WI: No Catholic Church?

How would you prevent the unification of all Western European Christians into one Church? What would it take to have the Gothic Church, Celtic Church and the other regional churches to stay autonomous from Rome? Even more, without a unified Catholic Church would it be possible to fully eradicate paganism? What would a religiously divided dark ages look like, what would it mean for the modern world if we had many competing Christianities and even some pagan faiths? How would this effect the formation of Islam?
 
Well, to start off, if Western churches never united into the Catholic Church, then Islam may be butterflied away. Keep in mind that the Western Church unification for a time meant Eastern Church unification to at least some extent through the end of the 1st millennium, and doing away with that might never allow Islam, or at least not any recognizable similar religion, to ever exist, historically speaking. Islam was certainly not inevitable by the 300s.

You'd have to make Constantine never decide to convene the Council of Nicaea (the easiest and latest decision-based POD, in my opinion), which may be done if he never heard the recommendation to start the council of Nicaea, rejected the idea, or simply ignored it in his daily business. However, this may not prevent an eventual similar council. Such a council, however, would inevitably not be as large, as the emperor did not sanction it, so it may not be enough to prevent eventual unification, if not a greatly weakened one that is less widely accepted.

This would result in the lack of a decline of Gnosticism and Arianism for probably at least a few decades; earlier divergences might allow it to flourish indefinitely.
 
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Md139115

Banned
How would you prevent the unification of all Western European Christians into one Church? What would it take to have the Gothic Church, Celtic Church and the other regional churches to stay autonomous from Rome? Even more, without a unified Catholic Church would it be possible to fully eradicate paganism? What would a religiously divided dark ages look like, what would it mean for the modern world if we had many competing Christianities and even some pagan faiths? How would this effect the formation of Islam?

Hello friend,

If you have a moment, I would like to talk to you about the good news of the Holy Father. Did you know that he was picked by God to run the church on earth? Did you know that our Lord and Savior and Our Blessed Lady use him to spread the love of God to every corner of the world? Did you know that if you follow the sacraments and perform the works that he and The Church laid out based on Christ’s teachings, you can stand before Him at His Judgement and say confidently that you believed in him, fed the hungry, quenched the thirsty and clothed the naked?


Alright, now that I can’t write anymore without laughing, the elimination of a centralized authority for Christendom is straightforward. All you really have to do is cause the Roman Empire to disintegrate while the Christians are still being persecuted. In the anarchy that follows, no one sect can establish themselves as orthodox the way we see Nicean Christianity today, and it is likely that we will have a number of different Christian churches sprouting up across Europe.
 
The Western Roman Empire never falls, and Italy remains under a single monarch (the western emperor) for as long as the speculative eye can see without the butterflies clouding the future from there. This way, the Pope never becomes the effectively autonomous leader of Central Italy, and remains an equal member in the Pentarchy. Wishing to curb his influence, the emperors decide to create more patriarchates in the territories of the WRE (maybe in Gaul and Iberia).
 
How would you prevent the unification of all Western European Christians into one Church? What would it take to have the Gothic Church, Celtic Church and the other regional churches to stay autonomous from Rome? Even more, without a unified Catholic Church would it be possible to fully eradicate paganism? What would a religiously divided dark ages look like, what would it mean for the modern world if we had many competing Christianities and even some pagan faiths? How would this effect the formation of Islam?
Well, it depends - do you mean de facto conditions or de jure? Because while in theory, OTL the Patriarchate of Rome - that is, the Pope - had and has authority over all Catholic Christians in at the very least the "West," in practice much practical power remained in the hands of local bishops, especially the further away you get from Central Italy.

As for paganism, if you're assuming a basically apostolic-succession-based form of Christianity, it wouldn't be that different practically speaking from the Orthodox missionary activities.

Also, if by "dark ages," you mean Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, "dark age" is largely inaccurate based on what historians know now.
 
Well, there was no such thing as an independent Celtic Church, so you'll have to establish a principle of autocephaly in the west.

This might be cheating, but perhaps have Peter remain in Antioch. That way you get something of a reversal - an eastern Papacy and a western Orthodox-like situation.
 
Have the Plague of Justinian hit 5-10 years early, in order to butterfly away the Gothic War and possibly the earlier Byzantine reconquest of North Africa as well. A continuation of the Ostrogothic Kingdom in Italy for at least another generation or two would have given Arian Christianity a stronger foothold among the Italian general population, and another couple generations as a vassal of the Arian Ostrogoths could have weakened the Pope's ability to credibly claim to be the leader of Western Christianity.

