Comments by "Luke Thompson" (@WhiteStoneName) on "Does the Pope have power? | Robert Barron and Lex Fridman" video.

That’s a good question. A lot has to do with Heaven/Hell and judgement and “binding and loosing” or authority. If one is a universalist, ie believes that in the end, all people (and the entire Cosmos) will be “friends of God”, then the Church ends up being the Cosmos (Humanity and everything else).
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@onepiecemememan I can see what you’re saying. And I think that can be true. It’s a problem with the impulse to name everything too narrowly and explicitly and systematically. But there have been and are many Catholic mystics who wouldn’t con belief. Mysticism is fundamentally personal and noncoercive. I’m not a Catholic btw. Just in case you’re wondering. I love the Paul Tillich quote “all institutions are inherently demonic.”
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@onepiecemememan the problem is that the counterfeit always shows up to mimic the real. Christ begets AntiChrist in a sense. But AntiChrist will always use the individuals for its own ends/desires—apart from the will of the individual. Christ never would. And the Church should be like her Bridegroom.
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@onepiecemememan I don’t think that organized religion has to always do that. Institutional religion…maybe. Probably? Full disclosure, I’m in the process of becoming an Orthodox Christian which I see as being intrinsically mystical, while only some of Western Christianity is mystical. Non-mystical Christianity is always gonna try and tell you what to think. And the attempt to control what someone thinks is a bad idea, imo. Interestingly, Karl Rahner, a Catholic, said, “the Christian of the future will be a mystic or not at all.” I love that quote.
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@dinadigiovanni4726 what does it mean to “believe”? The Greek word often translated “believe” is pistis. It’s about faith or faithfulness. Which is not mere affirmation of propositional statements. There is not easy consensus about what it means to believe in Christ and be a part of his Body.
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There are multiple ways to influence. Systematic influence or personal influence, for example. Systematic would be mechanistic and not necessarily personal. However, the personal would necessarily be rooted in relationship and context and admiration or respect. Therefore one—the systematic influence—has the capacity for manipulation and abuse. Whereas the personal does not. And lastly, the systematic/mechanical influence can be received willingly or unwillingly, voluntarily or involuntarily, coercively or noncoercively. This is the difference between the Church as a healthy organism and the church as an institution.
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