Historically speaking the problem arises when the Supreme Court ceases to interpret the constition in accordance with the original intent of the authors. When that happens the Court ceases to apply law and begins to create law, many times contradicting the constitution itself.
The same thing happens in the Church...hence the Reformation
"Historically speaking the problem arises when the Supreme Court ceases to interpret the constition in accordance with the original intent of the authors. When that happens the Court ceases to apply law and begins to create law, many times contradicting the constitution itself.
The same thing happens in the Church...hence the Reformation"
But how do we know what the "original intent" of the authors is?
It is difficult enough to discern the intent of living, breathing persons standing in the same room. The Constitution, the Bible, and the writings of the early Church fathers say what they say. But what they say is often confusing or contradictory.
Generally what happens is that whatever one's strongly-held personal beliefs are on any subject is just as strongly believed to have been the original intent of the authors, sacred or temporal. There is no problem having strongly held beliefs. The mischief starts when one mistakes one's own intuitive understanding of something with the "intent" of men long dead.
With the Supreme Court, of course, we are dealing with mere politics, and the checks and balances on the power of the Court are ultimately political.
But with the Church, there is no clear institutional check-and-balance, and certainly no clear biblical one. And so it comes down to a matter of faith as to whether one believes that God provided for a resolution mechanism in the Church itself, with the Church possessing the final "Power of the Keys, to loose and to bind", that Jesus certainly gave to St. Peter, or if one believes that the final authority of Peter died with Peter.