Pope Gregory's ghost

From The London Guardian-

Pope Gregory VII haunts the English imagination. Like any self-respecting ghost he never fully reveals himself. But he's there, hovering in the background, the spectre of aggressive religious interference.

Gregory's papacy was short (1073-1085) and ended in exile and apparent defeat. But he was responsible, more than anyone else, for the transformation of Rome into a papal monarchy, which claimed the right to depose emperors and absolve subjects of their allegiance. Within 130 years, when King John was forced to surrender his entire kingdom to Pope Innocent III and receive it back as a papal vassal as a way of ending a particularly acrimonious battle with Rome, it seemed as if Gregory's mission was accomplished.

In reality the later Middle Ages saw papal power wane across Europe and the Reformation effectively stamped it out in Britain. Yet despite, indeed because of this shift in political allegiance, the papacy has ever since been a bogeyman for the English, embodying the divided loyalties which apparently make kingdoms fall.

Ghosts can scare us but they have little substance. Contemporary Christian documents on electoral issues are shy, sometimes too shy, of indicating any party political preference. In his recent encyclical Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict reiterated the Roman Catholic teaching that "the church does not have technical solutions to offer and does not claim to interfere in any way in the politics of states". Nobody reading Choosing the Common Good, the recent publication from the Catholic bishops conference of England and Wales will find a secret manifesto there. Those who react badly to papal statements on equality legislation (they tend not to react so badly to statements on economic regulation or international development) need to understand that statements are not infringements. Benedict is no Gregory.

More here-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/mar/11/religion-political-influence