'Rome was not built in a day'
"I have made it a rule since the beginning of my episcopate to make no decision merely on the strength of my own personal opinion without consulting you [the priests and the deacons] and without the approbation of the people." Cyprian of Carthage
Cyprian almost sounds like a present day seasoned politician: he died in 258, and is famed for always having touched base with his earthly constituency.
In the year 373 Ambrose, The aristocrat governor of the province of Milan was asked to restore order after the See of Milan fell vacant and a storm erupted among the congregants, whose duty it was to elect a new bishop. So impressive was Ambrose, so naturally did he exude authority and presence that the crowd milling about the cathedral moved unanimously to acclaim him the new bishop, ignoring the inconvenient fact that he was not even a Christian, much less a member of the clergy. Once the emperor had authorized his appointment, Ambrose was baptized. Eight days later-a symbolic period of waiting in halfhearted deference to the canon law prohibiting a neophyte from ascending to the episcopacy (the office of bishop)-the 34- year-old Roman magistrate was consecrated bishop of Milan, a post in which he served with distinction for 23 years, until his death in 397.
Can it be that the early Catholicism was a democracy? Believe it or not, since the 1st century the whole Catholic community, including the laity, had been taking part in the election of bishops and the choice of ministers. Early Catholicism is dotted with scenes like those of modern day election incidences. In 395, for example, the cerebral Saint Augustine of Hippo (in present-day Algeria), petulantly described a raucous "inaugural ball" in the nearby town of Sinitum. A procession of the local laity, accompanied by a chorus of consecrated virgins chanting in unison, encircled the newly elected bishop as he ascended the flight of steps leading to his ornate, canopied episcopal chair in the church sanctuary. The assembled multitude was definitely in a party spirit, no doubt in anticipation of enjoying the patronage of the new episcopal administrator, who exercised control over local jobs as well as the sacraments. A year later rowdy crowds in Hippo pronounced the same familiar formula Nos eligimus eum (''We elect him'') over Augustine himself.
The catholic hierocracy has over 1.3 billion adherents and has reigned for over two millennia. And although there are those with 'liberal' inclinations among them, and even with constant threats of splintering, the largest religious denomination on the world isn't about to go back to its juvenile democratic ways. Some like to chastise Catholics under the argument that even though they were to contribute advice and work for the church but were excluded from decision making, they remain, no matter how many fine things are said about their status, second-class members;
that they are more objects that are utilized than subjects who are actively responsible. But the church maintains that the principle of specialization, which surprisingly was also advanced by Plato and Socrates, postulates that persons can advise and collaborate without necessarily participating in decision making; in this manner everyone performs a task befitting their status and still belongs to the church.
It is important that we backtrack to the meager beginnings of the church; we need to go back to the time immediately after the ascension of Christ and the subsequent crack down of his followers. Against all odds, Christianity prevailed. As they huddled together in that upper room in utter fear and trepidation of those baying for their blood like Saul of Tarsus, these were not brave men and women, at least not until the Holy Ghost descended on them and they were suddenly willing to die for the gospel. I have pointed out democracy's inherent disenfranchisement; contrastingly God repeatedly calls marginal characters to apostolic and prophetic roles. God chronically prefers misfits, second sons, hated tax collectors, arrogant fishermen, unknown characters from off in the hills--people who look for all the world like nothing more than nobodies that nobody sent. God works not through their talents, not through their credentials and their official positions but through their courage and their openness to the Spirit.
