Actually I am interested in why the Catholic Church is both a political system, with its own sovereign state, ambassadors, political leader, etc. and a religious system, with the same leader as its political leader. The only reason I can see is they want both political power and religious power in the world. WHich is exactly what Islam has.
It is not a political system. Like any other church, even down to the Unitarians, the Catholic Church has its own internal laws and its moral laws.
The Catholic Church has never been the same as the civil ruler, and in fact, the reason that many Catholics died was because of the conflicts between the civil ruler and Church authorities.
Henry VIII tried to establish himself as both the civil and religious ruler, but that didn’t work because Christianity can’t work that way, so all he really did was make Anglicanism the state church with the king or queen of England as its head.
The Catholic Church has NO civil power. The only place it has any power is the Vatican, which is a tiny fictional state composed mainly of a handful of clergy and religious that was set up to defend Catholic sites - such as St Peter’s Basilica - from secular powers that were trying to absorb or even destroy them.
I think Muslims and leftist Muslim defenders who are posting on FR to try to defend Islam by claiming that the Catholic Church is the same need to get a little knowledge under their ignorant belts. The only thing in the US that has even been remotely similar to Islam - because while the Puritans wanted to establish a theocracy, Roger Williams undid that and there has never been another mainstream Protestant attempt - is Mormonism.
And the Mormons were defeated by the US Army (under the Constitution based on the rights of man found in [Christian] natural law) and shaped up when they realized they couldn’t get away with a theocracy.
Interestingly, the colony founded by a Catholic, Maryland, specifically provided for freedom of religion. When Calvert’s grandson converted to Protestantism (because of his marriage), he denied freedom of religion and imposed an oath of adherance to his particular Protestant church.
Go and read up on history a bit, boyz.
The answer is simple.
When the Popes were political subjects instead of sovereigns, the political powers over them tried to force them to follow the dictates of the state.
As the elected monarch of a sovereign state that extends over six city blocks, he is not beholden to any politician.
The only reason I can see is they want both political power and religious power in the world.
When the Papacy was at the absolute zenith of its political and military power in the late Middle Ages, the area controlled by the Pope was slightly smaller than West Virginia - or about 3% of the Catholic world.
All this talk of the "Holy Roman Empire" is quite amusing, since anyone acquainted with the history of Europe knows that the emperors and the popes were in constant conflict with one another - and both were in constant conflict with the King of France.
No society in human history has ever been more politically pluralistic than the Catholic Christendom of the Middle Ages.