Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Absolute Power: How the pope became the most influential man in the world by Paul Collins

by
September 2018, no. 404

Absolute Power: How the pope became the most influential man in the world by Paul Collins

PublicAffairs, $39.99 hb, 368 pp, 9781610398602

Absolute Power: How the pope became the most influential man in the world by Paul Collins

by
September 2018, no. 404

For more than thirty years, Paul Collins has been His Holiness’s loyal opposition. Absolute Power is the latest round in his spirited debate with the Vatican, the government which has the largest constituency of any in the world.

Collins’s interest, in fact obsession, is in the nature and limits of that licence to govern – except that he would question whether the notion of government should come into it at all. The crucial text for his case is Christ’s rebuke to the squabbling apostles: ‘Anyone who wants to become great among you, must be your servant ... For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve.’ But this is a tricky text. Christ, as the incarnate God, remains boss. So the pope may be referred to as ‘the servant of the servants of God’. But any monarch, whether tyrannical or benevolent, serves a people by calling the shots for them.

Gerard Windsor reviews 'Absolute Power: How the pope became the most influential man in the world' by Paul Collins

Absolute Power: How the pope became the most influential man in the world

by Paul Collins

PublicAffairs, $39.99 hb, 368 pp, 9781610398602

From the New Issue

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.