"The delightful riddle here is how Catholics are willing to take as their starting point that they don't know what the Bible is and what it says, while at the same time laying claim to both true and universal Christianity. This never worked and will not work now either. If you start with that you don't know what the Bible is, then this discussion has ended. Otherwise, read Hart's review and the Bible verses there."

By now I strongly suspect that distinguishing things is not an operation you indulge in frequently, but I beseech you to try it. But here's what I've meant: I can -know- 'what' the Bible is in many different ways, some more immediate than others. I can know the Bible as a group of documents, some of which presented as primarily accounts of historical events. I can know what the word "Bible" means within the context of archaeology, textual history, patristic studies etc. But without the Church, the existence of which as a sacerdotally hierarchical society vested with true doctrinal and moral authority by God and claiming to be the true Israel I affirm due to my conviction of evidentiary value of at least some books of the Bible, I do not know what the Bible is in the sense of a divinely inspired and infallible set of books with proportional theological authority. This concerns both the set, with the list of books legitimated in some other way nowhere to be found, and individual books.

Of course, should you deign to alleviate my ignorance, you can contribute to the enlightenment of all the poor members of the Catholic sect worldwide by pointing out the manifest signs of biblicalness in the latter sense in, say, the Epistle to Philemon (or any other book, really). 

And, should anyone want to accuse me of apologising for popes, as Catholics are apparently so prone to do, at least in this matter, I'd like to make it clear that I do believe in a fairly robust version of -indirect- papal power over secular powers and few events in the sublunar world would bring as much joy to me, all things being equal, as the errection of a planet-wide Catholic empire somewhat akin to the HRE that would solemnly subordinate itself to this indirect power and establish Catholicism as its state religion. I do not, to my great sadness, know how anything mentioned above can realistically come about and entertain no such hope, but this is the ideal, and few Catholics or Orthodox, (Anglicans et al.?) should find this ideal to be odd or scandalous.

Nor do I think that faith and religion are virtues that cannot be sinned against with detriment to the common good, so I, in the (at least relatively) good company of most cultures in the world, believe that they these transgressions can be real crimes, and hence intrinsically they admit the possibility of punishment, including capital punishment. According to some (perhaps not quite in line with their own tradition?), this thought excludes the possibility of being "a civilised Christian". Ah well.

"I have no idea what this means, but it sounds like special pleading for Catholicism."

What this means is that I'm not really interested in this debate unless you can somehow justify your selection of points relevant for this discussion. For example, you seem to basically dismiss tradtional Catholic (and also Eastern Orthodox, to some degree) distinctions between magisterial and non-magisterial pronouncements as unimportant, without any argument or even a hint at one. I suppose what at least prima facie seems to be an imputation of 'spinning the history" of the Church, particularly in the last few centuries, is also something that, I think, will fail to inspire the interest of pretty much anybody not in substantial agreement with you and/or possessed of an extraordinary interest in your (unargued) opinions.
What -would be- interesting is, among other things, to see the important point in history (after which ecclesial writers stop being considered relevant witnesses) identified, and, for that matter, the detailed reasoning that would allow one to impute any theological (as distinct from historical) authority to the collection of writings known as the Christian Bible, particularly in connection with the above-mentioned item of interest, especially the property this collection of books apparently has in your understanding, namely, the one ordaining the necessity for any contender for Christian authenticity to be able to positively reconstruct all the aspects of its doctrine and practice from it that you consider to be important (this also being a delightful riddle). In other words, it would be positively grand to see the standard, that I supposedly fail to apply, properly defined and defended.

What makes the above-mentioned points especially interesting is my distinct impression of bearing witness to an entire brood of principia being begged. But I will try to carry on presuming good faith, and in this spirit  ask precisely why you think that citing a document of u

You can, naturally, cite the current situation as evidence of a flip-flop. But this change of strategy, adopted at Vatican II and involving, among other things, the revocation of secular-arm rights and duties from existing states, abandonment of serious attempts to legally establish Catholicism (to disasterous effect, in my opinion), was explicitly just that, in light of what the people behind it had considered to be a peculiar historical situation. It is also, needless to say, recent, and done in the context of existing and public accessible teaching.

In sum, the Church has never, either as "formal" magisterium or as a practical moral imperative, as far as I know, taught that "the pope can appoint emperors" is a binding statement under natural or revealed law, rather,  it was believed due to other reasons. As to feet kissing carried out by princes, well, I don't know, perhaps they should. I don't see anything wrong per se with the idea of kissing pontifical feet as a secular ruler: it seems to me to be a fitting if antiquated way of showing reverence to Christ, Whom the faithful - as rulers should in last analysis be - expect to be seen in their pastors.

[color=#000000]Let us.

Nota bene, though: unless you somehow prove your possession of a special grace of soul-reading or something equivalent, I submit that anything that presupposes judging internal dispositions of the popes whose behaviour you claim to be talking about is at least as uninteresting as Catholic appeals to the abscence of some propositions in magisterial texts or insufficient grounding within them. 

I propose to distinguish between popes qua vicars of Christ (visible heads of the Church) and popes qua secular rulers/bodies prescribed by particular constitutions. The papacy has never claimed political authority over what would become the Papal States on the basis of the first mentioned privilege: historically papal rule arose out of necessity caused by the decline of Byzantine authority in Italy (Ravenna's reach gradually diminished to the point of incapacity of enforcing imperial peace). This was confirmed in the Donation of Pepin and some employed the (forged, most probably by clerics in Gaul/Francia) Donation of Constantine, and in these documents direct political power of the papacy is presented as derivative: it's communicated to the popes by secular authorities (King Pepin III of the Franks and ever-august Constantine respectively) and viewed as competent to do that. 

Even popes like St. Gregory VII of Canossa fame didn't claim immediate supreme political power within Christendom in virtue of their Petrine charism. The Roman argument against lay investiture had never been that the Pope is a secular authority above the emperor. Investiture of clerics and monastics, whose ecclesiatical position had the status of imperial princes attached to it, wasn't claimed on the basis that the Pope and ecclesial hierarchy generally were superior princes anyway, but rather due to the relative eminence of ecclesial responsibilities compared to imperial ones.

The situation with further papal involvement