All For One and One For All

As one man affirms unto himself the supremacy of infallibility in communion with God, expressing His divine message, it is because the community of his religious peers have conferred that status upon him. The Pope, claims the Pope, is infallible.

For he has the ear of God and the trust of God to ensure that the Almighty's undiluted, faultless and authentic message is delivered to the people. But which people? Therein lies the quandary of exclusion and diminishment of any potential toward universal agreement.

If it is only the Roman Catholic Church that singularly represents the Almighty, then all other congregations comprised of millions of the faithful, responding to other churches, mosques, synagogues and sundry places of worship in the Divine are shams, their faithful mere mascots of a false clergy preaching the message of divine love and understanding under a corrupted version of God's house of prayer on earth.

It must be so, since we have it on the authority of one who claims the distinction of a direct lineage of God's earthly representatives. The pope speaks, pontificates with the absolute authority vested in his station, gifted him as God's spokesman in the name of the original emissary of God whose corporeal yet spiritual essence is yet anticipated to return to herald the salvation of - whom, exactly?

This is a man of stern intellectual bent, no longer a mere cleric of the highest order; now the inviolable voice of God's intent, purpose and expectations of his vast flock. If, in his great wisdom as a divine interlocutor he speaks of divisive inequality in the name of the god he eloquently serves with such wisdom, does he then serve God's will? Does God have such a narrow vision, such an exclusive embrace?

Why have the faithful been led to believe otherwise?

And how does this authoritarian representative of the Almighty fit the Vatican throne in the wake of the humbler man of God whom he succeeded, who was ready to embrace the brotherhood of man and the all-encompassing gathering-in of God's vast flock? And how does he differ from authoritative heads of other divine branches of God-dom who aver similar authenticity claims?

Say, for example, the Supreme Ayatollahs in Iran, past and present? Who, in their great wisdom also claim ownership of the one true God, differently named, but the universe's singular Spirit of Divinity all the same. Whom they claim has granted permission for his followers to pursue a humanity-perverse goal of nuclear attainment, for this same Allah has also granted immunity from godly querying as to the necessity of slaying His enemies?

More to the point perhaps, whose interests are served if God is indeed a kindly deity whose concern is the spiritual needs of mankind? How does exclusion and superiority serve His purpose? What, exactly, distinguishes this from empire building, hegemonic claims to superior, exclusive privilege? Relegating competing orthodoxies to the dustheap of historical pretenders.

Is there that much difference from the saintly disdain expressed in strictly defined terms of authorship decrying false approaches to divine expression and that of other, equally firmly established claimants to speak in the ineffable name of God defining His jihadist will?