But we can't afford to ignore anyone. Grace is the most elusive substance on earth and regularly appears through very iffy characters. For bishops and cardinals that means listening to lay people. For lay people that means listening to ordained leadership; all of us must listen to all of us, because God speaks God's truth through people we don't expect. The "angel of the Lord" never arrives with gilded wings, a gauzy outfit, a beatific smile, and a certificate of authenticity. People who are zealous for God are a notoriously edgy group. They make everyone else uneasy. The Mystical Body is full of folks you would rather avoid. And if some of them try to avoid you as well, that doesn't mean the effort to converse is pointless. God is not a linear thinker, and God's ways are fairly strange. "Losers" win, as long as they don't lose faith. If these are God's likely characters, then the question becomes: What would it mean for the whole church to accept the challenge to be something much more richly inclusive than mere democracy? Could the Catholics have nailed it? Let's examine how the church's leadership structure has evolved over time:
In Acts 1: 12-23 we see the eleven Apostles casting lots to choose Judas' successor, the lot fell on Matthias - that was the last verse that 'elected Apostle Matthias' is heard of in the Bible. Gods clear choice is obvious all through Acts and the latter epistles. Against all the odds Saul of Tarsus, the dreaded persecutor was called personally by Christ himself to become 'The Apostle Paul'; he is largely credited for taking the church away from the rejecting Jews and bringing it to us the gentiles. Paul's ministry can be termed as the most significant human effort that ensured the survival of the church. If the 'Apostle to the Gentiles' had not taken the gospel out of Israel the Jews who had rejected it would have quashed it. The principal threat to the gospel became its principal asset. The apostle Paul, writing in the decades immediately following the death and resurrection of the Lord, singled out prophesy and teaching as the noblest gifts of the Holy Spirit-with miracle-working, healing, 
administrating, and speaking in tongues not far behind. The church then was spirit led; one body with each members as important as the other.
All of Paul's epistles talk of a 'Royal Priesthood' with Christ as the head. Christ had given a scathing attack to religious leaders throughout his earthly ministry and as thus an administrative priest was not feasible in that early church. The emphasis was on fellowship. In actual sense, the early church founded the tenets of communism; they lived together and sold all their property and put proceedings into a common fund. Ofcourse, just like modern day communism, this arrangement failed; we later see Paul asking the gentile church in Antioch to give an offering for the church in Jerusalem. But the point here is that administrative bishops /priests were neither conferred by the people nor directly by the Spirit. These posts emerge later and were conferred by the laying on of hands by apostles. The posts may have been there in the Old Testament through the tribe of Levi who were designated 'The Priests and The High Priest' but then it was more pastoral than it was administrative.
Immediately after the Ascension of Christ the Bible in 'The Acts of the Apostles' records first the apostolic ministry. During the casting of lots to elect the successor of Judas In the verses cited above, we get our definition of an apostle; - The man must have been witness to the resurrection – this is the validation of the entire Gospel; Christianity is nothing but the believe in the fact of the resurrection (Read Also: The Most Astounding Fact). In 1 Corinthians 15:6 we are told that the Risen Christ appeared at one time to over 500 People. 180 others witnessed the Ascension. All those that saw the risen Christ before he ascended into heaven were eligible to fill the gap which Judas had left in the apostolic ministry. Saul (Later Called Paul) was not one of these; he did not see the risen Christ before the Ascension.
He's however probably the only human to have seen Christ in person after the Ascension and therefore meets the criteria for apostleship. Paul is also among the few privileged humans who have seen Christ in his glory; Christ in His glory had also been revealed during the transfiguration.
Stephen also saw Christ in His Glory, standing on the right hand of God to receive him as he gave up his Spirit during his stoning. In revelation John too saw Christ in his Glory seated at the right hand of God, but Stephen's and John's experiences were so unlike Saul's because for Saul Christ appeared to Him in Person. His divine Glory was so bright that it blinded Saul; the bible tells us that on seeing him Saul right away called him 'Lord' because he recognized his Glory – it was like something out of this world. We are further told that those that were with Saul on the road to Damascus did not get this experience – they heard Christ but were not allowed to see Him in Hi Glory.
The Bible thus far only records the Apostles Ministry – the witnesses to the resurrection. Our first hint of the Ministry of the elders is in Acts 6 when the Grecian Jews in Jerusalem begun to murmur of neglect by the Hebraic Jews. Because the apostles were too busy, they asked the people to choose amongst themselves people of good repute who could administer to the masses. Seven men were chosen, among them Stephen; it is important to note that the first martyr for Christ was an elder. These were ordained by the laying of hands by the Apostles. In Antioch and the other gentile cities that Paul and Barnabas preached and set up churches they left behind an elder:
Paul and Barnabas appointed elders for them in each church and, with prayer and fasting committed them to the Lord in whom they had put their trust. Acts 14: 23
We are introduced further to the elders in the pastoral epistles of Paul to Timothy and Titus. So by then we probably have a church of appointed elders who governed the church collectively as advisors, with the Apostles as the teachers.
