figurehead papacy

twopart question

what is the most viable way to make the Papacy a politically powerless figurehead of Christianity (about as powerless as the Japanese emperor doing sengoku/shogunate)

what (if any) changes would this do in present day? ... for one i'm guessing less slightly better relationships between Christianity as a whole, and the rest of the world since there wouldn't be any religious crusades (or at least not nearly as dolled up as religious in context), and secondly the churches would probably be more autocephalous, hence seen case-by-case even if they all(?) pay lip service to a papal throne
 

E.Ransom

Banned
twopart question

what is the most viable way to make the Papacy a politically powerless figurehead of Christianity (about as powerless as the Japanese emperor doing sengoku/shogunate)

what (if any) changes would this do in present day? ... for one i'm guessing less slightly better relationships between Christianity as a whole, and the rest of the world since there wouldn't be any religious crusades (or at least not nearly as dolled up as religious in context), and secondly the churches would probably be more autocephalous, hence seen case-by-case even if they all(?) pay lip service to a papal throne

I don't see the bishop of Rome becoming merely a figurehead, as a realistic option.
I do see ways of making his supposed position as the ultimate head of the entire Church on Earth, into a "primus inter pares"-position. That would probably require that Christianity never became state religion in the Roman Empire, and it would certainly require that the power-vacuum left after the fall of the Western Empire be filled by someone else than Rome's bishop.
 
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