Why have a Pope?

So if Catholic teachings are what matter and not so much the papacy, so much so that it doesn't matter if the see is vacant or there's an antipope, why bother having a Pope? It's about the office, not the man. Why's his office an indispensable part of the church's machinery?

Only our teachings make sense. There is nowhere else to go.

Exhibit A: the Old Catholics. A rump sect in Europe that chases secular trends. Please. THAT'S the true Roman Catholic Church? Exhibit B: the Orthodox. So Western Catholicism's a fraud but adulterous second marriages and contraception are A-OK? And WHICH Orthodox, Constantinople or Moscow, at each other's throats as Soloviev predicted, out of communion over the Ukraine? Exhibit C: the Anglicans. As in the Reformed Catholicism the Oxford Movement still believed in. "The Pope has overstepped his bounds and is unbiblical!" said the bishop as she was about to officiate at a gay wedding.

If it's not doctrine, it's on the table. If it's not doctrine, we might be wrong. So the almost/alterna-Catholicisms are worth reading and talking to. But no.

Rather, maybe the question should be, why on earth would our holy mother the church want to leave the ancient and venerable see of Rome behind?

The church probably won't know until decades afterwards if Francis was really Pope.

P.S. Think the Ford Foundation and that lesbian priest of the Anglican Church of Canada are really interested in supporting Catholic evangelism in the Amazon valley? Neither do I.