W. Robert Godfrey

He wanted to pursue somewhat less public life.

He wanted to be able to join the monastery and not be drawn into the active life, but the church was insistent.

And so in 590, he became bishop of Rome or pope, and he

died 14 years later in 604.

Fourteen years, not a really long period, but he was, through the power of his intellect and personality, really able to make a profound impression on the life of the church.

Now, you remember the title Pope was not unique to the bishop of Rome.

Some of you may have seen that the head of the Coptic church, Shenouda III, just died, and he's called the pope of the Coptic church.

Pope really comes from the Latin papa, meaning father.

So it's not an inherently really dignified title, although in the West it has become exclusively applied to one bishop, but it has not historically belonged to that one bishop alone.

So Gregory becomes a very important figure, so important in fact, that the Western church looks back to him as one of the four great doctors of the church.

He is still listed as one of the four great doctors of the church.

These doctors were Jerome, the great translator of the Bible, Augustine, the great theologian of salvation, Ambrose, the great preacher in Milan,

and Gregory.

And when you go back and read their works, one is tempted to say there were actually three great doctors of the church.

Jerome, Augustine, and Ambrose make sense, although they are all Westerners, and there were some pretty good Easterners that seem to be overlooked in this list.

But Gregory doesn't seem a theologian who measures up to the quality, the ability of the others on that list.

And I think the reason that he's on that list is that he left such an imprint on the church through his administrative work, through his organization of the church, through his reform of the liturgy.

through some of the moral direction that he gave to the church.

It wasn't that he was a great theologian, but he was a great leader.

He was a great representative of the emerging mind of the church.