5 ms·

influence over public opinion ;)

• b112 3y ago
  See my upthread response, but that has nothing to do with it. State control over the church, and church control over the state, is a huge, massive, immense change. Nothing comparable to any other legal change you've ever hear of.
  • pjc50 3y ago
    State control over church _doctrine_, yes, that's sacred, but state control over church _finance_ is a much more temporal business. Being a church isn't like diplomatic immunity. Allowing a church to build a huge opaque financial empire is the sort of thing that leads to theses being nailed to doors.
  • ggm 3y ago
    Why? No dispute how hard it would be, after all, the pope has a lot of tanks. But hard is not the same as immense. Churches pay wage tax, land tax, fines, church leaders even sometimes go to jail. Churches pay purchase tax, take out insurance, although they don't cover acts of God..
    • pjc50 3y ago
      > the pope has a lot of tanks Is this a mangling of Stalin's "how many divisions has the Pope?" The Vatican has not had a significant military since the war of Italian Unification ended in 1870.