All but one of the twelve apostles were martyred. John was the last, and was exiled in solitude in the remote island of Patmos. Theologians argue that after the death of the apostles there was likely to have been a vacuum in the hierarchies of the church. By this time, the heart of the church had moved from Jerusalem to the gentile city of Antioch. After the mention of elders the Bible also records 'overseers': The word 'overseer' is first used interchangeably with 'elder' in Titus 1: 5-7. By the first century, the overseer was referred to as Bishop - the Greek translation. Bishop comes from episkopos, originally a secular Greek expression meaning ''supervisor'' or ''overseer''. Only 100 years after the death of Christ mention is made of such men as Ignatius – The Bishop of Antioch - who took over the power and concentrated the various ministries in his hands as bishop. Ignatius (martyred in the year 107) believed that the bishop should be the focal point of the congregation, with all important functions and full authority vested in him. At this time, the need for a centralization of powers was purely evangelical; baptism and catechism functions. Around the same time the Didache, a Syrian catechetical manual, also endorsed the transition to this ordered ministry and instructed the congregation to elect bishops and deacons if prophets and teachers were in short supply.
But as the church grew, and as should have been expected, bad apples among the flock emerged. Christ himself had warned about these with the parable of the wheat and the weeds. Two characters distinctly emerge at this point in the churches development; Irenaeus and Marcion both of Lyon. In 180 AD Marcion, a renegade theologian, created quite a stir by rejecting the Old Testament as the work of an evil and inferior demi-God, thereby positing a decidedly unchristian antipathy toward creation. Others, in a similar vein, denied that the spirit of God had been fully incarnate in Jesus. The fragmentation of the Christian community into competing sects, each following its own popular leader, loomed on the horizon as a real and troubling development.
But Irenaeus would have none of it; he provided the most compelling theological rationale for the bishop's emergence as the sole authoritative teacher of the local church. The power of the bishop (who represented God the Father in the iconography of the period) gathered momentum in the second and third centuries, while presbyters (representing the Son) and deacons (representing the Holy Spirit) came to be seen as his subordinates. He felt that Heresy-the willful departure from the beliefs established by the worshiping community-must be checked by a fortified Catholic orthodoxy. And orthodoxy requires an enforcer, a boundary setter, an authority empowered to determine who's in and who's out. The function of the Bishop now changed from baptismal and catechetical to a doctrinal guard.
Nothing in the job description of the monarchical bishop necessarily undermined the spirit of democracy or impeded the practice of the popular election of the bishop - nothing, that is, except the argument, advanced compellingly by Irenaeus that the monarchical bishop stood in a direct line of succession reaching back to the apostles themselves. Irenaeus portrayed Rome as the preeminent example of a church whose fidelity to the teaching of Jesus and the apostles was guaranteed by the fact that its bishops were direct successors to Peter and Paul. And the status and authority accorded the bishop of Rome, and the aura of divinely ordained monarchy surrounding him, grew with the acceptance of apostolic succession as a criterion of orthodoxy.
Gradually the church was developing a clergy (from the Greek kleros, meaning ''official'') set apart from the laos (''people''). The distancing of the hierarchical ministry from the laity took a dramatic turn during the reign of the Emperor Constantine, who conquered Rome under the sign of the Cross and outlawed the persecution of Christians (in the Edict of Milan of 313). In gratitude for his victory, Constantine surrendered his Lateran Palace to the bishop of Rome for use as a papal residence and bestowed important privileges on the Christian clergy, recognizing it as a distinct social class and exempting priests from military service and forced labor. Constantine invested the judicial decisions of the bishops with civil authority and bolstered papal power over church and state in the West when he conveniently moved the capital of the empire to the Eastern city of Byzantium. Into the resulting power vacuum stepped the new pontifex maximus-the sovereign papacy as we currently know it.
However, for fans of democracy, Catholic style, Constantine did no favors by conferring official status on the members of the clergy. In their lifestyle, the Roman Catholic clergy at first were not sharply differentiated from the laity. They, too, married, raised families, and earned a living by working at some trade or profession. But as the practice grew in the Constantinian era of paying them for their clerical work, the presbyters withdrew from secular pursuits. By the end of the fourth century, notes church historian Thomas Bokenkotter in his concise 'History of the Catholic Church' (Doubleday, 1979), such withdrawal was deemed obligatory.