A surviving Ostrogothic Kingdom and no Exarchate of Ravenna would also have butterflied away Frankish involvement in Italy. As I understand it, the symbiotic relationship between the Carolingian Franks and the Papacy IOTL was critical to the development of the Medieval Catholic Church: the Carolingian relied on the Pope to legitimize their dynasty and their claims to be successors of the WRE and leaned heavily on the Church for help with administration and record-keeping, and in exchange the Carolingians supported an established Church at least nominally subject to the Pope throughout their empire, chased the Lombards out of Central Italy, and guaranteed the Pope's temporal independence from both the Lombards and the ERE.

A surviving Ostrogothic Kingdom would make the Pope a less-appealing ally for the Carolingians (who might instead do something like proclaiming the elevation of the Archbishop of Lyon or Tours to the status of Patriarch) and, if it survives long-term and not just for a generation or two, would also check Carolingian expansion into Italy. You might then wind up with three or four Western Christian churches: a Celtic Church in Britain and Ireland, a hierarchical Chalcedonian-derived Church in Francia (possibly with a later schism between Frankish successor states, if the post-Charlemagne fragmentation of the Carolingian Empire isn't butterflied away), and an Arian church in Italy.
 
Well, there was no such thing as an independent Celtic Church, so you'll have to establish a principle of autocephaly in the west.

This might be cheating, but perhaps have Peter remain in Antioch. That way you get something of a reversal - an eastern Papacy and a western Orthodox-like situation.

The Celtic Church was only nominally Catholic for a long time.
 

PhilippeO

Banned
Rome is sacked and abandoned in 6th-8th century ? thus making many powerful Archbishop of Milan, Carthage, Paris, etc become leader of local church ?
 
Well, there was no such thing as an independent Celtic Church, so you'll have to establish a principle of autocephaly in the west.

This might be cheating, but perhaps have Peter remain in Antioch. That way you get something of a reversal - an eastern Papacy and a western Orthodox-like situation.

That's easy enough; prevent the rise of a Catholic dynasty in Gaul (or at least prevent the rise of a strong unified polity there) and the Papacy is dealing with the Arian Lombards calling the shots in northern Italy without a protector and with their eyes set south on Rome. Either by peaceful negotiation or violent conquest, Rome won't be allowed to establish a unified creed or organization with anything close to the influence/reach/wealth to counter the natural atomization of doctrine and authority, especially since large chunks of the population are at that time only nominally Christianized with many of their regional pagan customs and beliefs still bubbling below the surface. The Bishop of York, for example, would likely have to push for autocephaly merely to hold his ground and be tolerable to the local political leadership.

If Papa dosent like it... Well, the kings may very well predate Stalin by saying " How many divisions has the Pope?"
 
The Celtic Church was only nominally Catholic for a long time.
I see the celtic church mainly as a monastic movement. A very large congregation of collaborating monasteries, where the highest authority was the abbot. This was their strength as long as they were cut off from the rest of the church, what happened after the anglo-saxon invasions of the 4-5th century. But this lose organisation became a weaknes when contact was reestablished in the 7th century. The training of priests and missionary was less of an ad-hoc affair in the Frankish catholic church organisation, because for the Frankish kings the conversion of neighbours was a political goal. Celtic missionairs in the Frankish empire were placed under state control.
A more resilient autonomous celtic church could be reached in my eyes if somehow it remains longer isolated and gets strongly linked to a strong political unit (Scots?) where the king gets influence at the cost of independence of the abbots.
 
Well, to start off, if Western churches never united into the Catholic Church, then Islam may be butterflied away. Keep in mind that the Western Church unification for a time meant Eastern Church unification to at least some extent through the end of the 1st millennium, and doing away with that might never allow Islam, or at least not any recognizable similar religion, to ever exist, historically speaking. Islam was certainly not inevitable by the 300s.

The Eastern Church was not unified at the time of Islam - there was a major division between Chalcedonians and monophysites, and the latter were persecuted by the Romans, causing many to welcome the Arab invasions (since they promised to make no distinction among Christians). A truly unified Eastern Church probably would caused much more resistance to the Arabs.
 
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