[beckett]

The Pope has proposed a global authority backed up the "authority to ensure compliance," which can only mean authority from the barrel of a gun, just as all law is ultimately enforced, if it comes to it, by physical coercion.

You're living in a dream world if you think subsidiarity negates hierarchy. That's kind of like saying a mail room supervisor can tell the CEO to take a hike if he doesn't like what the CEO wants him to do. Or perhaps, better yet, an altar boy can tell the Pope he's banishing the Sacraments from Roman Catholicism whether the Pope likes it or not.

POWER assigns to the OFFICE, and the higher the office's place in the hierarchy, the more power it accrues. Catholic clergy understand hierarchy very well. They just about invented it in its modern form. The Pope wants to superimpose a hierarchy above all other hierarchies, and all his and your silly disclaimers about subsidiarity are mere window dressing, catnip for fools who don't understand the uses and functions of power.

[ELS]

And you refuse to see that the Pope understands the danger of a "universal power of a tyrannical nature." He is not advocating for an armed central government.

Those who have eyes to see ...