Explainer

Creed

Leading

14 March 2025

6 min read

Why’s there a pope in Rome?

A modern gathering sheds light on an ancient question: who brings the church together?

Jack Chisnall

Jack Chisnall is a former gag teller and Oxford Theology graduate, combining the two at Holy Fooling.

A pope wearing a white skull cap and white robe, viewed from behind

Coronel Gonorrea on Unsplash.

On 1st March, an event called Gather25 tried something which it described as “unprecedented”. It sought to unite, in a 25-hour worship broadcast, global Christianity. Each session was led by a different nation, and its top pastors sent out to bat. It was slickly organised, as well as technologically sophisticated; I wished the event well, and prayed for it. While in the more institutionalised church settings, people are waiting on new Archbishops of Canterbury, or praying for the Pope to recover, here was action.

It got me thinking, though: when can it be said that the Church has properly met? Who decides to meet? Who sends the invites? Who confirms the decisions? Anyone reading the Gather25 website will have noticed overtures about the ‘Council of Nicaea’. Nicaea was the first important gathering of the ancient Church, in 325 AD. By citing this, Gather25 positioned itself downstream of a very prestigious meetup. It perhaps hoped for itself that it would be similarly ecumenical (a Greek word to do with the whole household). Did Gather25 have the same Nicene status?

Sadly, no. Gather25 was openhearted and dynamic, but it was a very particular slice of Christianity meeting for a very historically specific form of worship. The difficulty is that it takes more than even the buzziest PR, or all our modern advances in communication and streaming, to truly summon something as untameable as the Church to order. What do we need to ensure we have a gathering at which the Church is truly represented, and able to officially act with the “mind of Christ” (as St Paul puts it)? Wouldn’t you need something, or someone, able to steer the entire thing?

At the Council of Nicaea in 325AD, nothing less than the most powerful man on the planet would do. The Emperor Constantine alone had the clout to draw in Christian leaders from around the world, make them sit together, and demand an official settlement of a difficult question: how exactly was God the Son, Jesus, linked to God the Father? Even with such heavyweight patronage, church leaders did not produce an absolutely finished answer at that time - it actually took a whole extra council, in Constantinople in 381 AD, to confirm the confession that is still known today as the Nicene Creed, and which begins “I believe in God, the Father Almighty”.

Yet a problem had been touched on. Should a Caesar really have this kind of upper hand over a sacred institution? Some lines of thought tried to think of the emperor as a kind of ‘living law’ who represents God to the Christian people he rules over. But this couldn’t jive with key parts of a tradition wherein Jesus had radically authorised servant leaders from among simple Galilean fishermen, known as the Twelve Apostles, or ‘sent ones’. Who should rule?

Was this a bit of overreading, designed to give a senior cleric a Scriptural trump card to play against a secular leader in a petty power showdown?

The problem has not really gone away. If we ignore this question of legitimacy, we are at the mercy of raw power. Either we seek an authoritative means of unifying Christians, or it becomes a case of who happens to have the most cash, or the most Instagram followers. It has never been the case that the Church has just organically ‘met up’ without a protos, a first name on the team sheet. Indeed, when has this ever happened, in any sphere of life? It would be like a parliament forming without the invitation of the sovereign.

It is against this bigger problem that the rise of the Christian leader in Rome must be viewed. Rome was, of course, the centre of an Empire during the first few Christian centuries, but it quickly gained distinctly Christian prestige. St Paul’s letter to the congregations there continues to be one of the most sizzling documents in the New Testament; he was also martyred there, along with his fellow leader St Peter, one of the original Twelve. Rome was a big deal, and sources from as early as the first century show the leading clergyman (or ‘bishop’) of Rome, a man called Clement, being asked to weigh in on a dispute over 600 miles away from his locale.

For Catholics like me, it is clear the Church was onto something. It would go on to discover that there was more to the Bishop of Rome than merely his occupation of a well-to-do area. There would be a development. Many church doctrines, after all, are the result of reflection, Scriptural deep dives, and the need for clearer unified doctrine and practice - the Trinity, for example.

And the Bishop of Rome’s role developed in a particular setting: while the figure of the emperor loomed ever larger in the East, a parallel momentum would gather around the leading cleric of a city where St Peter had passed on his mantle. For St Peter had, after all, been singled out by Jesus in his earthly ministry. In the Bible, the Gospel according to St Matthew depicts Jesus giving “the keys to the kingdom” to his follower Simon, who he then renames ‘Peter’, meaning rock, upon which he vows to build his church. Not only this - Peter is to strengthen his brothers (St Luke 22:32); to feed the Lord’s sheep (John 21). The Bishop of Rome was increasingly thought to have this Peter-like quality.

