Pope as Head of State

The New Republic Online has an interesting article (subscribers only) about the impact the Roman Pontiff has as the Head of State for the Holy See (Vatican City). While I agree strongly with the premise that the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church have significant impacts on international issues, I think that perhaps the authors are off-base in presuming that the Holy See's treatment as a sovereign nation gives the Church clout:

Most troubling, however, is that the bizarre practice of treating the Roman Catholic Church as a country has serious political implications for women's equality, gay rights, and reproductive freedom. Of course, the Holy See unjustly bans women from holding key Church posts; but the Vatican's fictive statehood allows it to promote its retrograde gender values in multilateral forums as well. For example, during negotiations for the first follow-up conference to the International Conference on Populations and Development, the Holy See advocated for replacing the term "respect for women's rights" with "respect for women's status." Also during this conference the Holy See spoke out against the use of emergency contraception for women who were raped by Serbian forces in Kosovo and successfully blocked all mention of this important provision from the final conference document. When ratifying the children's rights convention, the Holy See claimed that the convention would "safeguard the rights of the child before as well as after birth." And during negotiations on the International Criminal Court, the Holy See pressed to exclude "forced pregnancy"--the practice of ethnic cleansing through rape--from the list of war crimes.

Nations don't just give other nations positions of power and respect within the international community just because they claim to be nations. Rather, could it be the fact that over 17% of the world's population is Roman Catholic? Perhaps the fact that the sole superpower left in the world has a population wherein 1 in every 4 citizens is Roman Catholic? See, the issue isn't the recognition of the Holy See as a nation. It is the fact that other nations recognize the power that exists in a well organized hierarchy which wields significant sway over the members of the Church.