“the Holy Roman Church and the Holy Roman Empire are one and the same thing, in two aspects; and Catholicism, the principle of the universal Christian society, is also Romanism; that is, rests upon Rome as the origin and type of its universality; manifesting itself in a mystic dualism which corresponds to the two natures of its Founder. As divine and eternal, its head is the Pope, to whom souls have been entrusted; as human and temporal, the Emperor, commissioned to rule men’s bodies and acts.
-James Viscount Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire Theory of the Medieval Empire
I for one, as Eastern Orthodox, would love to see the Catholic West revived under a new Holy Roman Empire, but how can this be achieved when the Catholic Church itself refuses to make claims of sovereignty or to denounce the current regimes in that part of the world as illegitimate. There was a time when the Church resolutely stood against democracy. What happened?
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When the last Emperor of Austria (the last Holy Roman King) was forced from his throne, the last remnant of the temporal body of the Church was murdered. Hence the Hierarchy of the Church is extremely compromised in the modern world. But we do not fear those who can kill the body, for we believe in the Resurrection.
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