Scripture as figurehead

Totalitarianism can take difference forms. In some cases, when the supreme leader is too aged and enfeebled to defend himself, an ambitious general stages a coup d’etat by assassinating the supreme leader and brazenly assuming the reins of government. Some ambitious generals bask in the limelight. They revel in the cult of personality.

But other ambitious generals are subtler. They find it useful to have a beloved, but senile, figurehead who’s the public face of the autocratic regime. On the one hand, he’s too ineffectual to interfere with whoever is actually running the show. On the other hand, he gives cover to whoever is actually running the show. As a beloved, adulated figurehead, it’s easier to implement unpopular policies under the aegis of the venerable and avuncular supreme leader.

This resembles the relationship between the Bible and the Magisterium in Roman Catholicism. In Catholicism, the Bible is the titular head of state. Ritual obeisance is paid to the nominal supremacy of Scripture. But behind the genuflections to Scripture, the Magisterium calls the shots.

And, of course, this is a prescription for tyranny. Just as a military dictator is a law unto himself, when there’s no check on the Magisterium, it succumbs to delusions of grandeur. Unbridled corruption. It makes the sort of mistakes that only an institution which deems itself immune from error can make.