventh century on, the independence from the Papacy of the Roman Catholic Church in France was so marked that it has received a technical name, in history, Gallicanism. This means the control by Frenchmen, especially the French government, of the Roman Catholic Church in France, with the pope having in relation to the French the place of spiritual head only. Philip the Fair in 1303 imprisoned Pope Boniface VIII for his interference in French affairs ; and Louis XIV, in the seventeenth century, brought the independence of the French church from the pope to the highest peak, although his Roman Catholicism was just as valid as that of other statesmen of the day. He simply could not brook papal control in his dominions.
It is hardly necessary to call attention to the bloody antipapal revolt during the French Revolution, of which Berthier's unseating of the pope in 1798 was an extraordinary product ; the Protestantism of the government of the Third French republic in 1871; or the nonviolent antipapal movement in France, culminating in the important cultural decisions of 1905. These but serve to illustrate the weakness of the Papacy in France.
Equal attention might be given to the long struggle, during the Middle Ages, between the Papacy and the German, or so-called Holy Roman, Empire. Germany before the Reformation was never anything but Roman Catholic. Yet during the long reach of years from Emperor Otto I in 936, through the reigns, for instance, of Henry III, IV, and V, and Frederick Barbarossa, till the death of Frederick II in 1250, and indeed afterward, there was a constantly repeated struggle in which German statesmen and bishops, although Roman Catholic, contended against the encroachments of papal power. Under the powerful Pope Innocent III, 1198 to 1216, the Papacy and the Roman Catholic Church are indistinguishable, but otherwise during these more than three hundred years of German history, sections of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany and in Italy were nonpapal and sometimes anti-papal.
Controversy Illustrated in England
In England, too, the distinction between the Papacy as a religio-political force and the Roman Catholic Church as a religious body can be demonstrated. Before to66 the Roman Catholic Church of the Anglo-Saxons in Britain was giving little heed to the dictates of the Papacy. One of the excuses William the Norman had for invading Britain, and a basis for the placing of a papal blessing upon his enterprise, was his declared intention to restore to the Papacy its authority over the Roman Catholic Church in England. Yet when he had conquered England, he himself successfully bade defiance to the pope in the matter of appointment of bishops.
It was this same question that at about the same time brought Henry IV, the emperor, on his knees before Pope Gregory VII at Canossa. Although, like Germany, England was always Roman Catholic, she continued after William the Conqueror to exhibit anti-papal feeling, and during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries several decrees were issued, antipapal in their effect. Antipapal feeling culminated during the reign of Henry VIII, who sought to form a Roman Catholic Church in England, with himself rather than the pope at its head. The pressure of the times and the Geist of his people forced the formation, riot of a Roman Catholic Church, but of an English Catholic Church, which developed into what we know today as the Anglican Church, and which has two wings of opposite tendency : one, the Low Church, moving toward anti-Catholic simplicity ; the other, the High Church, obviously tending toward Roman Catholicism.
But the distinction we are presenting is most clearly seen throughout Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Shortly after the death of Bonif ace VIII in 1303, a line of French popes occupied the papal throne, not in Rome, but at Avignon, a city near Marseilles, which was then just outside the kingdom of France. Large sections of the Roman Catholic Church looked askance at popes sitting outside Italy. When in 1378 a pope was again seated in Rome, French popes continued at Avignon, and the Roman Catholic Church was scandalized by the sight of two so-called popes.
Christendom was divided, the pro-French countries looking to Avignon, the anti-French looking to Rome. The popes were spending money lavishly, quarreling with kings and bishops, and excommunicating one another. The Papacy was under severe scrutiny and criticism. Said Marsilio of Padua, an Italian philosopher of the fourteenth century, "Decretals and decrees of the bishop of Rome, or of any other bishops or body of bishops, have no power to coerce anyone by secular penalties or punishments, except by the authorization of the human 'legislator.' " Wycliffe's later attacks upon the pope were even more severe. During this great schism, the Papacy was therefore only nominally a factor in European affairs, but the Roman Catholic Church managed to live on. Following the Council of Constance, 1414-1418, the popes Martin and Eugene were able to restore papal power.
After 1450, however, the humanistic spirit of the Italian Renaissance conquered the Papacy, and made of it an agnostic, if not a pagan, immoral, corrupt, court. We can only speculate regarding what might have been had not the Reformation occurred. The terrific social and political upheaval which accompanied the Reformation drove the Roman Catholic Church back upon itself and compelled it superficially to reform. For this a strong centralized power was needed, and a succession of vigorous popes and an active Society of Jesus restored a strong Papacy and a compacted but territorially contracted Roman Catholic Church. Papacy and church then became to all practical purposes mutually identical.
The Council of Trent, like the reign of Innocent III, marks a restoration of full papal power and a uniting around the Papacy of the Roman Catholic Church. As a matter of fact, it is a defensible proposition that the Reformation in the sixteenth century, except as seen in the small so-called Anabaptist bodies, was in a sense a breaking off of antipapal elements which already existed in the Roman Catholic Church of the fifteenth century. The great Protestant bodies are "daughters of Babylon."
The Lateran Council of 1870 left no doubt with respect to the powers of the Papacy and its complete identification with the Roman Catholic Church, which it now controlled. The Old Catholics, who at this time seceded in protest from the papal church, made but a feeble impression, and are practically extinct today.
It is therefore to be emphasized that the prophecies of Daniel 7, of 2 Thessalonians 2, and of Revelation 2 and 13, deal mainly with the Papacy. Laying down the broad lines, prophecy sees the mystery of iniquity tightening its grip upon a corrupted church. All through the long period of 1260 years the Papacy developed. Sometimes it progressed rapidly, sometimes it must needs recede, sometimes it was halted: but it pressed on to its greatest triumphs in the times of Gregory VII, Alexander III, Innocent III, and at the Council of Trent. After the deadly wound of 1798, the healing process is seen, for instance, in the Concordat with Napoleon, in the Lateran Council of 1870, in the creation of Vatican City in 1929. There is now no question of resistance to the Papacy within the church. Prophecy indicates the slenderness of the hope of resistance, except spiritually, outside the church. All the world is wondering after the beast.
