Comment by dgellow
4 hours ago
In theory only and all Catholics recognize the authority of the pope. In practice it’s a mess as far as I understand, with a bunch of American catholic groups who rejected church reforms that happened during the 20th century, resulting in people calling themselves catholic who do not actually believe that the Catholic Church has authority over their religion.
Add to that the fact that the pope has a cultural influence that goes further than only the catholic audience (lots of Protestant see the pope as important even if that’s not something dictated by Protestantism, a bunch of not really religious people see him as a sort of spiritual leader, etc)
I'm not aware of any Protestants that see the Pope as important except in a very negative way - that's practically the defining feature of Protestantism and one of the few things all the Protestant denominations have in common, whether "low church" or "high church".
Heck, it's a struggle to convince many of them that Catholics are Christian at all, and "the Pope is the antichrist" used to be a normal, mainstream comment in American newspapers.
It is somewhat a piece of irony that the Pope generally holds a more favorable reputation in the minds of the irreligious in America than the religious. Even the average Catholic likely does not have as much respect for the Pope as some of the commenters here.
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