By the third and fourth centuries, bishops were already meeting in legislative synods and now understood themselves to be an elite company of specially chosen priests. Certain churches assumed authority over other churches, and some acquired metropolitan status, which elevated them over the churches of a province. Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch acquired super-metropolitan status. By then the Catholic hierarchy had already became a formidable reality.
The middle Ages brought monasticism and with it the complete withdrawal of the clergy from public life and even a subsequent change in their attire. Monasticism ushered in the monk who was a new type of martyr,
a disciplined spiritual athlete who renounced worldly desires to live a life on the margins of society, seeking God alone and preserving classical culture in the monastery. Not all monks were priests, and certainly not all priests were monks, but the notion that some men are "called to the perfection of holiness" gradually permeated the clerical ranks. According to Bokenkotter, eventually even the priests who were not monks adopted semimonastic role. This meant withdrawal from their families and abstinence from sex because sexual intercourse was deemed incompatible with the sacred character of the clerical state. Celibacy was first required of the clergy by a fourth century synod of Spanish bishops and then by the popes beginning with Siricius, who enforced the discipline in their legal decrees.
According to a letter from Pope Celestine to the bishop of Provence, by the year 428 "the learned and more virtuous" implying the clergy were clothed in a supernatural aura and in distinct ecclesiastical dress. Bishops and some priests were wearing a special gown, doubtless of monastic origin, to distinguish them from the faithful masses.
During the first half of the 12th century the legal scholar Gratian of Bologna collected, organized, reconciled, and synthesized the various rulings of past popes and councils, along with relevant scriptural and theological teachings concerning the moral codes and procedural norms of the church. In so doing Gratian basically invented the discipline of canon law. His collection of decretals became the basic textbook for generations of medieval canon lawyers, who attempted to strike a balance between papal power and the "divine rights" of the Catholic community at large. So much for the common touch, Catholicism as we know it was with us.
Democracy in the church from 900 to 1500 really amounted to clerocracy, the election of priests by other priests. The bishop in major cities, for example, was elected by a chapter of canons (priests attached to the cathedral) rather than by the people at large. By the High Middle Ages the ground had completely shifted: the bishop was understood to receive his authority from the divine law structure of the church itself rather than from the church's people. Despite the elimination of direct popular election of the bishop, however, the democratic notions of representative government and the accountability of elected officials did not vanish from the church altogether. In democratic Catholic Church, 'The Reconstruction of Roman Catholicism' (Crossroad, 1993) by Eugene C. Bianchi and canon lawyer John Beal notes that "authority still came to the bishop through human mediation in the form of election by the majority of canons, a body that was understood to represent, however inadequate that representation may seem to us, the whole local church."
In a classic fit of legal double-talk, the medieval Catholic Church still considered its legal authority to have resided ultimately in the Catholic people but exercised by officeholders. But it is noteworthy that the said 'officeholders' were no longer representative for they were chosen according to ecclesiastical law-law that was defined, of course, by the officeholders themselves. The Council of Constance of 1414-18, saw it fit to set the record straight and decreed that "this synod holds its power directly from Christ; all persons, of whatever rank or dignity, even a pope, are bound to obey it in matters relating to faith and to the end of the schism as well as to the reform of the Church in its head and in its members." This settled the debate – The synod claimed divine authority, not authority from the laity.
The church finally felt that it needed a strong executive branch-so strong in fact - it eventually absorbed the legislative and judicial branches within itself. The tendency of local Catholic officials to look to Rome and the papacy for direction on a variety of matters increased. Increasingly plagued in the late Renaissance and early modern period by new and virulent forms of heresy, the church responded to the Protestant dissenters of the 16th century in much the same way as Irenaeus and other monarchical bishops had responded to the heretics of the second century: by centralizing authority and consolidating power at the top. The Renaissance and Reformation popes were in no mood to dialogue with the likes of Martin Luther, and they responded poorly to his invitation to reconsider the whole papacy thing altogether. Fidelity to the apostolic church, Luther and other reformers suggested, meant a 'royal priesthood of all believers', with ministers of the word and sacrament serving at the behest of the local congregation. The reformists asserted that the hierarchical priesthood-men set apart by a special mark of grace on their soul-was not warranted by the New Testament and therefore not warranted at all.
