Is the Pope Holy?

As many of you can guess I am not Catholic. There are many reasons for this but the one that stands out the most is that I question the Pope’s Holiness and Authority.

Now, many non-Catholic Christians seem to defer to the Pope calling him ‘his holiness’ or at the very least ‘father’ – I believe this a direct disregard (or at the very least ignorance) of the Scriptures. But this I will address later on. I feel there are things that must be pointed out first.

How can the Pope be Holy at all?

When the Bible says “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) how can one man, chosen by human fallible men be deemed sinless? There was only one sinless human in all of history – Jesus Christ. So that would mean the Pope cannot be sinless. Secondly let us look at history vs. Catholic tradition/doctrine : Catholic doctrine implies if not directly states that the Pope is God or Christs’ humanly representation, no we don’t really have to go even that far, let us say that Catholics’ hold true that God indirectly appoints the pope as His chosen vessel. Now let us look into history a bit; for how many hundreds of years -off and on- has the papacy been filled by and exploited by corruption and those seeking and selfish gain and power. How can we say that a God who is perfect and cannot make a mistake would appoint or even allow an appointment of such corrupt men as His representation of what so many regard as his church?

Not to mention that under certain papal reigns happened such horrendous acts as the inquisition and murder and torture of ‘fellow’ Christians under the excuse of supposed heresy? How did these Popes allow the use of such Old Testament type punishments rather than what Christ taught in His New Testament? Patience, Love, Gentleness and on and on? These ‘representatives’ of Christ certainly did not have any such Christ-like qualities about them at all!

Lastly, that the Bible tells us

Not to call any earthly man ‘father’ – Matthew 23:9 (How then should you call a priest or other higher clergyman ‘father’)

That there is no favoritism with God – Ephesians 6:9 (Why then would He choose a favorite among men to be His ‘earthly representative’?)

That “no man comes to the Father but by Me(Jesus)” – John 14:6 (so how can an earthly man make intercession for us if the only way to come to God is by Christ?)

That Christ himself makes intercession for us to the Father – Hebrews 2:17 (and the whole book of Hebrews explains how He is our one and only High Priest, perfect and blameless)

So how can the pope be holy? He can’t. He is not. No Pope ever has been, no pope ever will be. The pope himself must know this, in his heart of hearts, he must know that he is not near to God in holiness and that in fact he is a pretender. According to Catholic tradition the Pope is not merely a man, but second to Christ. How can he dare to compare himself to Christ? It is blasphemy!