How much power does the Pope have in the Roman Catholic Church? To what extent can he be a dictator? I don’t mean in terms of persuasive influence.
He has to share power with the Curia, but considering that he’s the one who picks most of them, it’s a little different than Congress and the President.
It depends on what you mean by “power.”
He has an enormous amount of teaching authority. He has the power to appoint bishops all over the world, who in turn have a great deal of authority in their dioceses.
He has, in theory, the charism of speaking infallibly on matters of doctrine concerning faith or morals. In practice, popes don’t do this. John XXIII is said to have said “I am only infallible if I speak infallibly but I shall never do that, so I am not infallible.”
Not all Catholics believe that the Pope is infallible. Notable among dissidents is Hans Kung.
That said, popes are widely ignored. How many Catholics, at least in the Western world, take Catholic teaching on birth control, as affirmed by Paul VI in his (non-infallible) encyclical Humanae Vitae? How many Catholics pay no attention whatsoever to the various pronouncements and encyclicals of popes concerning social justice? In that sense, a pope’s power is pretty limited, since popes are, while certainly regared with affection, often ignored by the laity.
I think you miss some major points. Firstly, you can’t just handwave away everything outside the Western world. The majority of Catholics are not from the Western world by a large margin. Not only that but I suspect Catholics in 3rd or 2nd world countries take Catholic teachings more seriously than in the West.
Secondly, while a pope probably has limited power to make people stop doing what they want to do (like make Westerners not use birth control) he probably has considerable power to allow people to do what they want to do but feel they shouldn’t.
Birth control (family size) is a key factor in several important societal attributes, such as poverty, women’s education level and so on.
If a pope was to use all the power he has to move the juggernaut that is the Catholic Church in the direction of approving of birth control he could cause major change in the world.
It isn’t going to happen because popes don’t get elected if they are radicals, but that’s not to say that popes don’t have power, only that they don’t use it.
I think you’re probably right, and I certainly don’t handwave away everything outside the Western world. That said, the Pope’s “power” in the Western word is definitely waning.
Birth control (family size) is a key factor in several important societal attributes, such as poverty, women’s education level and so on.
If a pope was to use all the power he has to move the juggernaut that is the Catholic Church in the direction of approving of birth control he could cause major change in the world.
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I don’t know that I agree. Just conforming to what the world actually thinks and does hardly seems like an exercise of power. More like a concession.
I think that those popes who have power have it because of their own personal charisma (John XXIII, John Paul II). Those without charisma have no power (Benedict XVI). So the power doesn’t come from the office, but from the man.
Birth rates are falling quickly even in the third world. Its pretty clear that places like Brazil are ignoring the Popes at a rate close to that of their 1st world peers.
The Pope is an absolute monarch; the Curia serves at his pleasure. In fact most officials in the Vatican technically loose office (but continue acting in their former jobs) as soon as the Pope dies/abdicates and have to be reappointed when the new Pope takes office.
In juridical terms, he has absolute power within the church. He is the supreme legislator. He can make any church law, unmake it and remake it as he wishes. So if the existing law doesn’t let him do what he wants to do, he can change the law so that it does, and then do it.
But, note, that’s juridical power. He cannot command anybody’s conscience, obedience or will. (He can claim the right to do that, but its up to others whether they assent to that or not.) So if he does something that’s seen as fundamentally not the thing to do, all he really acheives is to devalue the currency of his own juridical power.
It’s widely noted that he is unable to make people beleive that using contraception is wrong, and conspicuously unsuccessful in persuading them not to use it, and attempts in that regard have simply led people to reevaluate his office, and its signficance to them. And that illustrates the real limits on his power.
Aside from his power over the Church, he’s technically the Absolute Monarch of the Vatican State. On paper, he can do just about anything he wants there, and he has the Swiss Guard and Vatican Police to back him up.
Of course, in reality, if he starts burning heretics in St. Peters Square, the Italian gov’t would probably step in pretty quickly. But it’s not totally meaningless, the Vatican does occasionally have criminal trials and punish people. The butler that was responsible for the Vatileaks scandal, for example, was tried in the Vatican and sentenced to a prison term, which he served until the Pope pardoned him.