For the Roman Catholic bishops at the Council of Trent (1545-63), however, reform meant something very different: a stronger ordained priesthood; a reformed and standardized seminary system; a pope defined as "universal bishop," with clear-cut authority over a council of bishops; and the centralization of all significant power in the Vatican. Thus Catholicism after Trent moved ever further away from democracy. To many in the church, this policy seemed to be a prudent measure in reaction to the rise of nationalism, the secular rationalism of the 'Enlightenment', and the democracy-loving, church-hating liberalism of the 19th century. Perhaps the council fathers at Trent had been farsighted to build a fortress around the church and strengthen the power of the 'commander-under-siege'. Perhaps that's the reason that Catholicism till enjoys its popularity.
The first ecumenical council in 300 years, Vatican I (1869-70), added an exclamation mark with its declaration of papal infallibility. It is difficult to find any room for conciliar democracy, much less popular democracy, in the wording of its dogmatic constitution:
"
The primacy of jurisdiction over the whole Church was immediately and directly promised to and conferred upon the blessed apostle Peter by Christ the Lord. The power of primacy, inherited by whoever succeeds Peter in this Chair, according to the institution of Christ Himself, is full and supreme over the whole church",
Vatican I proclaimed, not only in matters of faith and morals but also in matters that pertain to the discipline and government of the church throughout the world. By the 19th century the popes had already accrued the power to name bishops. In 1918 the Code of Canon Law merely made it official by granting the right of episcopal nomination exclusively to the pope-without any essential participation of the other Catholic bishops, much less of the lower clergy or laity.
Contemporary Catholicism probably witnessed its biggest challenge to this order during Pope Paul VI reign occasioned mainly by Vatican's response to increasing public pressure over the church's stand on birth control. 'Dignitatis humanae' - "Declaration of Religious Freedom," in 1965 by Vatican Council II was the Catholic's church reaction to increasing public concern over Catholic laity not having regular participation in the decisions of the church. Interestingly however, the document articulated and defended the rights of people as citizens of the state and participants in civil society. As regards the church's own governance of itself, Vatican II renewed the ancient proclamation that the church is the whole "People of God"-laity as well as clergy, bishops as well as the pope-and issued decrees (in the Revised Code of Canon Law, which was published in 1983) leading to the establishment of consultative bodies, such as parish councils and diocesan synods.
In case there was any doubt that Vatican II did not significantly check the momentum of ultramontanism in the modern church, Pope Paul VI dispelled it in 1968 when he rejected the majority report of a commission of bishops, theologians, and laity he had established for the purpose of reviewing the teaching on birth control. When the commission recommended that the church relax the ban on artificial birth control, Paul VI disbanded the commission, considered their recommendations, and then did just the opposite. His subsequent encyclical, Humanae vitae, reinforced the ban, with the pope claiming that he could not allow the commission to reverse the tradition of the church.
"One cannot speak of our structure and process without talking about the need to take more fully into account the sensus fidelium [the mind of the faithful]," the bishops said. "Important official documents, such as the "Teaching Ministry of the Diocesan Bishop" and the English translation of the Universal Catechism, were issued", the bishops complained, "without any prior discussion and consultation with our conference. As a result, pastoral authority was taken completely out of our hands."
"Pope Pius XII once spoke of the place of public opinion in the Church," the American Jesuit Father John McKenzie noted. "Whatever he may have meant, we have not yet found a way to make public opinion in the church meaningful. Public opinion in the church, if it is limited to enthusiastic approval of all hierarchical and pastoral decisions, has as much meaning as an election in Russia. Public opinion is meaningful only when it reviews and, when necessary, criticizes the decisions of authority."
The bottom line remains essentially the same for the largest Christian Denomination: according to canon law, final decision-making authority still rests exclusively with the pastor on the parish level, exclusively with the bishop on the diocesan level, and exclusively with the pope and his administrative bureaucracy on the international level. In effect, the Catholic Church is in political form, closer to a hierocracy (a holy caste) than to a democracy (the entire holy people of God). The Catholic Church does not pretend to be a debating society; the Pope does not count votes on matters of doctrine and faith. In simple political terms; Catholicism is a 2000 year old Autocracy.
This however does not imply that there are no democratic successes in the history of the church; lets now briefly examine two democratically modeled churches:- Presbyterians and Baptists.
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