Steve Russell: Why should we care about selection of new pope

Why care about who heads a fantasy world of wealthy child molesters?

We have to. From the time Constantine made Catholicism the state religion of the Roman Empire until the Treaty of Westphalia, the history of Western Europe and Church history were one in the same. The Americas were mostly settled by Western Europeans. Their history and myths have become as important as our own.

The Roman Catholic Church survived the Great Schism, Henry VIII’s libido, and the Protestant Reformation.

Today, as Church authority in the Northern hemisphere is as imaginary as the Holy Trinity and transubstantiation, people in the Southern hemisphere have rushed to put themselves under the Church's thumb, er, umbrella.