Was this a bit of overreading, designed to give a senior cleric a Scriptural trump card to play against a secular leader in a petty power showdown? It is an accusation hard to shake off completely, sinful humanity being what it is. In the Middle Ages, a decree was conveniently ‘discovered’ by the Roman Emperor that handed over all his power to the Bishop of Rome, the new pontifex maximus - it was, of course, a complete phoney designed to assert church power over secular rulers. But for Catholics, despite patchy moments, there has always been more to be said for the Pope (from Papa, ‘father’) as a legitimate consolidation of Jesus’ vision for the leadership of the Church he founded: a brotherhood, headed by a type of St Peter, the rock on which the Church is built.

Not headed by St Peter’s successor as a flawless demigod, it should be said. For it is also part of Christian tradition about St Peter that he was capable of tremendous human weakness - he betrayed Jesus on the night of his arrest and trial, and denied he ever knew him. Some Popes have sadly been downright wicked or self-serving. Nor is it headed by the Pope as a tyrant. St Peter confirms early doctrinal pronouncements for the Church - he declares that food laws should not prevent Israelites from enjoying table fellowship with other ethnic groups, for example. But he is also frankly challenged by other leaders during early meetings in Jerusalem. The Pope teaches not as a lone ranger, but always within a bigger fraternity of fellow bishops.

In 2024, a Vatican department released a new document pondering what role the Pope could play in bringing together the separated brethren of world Christianity. I hope this offer is taken seriously. Because what remains compelling for Catholics is a figure who makes it possible, at the most foundational level, to say that the Church is One, as per Jesus’ prayer in John 17:21, and all without needing to rely on good digital marketing. It is not just pious sentiment for a Catholic to say that they are genuinely connected to a global family of as many as 1.4 billion people, because they share a pastor who claims to serve the whole thing, the ‘servant of the servants of God’. Any critique of the Papacy - and there are many intelligible ones, raking over the sordid moments or disputing the Scriptural evidence - must, though, rankle with that: what really keeps us together, then? The Catholic insistence has always been that saying ‘Jesus’ or ‘the Holy Spirit’ really amounts to saying: “what I think Jesus wants; what I think the Holy Spirit is saying” - and that is, in effect, actually many popes instead of just one.

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Article

Attention

Creed

Education

Psychology

1 April 2025

6 min read

We miss so much when we only see what we are looking for

Explaining why we don't see the unseen - with the help of a gorilla.

Henna Cundill

Henna is a researcher with the Centre for Autism and Theology at the University of Aberdeen.

Manuel Bonadeo on Unsplash.

In a thriving Pentecostal Church on an English city street, a room full of worshippers are singing, clapping, dancing and throwing their hands in the air. The preacher cries “Come, Holy Spirit!” and there are cries of “Amen!” and “Yes Lord!” One person has tears on their cheeks.

A few doors down, a few dozen Anglicans also gather. Heads bent over their liturgy books, there is a hum of responses and an air of reverence. “Give us the joy of your saving help: and sustain us with your life-giving Spirit.” The altar candles flicker as the community settles itself into pews. The Holy Spirit is no less present to these worshippers, although they respond in a completely different way.

Both churches share one creed, in which they commit to their belief in God as the source of all things, seen and unseen. Whilst Pentecostal theologies tend to focus on the observable and unpredictable signs of the Spirit at work, many Anglicans would describe the Spirit in terms of an inner experience, perhaps one that is cognitive rather than physical. But either way, Christians share one belief – that God is present in the world, and we call that the Holy Spirit.

However, there are also hundreds of people who walk past both of these churches, week by week, who would never dream of setting foot inside. Many of them will think that anyone who believes in God is deluded or deceived. Such rationalist thinkers often have a strongly monist view of the world, in which everything, even mysterious things such as human consciousness and perception of non-physical entities, must have a physical or biological basis. As Ebenezer Scrooge says to the apparent ghost of Marley in Charles Dickens’ book, A Christmas Carol, “You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”

It is almost impossible to convince someone who hasn’t had a first first-hand experience of God that anything like the Holy Spirit exists. Many nay-sayers, I suspect, quietly (or maybe not so quietly) believe that their unbelief is because they are more rational and maybe even more intelligent than those who get excited by such things. But there is another possible explanation for why some people apparently cannot, or will not, see the unseen.

