**when one has worked their way up the hierarchy of one of the most powerful, wealthy, often venal, organizations in the history of hard-ball Machiavellian politics,**
A Pope does not “work his way up the hierarchy**
The choosing of the Pope is done through the College of Cardinals at the Conclave — they are led by the Holy Spirit.
Are you saying that the Holy Spirit is wrong here? That’s a sin! An unforgiveable one, to boot!!
The Holy Spirit is never wrong, but humans often are, and even those who make a specialty of claiming the imprimatur of the Holy Spirit. The Pharisees could not contemplate the possibility they were wrong. After all, they sat in the seat of Moses, and Moses had a hot line direct to God. So what could possibly go wrong? Other than becoming so deeply committed to their own sense connectedness to God they totally blew it when Jesus worked wonders among them to show, by the Holy Spirit, He was the Son of God. They mistook him for a devil, not because they had any real evidence of malicious motive, but solely because he dared question their pedigree of divinity.
And that act right there is the only place in Scripture where the unforgivable sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is exampled for us in concrete form. They showed they would rather deny the witness of the Holy Spirit acting in power before their very eyes, than surrender their pretense to divine authority. Based on that example, it is much safer spiritually to question the divinity of a human hierarchy, like Jesus did, than to defend said hierarchy by attacking the spirituality of honest critics, like the Pharisees did.
“Are you saying that the Holy Spirit is wrong here? That’s a sin! An unforgiveable one, to boot!!”
LOL! I’m not Christian - already damned in your eyes, I suppose.
Like I said, no dog in this fight, but my wife is Catholic and I try to follow the historical trajectory of this stuff for that reason (and the historical trajectory leaves a great deal of questionable goings-on to comment about, quite frankly).
I suppose outside objectivity has no place in such discussions - just as is obviously the case with Islam - so I’ll just offer my apologies, await my eternal damnation as you have specified, and let those of you who know better squabble it out among yourselves.
Were the cardinals led by the Holy Spirit when they elected Rodrigo Borgia (Alexander VI) - the majority of whom he bribed to get their votes and to wink at his debauchery? Alexander VI was not even the worst Pope but there were several that came before and after him. Maybe it's not an issue of thinking the Holy Spirit is wrong, but that the Roman Catholic Church is.