So the Pope is a marxist.... (wait for it)

[kandrathe]

I don't see how you can tease the two apart. Without those alliances between early Christian leaders and their governments, Christianity as we know it would not exist today.

It's not even remotely true that all early Christian leaders were powerful and corrupt. But, many were. I guess its a matter of perspective. I consider Christianity, as practiced by devout Christians, to be more likely embodied by the humblest of farmers. I think becoming a priest or church leader may suffer from same issues I see with those drawn into being cops. Yes, many seek it for the service part, but also many are attracted by the power.

I'm not really sure what would have happened, had it remained a movement led equally by women and men, underground, and mostly in homes. I'd hypothesize that at least two or three major flavors would have emerged without the brutal repression of the Arians and Gnostics, but it may have fizzled out, perhaps. It lasted under persecution by the Romans for a few hundred years, so who knows. But, really, there are too many variables to contemplate past perhaps 400 AD. Without the force of Constantine I, or Justinian to root out 'heresies', and no ecumenical councils, the drift may have deepened and things would have continued as they had for the prior 250 years. Here we are today with about 41,000 Christian denominations -- maybe Constantine really didn't matter after all. However, the Romans did manage to kill off all the severe schisms, until Protestantism.

And, as a corollary to the above and apropos of your comments about the state of the RC Church in Minnesota:

The historian and moralist, who was otherwise known simply as Lord Acton, expressed this opinion in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887:

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

So true.