Why is the Catholic Church so wedded to political power with the Pope as a political sovereign?
The Church began independent of the state, in fact the political power persecuted it. Then Constantine, a Roman Emperor, embraced Christianity and began to give help and recognition to the Church and not persecution and opposition. This wedded the church to the Roman state whether Catholics liked it or not. In Western Europe the Roman Empire collapsed with nothing to take its place and civilize the barbarian invaders. The Catholic Church was the only entity surviving this catastrophe and encouraged the people to pay allegiance to local war lords, usually barbarian invaders or their descendants, in the interest of stability and security. The medieval form of government and eventually modern European states came out of this arrangement. But these early states had arisen under the protection of the state and were accustomed to church/state union. When they became sufficiently powerful and no longer needed the Church’s tutelage, these states then began to control the Church as a political
