What about the Pope?

The Catholic church is currently undergoing its process of selecting a new Pope. In Catholicism, the Pope is “the highest honor a member of the clergy can receive”. “The Pope rules the Catholic church in a very similar way to a king would a country, and he is the head of state for the Vatican City.” How does this process take place, you may ask. According to the website, vaticannews.va, there are 133 Cardinal electors who cast votes for who they believe the next Pope should be. There must be a two-thirds majority to be elected Pope, meaning at least 89 of the possible 133 votes. “Once a Pope is elected, he will be led to the "Room of Tears", a small room next to the Sistine Chapel where he dons the white papal vestments for the first time”. There are a lot more details in the process, but this is, in a nutshell, how it works. Sounds like a political election, right?

How does this compare with the Bible? Well, even a basic knowledge of scripture will lead you to see that this entire process is based on Catholic tradition and cannot be found in scripture. The Bible tells us that Jesus Christ is the head of the church, which is his body (Ephesians 5:23). We, being Christians, are the individual members of that body, i.e. the hand, the foot, the toes, the organs etc. (1 Corinthians 12:12) I believe the Bible compares the structure of the church to our physical body for a specific reason. The human body cannot operate without the head. Our brains control everything about our bodies, including regulating senses, emotions, thoughts, memories, and even controls process we don’t think about such as breathing and heart rate. Even so, the body cannot lose its head, and then simply pick another head. If the head is removed, the body dies! It stands to reason that the church is, and always will be, led by Jesus Christ. There are no new rules or policies by which the church is supposed to be organized and operated. There is one body, the church (Romans 12:5) and there is one head to that body, its Leader, Jesus Christ (Ephesians 1:22-23) and that will never change!

-Caleb Westbrook