The Roman Catholic Church is supposed to have the authoritative word from heaven. What the Pope binds on earth is bound in heaven. If the Roman Catholic Church excommunicates you, you are outside Christ’s Church. What they say goes. This claim to power has lead some evangelicals, even reformed evangelicals to become Roman Catholic. One thing that always bothered me about this claim is that they seldom exercise it. Well, they finally get really close to exercising their authority. The Vatican news agency recently used some pretty firm words when discussing stars wearing expensive crosses as jewelry. Relying upon that God-given authority to bind and loosen, the Vatican news service went so far as to call this practice “incomprehensible”. Yes, yes, I know. A bold, strong move by the Vatican. Let us all stand in awe of the infallible authority of the One True Church!

Why, this far-reaching authority even lead the Pope back in 1989 to threaten to excommunicate Madonna if she performed “Like A Prayer” in Rome! Burrr! A display of divine authority like that sends a shiver down your spine doesn’t it? She can go ahead and perform a blasphemous song anywhere else, but she’d better not bring her filth to Rome. Back when that song came out I was still Roman Catholic and I got to see the video a number of times. During it, she is in a church praying to a statue of a saint (which is bad enough). The statue starts to cry and then comes to life. The images suggest that she makes love to him right there in the pew, or at least there is a lot of hugging and smooching going on anyway. It ends with her and a black Jesus standing in front of a burning cross. You can see why the Vatican wouldn’t want that sort of thing in Rome.
It is fine for the rest of the world, but never in Rome.