Is the Roman Church more a political institution than a religious one?

The Roman Catholic Church is one of the oldest institutions of the world. It has played a very important role in history and has provided support for the sick and the poor, education and medical services.  al services in the the world.  in the world. Although the Church has done a lot of good, it has also made some compromises that turned it into a political institution.

First of all, during the Holy Roman Empire, it was the Pope who crowned the emperor. The Pope used to choose a Christian sovereign whose responsibility was to rule over the Empire, but also to protect the Roman Catholic Church. This meant that it was the Church that selected the ruler of Europe’s largest political entity of that time.

During the XX century, the Church came to a compromise both with Nazism and Fascism. Pope Pius XII never condemned the Nazi Holocaust: millions of Jews were exterminated and the Church didn’t do anything.

Nowadays, in Italy, there are some political parties that support the Church or are Church-oriented (UdC, for example). Some parties even alter their programs to obtain the votes of the Christians. This happens because the majority of the Italian population is Catholic and for a political party having the approval of the Catholic Church can “make the difference”.

Moreover, in Italy the Church has evidently influenced legislation: the reason why the State can’t legalize gay marriage is that the Church is too powerful an institution to fight against. The Church can express itself through many means of communication: the radio, the television, the social networks (in fact, the ex-Pope Ratzinger opened an account on twitter and now Pope Francis is continuing “tweeting” on the same platform). In addition to this, in Italy not only the political parties, but also the Church has its own press (let’s think about the magazine “Famiglia cristiana” and the newspapers “Avvenire” and “L’osservatore romano”).

In Italy, the relationship between the Church and politics has always been on a razor's edge. In fact, last February, Padre Peppe Trifirò, an Italian priest, asked his parishioners to abstain from voting in parliamentary elections. “Let’s give our politicians a sign” Trifirò said “that we don’t feel represented by them and that we think our politics is becoming dirtier, more speculative and more inhuman everyday.”. It is not the first time the Church “has advised” the worshippers not to vote. The point is that the Church uses its political influence even if it is supposed to be a religious institution.

Some may say that the Church has become political in order to survive, that it was “forced” to be political and to make compromises, otherwise it would have disappeared. It may be so, but it seems like the Church feels comfortable in this position.