Demote the Pope?

An international Protestant leader has added a new item to the crowded agenda for ecumenical discussion between Protestants and Roman Catholics. Writing in the Journal of Ecumenical Studies, the Rev. Lukas Vischer, top staff theologian at the Geneva-based World Council of Churches, criticizes the political status of Vatican City, the 108.7-acre enclave in Rome where Roman Catholicism is headquartered.

Vischer says that King Louis XIV's purported remark, "I am the state," would "hardly be an exaggeration on the lips of the Pope," who is an absolute monarch in his postage-stamp realm. Vischer also argues that Vatican City's existence as a sovereign state limits the church's readiness to support anti-establishment political movements.

Vischer proposes that the Vatican think about renouncing its political sovereignty, which was established by a 1929 treaty with Italy, and instead set itself up as some sort of "extraterritorial zone secured by international guarantees." Most probably, the net effect of the Vischer proposal will be to reaffirm Pope Paul's stated position that any idea that the Roman Catholic Church might some day join the World Council is merely "a hypothesis."

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