Quote of the Day (Pope Gregory VII, ‘Oppressed’ by Multiple Challenges)

“The Eastern Church fallen from the faith, and attacked by the infidels from without. In the West, South, or North, scarcely any bishops who have obtained their office regularly, or whose life and conduct correspond to their calling, and who are actuated by the love of Christ instead of worldly ambition. Nowhere princes who prefer God’s honor to their own, and justice to gain…. And when I look to myself, I feel oppressed by such a burden of sin that no other hope of salvation is left me but in the mercy of Christ alone.”— Hildebrand of Sovana, later Pope Gregory VII (1020-1085), in a letter to his friend, Abbot Hugo of Cluny, Jan. 22, 1075, quoted by Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church (1907)

The new film adaptation of Robert Harris’ novel Conclave spotlights, amid the election of a new pope, deeply unholy political infighting, corruption, and clerical disobedience of vows of chastity.

I was going to write that readers and filmgoers—with attention spans shortened to a TikTok clip and little if any historical background—may be surprised to learn that the same problems besieged the Vatican nearly a millennium ago.

But now I read that German Cardinal Gerhard Müller, Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester, and—ahem!—TV commentator Megyn Kelly have blasted the thriller for depicting such issues in a manner that Cardinal Muller has termed “anti-Christian propaganda,” according to Edward Pentin’s January 20 blog post for National Catholic Register.

Clearly, these outraged worthies haven’t read one of the greatest of medieval popes, Gregory VII, on the same subjects.

According to legend, the reforming Benedictine monk Hildebrand, on a wave of popular acclamation, was carried into the church in St. Peter’s in Vincoli (an easy task to perform, as he was dwarfish), and elected people in 1073, protesting all the while his unworthiness for the office.

Maybe the anguish that Hildebrand (who took the name Gregory) felt before and while serving as the successor of St. Peter was the kind that the intensely pious exhibit in measuring how far they fall from the injunction in Matthew 5:48 to “be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Or maybe he dreaded the enormous problems that had plagued his mentor, Pope Gregory VI—including exile into Germany forced at the behest of Emperor Henry III.

From the first, Gregory VII denounced the growing practice of simony, the sale of church offices or ecclesiastical preferments, and soon he also banned lay investiture, or bestowal of a church office by a member of the secular nobility rather than by church officials, and clerical marriage.

His actions sparked an epic clash with Emperor Henry IV that weakened both. Like his successors to this day, Gregory had to keep church objectives in mind even as he dealt with secular rulers. The problem was that he and Henry IV could not—or chose not—to move beyond non-negotiable positions.

Medieval monarchs like Henry saw, in appointing bishops to their offices, the opportunity to break the hereditary rule of lords, with bishops becoming vassals of kings. Countering the notion that Henry advocated of the divine right of kings, Gregory proclaimed a spiritual authority higher than a temporary power.

Though never using the word “infallible,” Gregory laid the groundwork for the doctrine by positing that the Holy See “did not err.” Pure and ascetic himself, the pope could never imagine that the supreme power he pronounced over spiritual and secular affairs in the name of removing clerical corruption might ever be used to conceal it.

Like so many reformers in all walks of life, Gregory exhibited a zeal and anger that upset his targets. (German bishops, for instance, complained that he treated them like bailiffs on an estate.) At his best, however, he was as fearless as he was fierce, overcoming his initial self-doubt, and even surviving a kidnapping and imprisonment before being liberated by many of the faithful at the end of 1075.

Henry IV could never forget his humiliating winter journey to the castle of Canossa in 1077 to beg the pope’s forgiveness as the first step in lifting his excommunication. Three years later, he invaded Rome, replacing Gregory with an “anti-pope.”

"I have loved justice and hated iniquity; therefore, I die in exile,” Gregory remarked sadly on his deathbed in 1085.

Church historian Eamon Duffy has rendered the most judicious assessment of the pontiff in Ten Popes Who Shook the World:

“To 19th-century Protestant politicians like Bismarck, it embodied the overweening claims of a power-mad Church, a humiliating defeat for the autonomy of the secular world that must never be repeated….

“Gregory was defeated in the short term, but he changed the world all the same. Other popes would avoid such all-out confrontation, but never again would the Church accept the right of kings and rulers to determine spiritual matters. Whatever Gregory’s intentions, a lasting line had been drawn between the claims of conscience and the claims of state power. And under this overbearing autocratic pope, human freedom took one small, uncertain step forward.”

Nevertheless, spiritual leaders who dare to openly confront wayward politicians continue to encounter peril, as Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde is experiencing now following her inauguration day sermon directed to President Trump at Washington Cathedral. (I doubt that anyone would want to read the kind of messages she must be receiving from MAGA followers following their leader’s whining, abusive tweet.)

(For original source material on the escalating clash between the "City of God" and the "City of Man" in the Middle Ages, see a volume edited by Brian Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State, 1050-1300.)