Private education, at least in predominantly Catholic countries, is highly influenced.
Highly influenced by what?
By Catholic teaching, especially the Jesuits whose forte is teaching.
Well, Catholic education is influenced by Catholic teaching. You’d expect that, I think. But does this tell us anything pertinent to the question raised by the OP, which is how much power the pope has within the church?
I don’t think I was clear. Like any religious leader - outside countries where religion is state-established - the pope’s power is limited by the extent of his religious influence upon people. People are free to ignore the pope and significant numbers do. However, to consider his position only from that POV - to say that he has little power because everyone can ignore him and many do- is fallacious. He has power because many people *do not *ignore what he says.
In other words, to put better what I attempted to say above, a pope probably has limited power to make people stop doing what they are particularly determined to do and/or where he is not influential. But he has considerable power to allow people to do what they want to do but don’t because they feel as good catholics they shouldn’t, particularly where the pope is influential. There are probably hundreds of millions of people in the third world in particular who fall into the latter category.
But they would fall faster if the pope said birth control was OK. People don’t lack power because they don’t have absolute power. You have to be pretty damn megalomaniac to consider you don’t have power because only 50% of hundreds of millions of people do what you say 
Because, at least in my (Catholic) country, primary debates that pit church against state (abortion, reproductive health, environment, etc.) are well participated in by the middle- to upper income population, many of whom were educated in Catholic schools, and exert quite a bit of control in commerce, administration, and legislation. So the debate is very academic, somewhat above zombie-street level.
And our churches always get their cue from the Holy See, so there you go.
Outside the Vatican, a lot of the Pope’s power is persuasive rather than dictatorial. He can fire bishops and priests, influence the message the Catholic church sends - but within limits. The church for example put a serious damper on “libertation theology”, the idea that Jesus might have said that the rich should give their money to the poor, everyone should share with their neightbour - it sounded too radical and communist!
However, if he tries to push a point of view that’s too radical, too at odds with what people think, at best he will be ignored (birth control), at worst huge chunks of the church may leave and go their own way. Recall that a group of the French church followed an archbishop into their own church over simply the issue of non-latin masses.
At best he can provide moral support for social movements - I’m sure the catholics in Poland took a great deal of comfort in the 1980’s from knowing the church had not only not forgotten the Solidarity movement but it was central to the pope’s heart. There’s the story that during the darker times in the 1980’s the pope called the Polish government and told them he would fly to Poland and march with his people if the government used excessive repression on the movement. Notice the government never descended to the level of Hungary or Czeckoslovakia with Soviet “assistance”, tanks, bullets flying, etc. - because both Warsaw and Moscow wwere worried about the optics of arresting a man that commanded the ultimate respect of one sixth of the world and the strong admiration of most of the West. He had the power because they were afraid of the consequences. Stalin is famously quoted as saying “How many divisions does the pope have?” I think he missed the point.
But yes, if the Vatican started executing heretics, burning them at the stake in the middle of St. Peters, which the pope technically could do (if enough Vaticanistos obeyed him) - I agree the Italian government would say “Mamma mia, we didn’t sign a treaty for this!” and step in presto.
Hold on. That’s an interesting suspicion right there. No doubt very common, too. But I wonder if it has ever actually been shown to be true?
For example, has it ever been shown that third world Catholics do indeed abstain from pre-marital sex to a higher degree than first world Catholics do? Or really, that third world Catholics follow the Church’s teachings more closely than first world Catholics on any given doctrinal point?
When JPII visited Africa quite a few years ago, I recall one discussion (The Economist?) was that he was trying to emphasize to parish priests there that celibacy meant celibacy, that having someone on the side was a serious offense. This in an area of the continent where having a country wife and city wife was normal for many migrant workers, and contraception (even for AIDS prevention) was seen as an insult to a guy’s manhood. After all, according to the local lore, you could cure AIDS by having sex with a virgin…
Different societies, different perceptions.