on popes and timelines

I've been reading a lot about popes lately. I suppose many people have, seeing as one of the big news stories of late is the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI.

I am mostly unfamiliar with the Roman Catholic tradition, although I know a great deal more now than when I was growing up. When I was a child one of my best friends was raised in the Catholic church, and what I knew about Catholics was mostly gleaned from him, although he himself was not especially religious.

The more I read about popes, the history of the papacy, and the history of the Roman Catholic church in general, the dizzier I become. I learned that Pope Benedict XVI is the 265th officially recognized pope in the history of the church; there have been eleven popes that reigned for thirty-three days or less, the most recent being John Paul I in 1978; the pope is only considered to give infallible statements when he speaks ex cathedra, and the most recently this has happened was in 1950 with the definition of the Assumption of Mary; and so on. I've learned most of this through Wikipedia, so it's entirely possible that my education is skewed, if not outright flawed.

The most dizzying aspect of my attempts to learn about popes and Catholicism has been the sheer historical magnitude of it all. I mean, the United Methodist Church has only existed since 1968! You may think, "Well, that's nit-picky, the Methodist tradition goes way farther back than that." And you'd be right - the United Methodist Church was formed through the merger of the Methodist Church and Evangelical United Brethren Church, and if we trace it back to its roots, we might stretch things a bit and claim May 1738 as the genesis of the Methodist movement, when John Wesley have his "heart strangely warmed" at Aldersgate Street in London. But by May 1738, the pope was Clement XII, the 246th pontiff in church history. The institution of the papacy was already over a millenium-and-a-half old!

Being an American (and especially a Texan) I think I have a hard time grasping history. My wife and I visited New England last year, and history is counted in totally different terms. In Houston or Salt Lake City, something is old if you can trace it to the 1800's; in Boston, Providence, or Montréal, something is old if you can trace it to the 1600's; in Vatican City, something is old if you can trace it to the first millenium AD; when I visited Egypt in 2006, I saw old things that date to 2500 BC or so. For perspective on that, Jesus lived closer in history to us today than to the construction of the sphinx. (The way I've often seen this concept expressed online: Cleopatra lived closer to the moon landing than to the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza.)

As I ponder these realities, I attempt to come up with some grand takeaway from my reflections. Truth be told, I'm not sure what to make of it. I guess I'm just reminded that I am a small thing in the course of history, but small people do add up over time.