The days of the secreted and persecuted church during the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries were long gone when the Roman Empire fell in the late 5^th century. The Latin church found itself increasingly needed in secular affairs and seduced by them. By the Renaissance period of the 15^th century, the millennium had long let loose the siren’s cry of secular power, national politics, and a host of other factors. This lead to the formation of the Papal States, the rise of a courtly Roman Curia comprised mainly of lay nobility, a complex means of funding the increasing “empire” of the Church, and a culture of corruption, moral laxity, and an obscuring of the lines between the holy and the secular. In the mix there were saintly popes and popes with, shall we say, other foci, aspirations, and intentions. The church was unknowingly on what the historian Barbara Tuchman would famously call “the march of folly.” The march reached its zenith in the last six popes before the Protestant Reformation(s). The folly of the papacy and the Roman Curia, pursuing secular goals at the expense of its spiritual mission, bewilderingly ignored the growing outrage and distrust of common people seeking some assurance of salvation – which they found in the theological focus of the Augustinian monk, Martin Luther. The papal/curial folly gave birth to the Reformation(s). The six popes highlighted over the next several weeks were the ones occupying the Chair of Peter in the 50 years preceding the Protestant Reformations that swept through Europe in the 16^th century. They were the last pontiffs over a united western Christianity Continue reading →