The British education system is heavily orientated towards STEM. Even when more creative subjects such as literature find their way into the syllabus, they are often studied in a rather dry and analytical way. Notwithstanding the efforts of the occasional maverick teacher, I recall much time spent learning how to identify the iambic pentameter of Shakespeare, and little (if any) time learning to articulate how his sonnets made me feel. Such a system turns out good scientists, but it may be that in doing so it trains our young people out of being able to perceive a whole raft of things which are arguably just as important to human flourishing.

The world around us contains significantly more sensory input than our minds can process, so we simply don’t pay attention to most of it.

A “selective attention test” can quickly prove this point. I did one recently with a room full of psychology undergraduates, almost all of whom had identified as monists. “Since you guys are the brightest and the best,” I simpered “let’s do a little intelligence test. Apparently only five per cent of the general population get the answer right to this puzzle, but in this room, I expect the success rate will be a little higher…”

Having primed them by flattering their egos, I proceeded to show them a video called “The Monkey Business Illusion”, designed in 2009 by scientists Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons. During the short film, a group of people pass basket balls to each other, and viewers are asked to count how many times the players wearing white shirts pass the ball. It seems simple enough, and when the film ended, I asked the students how many counted the right number of passes. Almost every hand in the room went up. No surprises there.

Then I asked the more important question – who saw the gorilla? There was a smattering of laughter, and this time only about half of the hands went up. Meanwhile, the other half of my students were looking around at their peers, utterly confused…

But it was true. In “The Monkey Business Illusion”, a person in a 6ft gorilla costume walks right across the middle of the scene, weaving through the players in the game. However, because most viewers are intently focussed on watching the players in white, they simply don’t perceive it. You can try this for yourself - the video I’m talking about can be found easily on YouTube, and if you follow the search term “selective attention test” there are many others like it.

The material point is that the world around us contains significantly more sensory input than our minds can process, so we simply don’t pay attention to most of it. If you pause for a moment right now, you might notice that there is the hum of a heater in your room, or the noise of traffic outside, or the smell of an air freshener, or that a piece of your clothing that is too tight – things you were simply not aware of until I pointed them out. It’s common that we don’t perceive things until something else makes us think that they are important. If someone tells you that your house might have structural damage, you will suddenly start to notice every creak that comes from your walls and ceilings, even though those creaks have probably been happening for years.

As social beings, we can be easily conditioned into paying attention to certain things and ignoring others. If I tell a group of students that intelligent people are highly attentive to the players in white shirts, I increase the likelihood that they simply will not notice a gorilla.

There is good research to show that children, even in our modern and secular society, are inherently spiritual – most young kids believe in God, or gods, fairies and the existence of many things unseen. But this is not celebrated in our STEM focussed education system, wherein young minds are highly conditioned to let go of such “irrational” beliefs and trust in the full explanatory power of science. It is so effective that, by the time they get to my classroom at university, I’ve got little hope of persuading any of my monists that there was a 6ft gorilla without showing the video again and letting them see it for themselves.

But there are always some people who are willing to challenge the idea that Marley was just an undigested bit of beef. There are always some people who attend churches of one type or another, or practice other forms of spirituality and religion. Some pray, some meditate, and many take part in rituals. This trains them in what anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann calls “micro-processes of attending”, leaving them more ready to perceive spiritual things instead of screening them out of their conscious awareness. How they respond might depend on preferred tradition – dancing, liturgy, or a little bit of both. But all agree that there is something going on that is unseen and important.

Many STEM educated, highly rational and fully committed monists no doubt think that those who attend churches are deluded and deceived into perceiving unseen things are simply just not there. These nay-sayers have been taught, implicitly and explicitly, that it is more intelligent to believe in the all-explanatory power of science. But perhaps it is they who have been deluded and deceived? As the Monkey Business Illusion demonstrates, if you flatter someone’s intelligence enough, it becomes entirely possible to hide a 6ft gorilla in plain sight.

Watch the Monkey Business Illusion

Celebrate our 2nd birthday!

Since March 2023, our readers have enjoyed over 1,000 articles. All for free. This is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.
If you enjoy Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?
Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.
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