The problem that many a government is concerned about, is the faith and loyalty of their constituents. In other words, governments, typically want their people to be subservient and faithful to their government, which is why many a government, desires to have either no religion, or to have just one orthodox approved religion within its borders. The reason that this is so, is that governments for the most part want to be in firm control of their people, and the one thing, that governments are fearful of, is that which will supersede their authority, by having some other agency, such as religion, that will effectively be the people’s master, instead. Indeed, when any government and the religion of choice of the people are at loggerheads, civil unrest and revolution are distinct possibilities within that country’s realm.
We read at Wikipedia.org, that “Of the first 31 popes, 28 died as martyrs.” Somewhat incredibly, that isn’t all that surprising, because Roman rule at that time did not tolerate anything that would subvert the loyalty of their people. That is to say, Roman rule saw the rise of the Christian religion and its adherents as a real threat to their rule, and like many a government that is trying to exert its control, believed that the most effective policy to extinguish those that were considered to be disloyal to that Roman rule, was to ruthlessly eliminate those people’s leaders. So then, it was not until the Edict of Milan so agreed to in 313 AD, that the Chrisitan religion, as in Catholicism, became part and parcel of acceptance within the Roman Empire, which not coincidently meant that Catholic Popes no longer needed to fear being martyred.
This thus signified that despite the fact that the Christian religion was considered to be an “enemy of the state,” for generations within the Roman Empire, that this was no longer the case. This thus meant that the argument could be made, that perhaps the Christian religion had therefore successfully made converts of Emperor Constantine and those that followed him, making for a better and more tolerant society. Then again, the argument could be made that the Christian religion, tiring of its popes being martyred, and of its adherents being persecuted, came to some reasonable degree of accommodation that thus permitted this particular religious faith and that governance to work together, though perhaps at the expense of the people, in general.
What has to be acknowledged, convenient or not, is that when the religion of choice within a particular governance, of which, these together, now seem to get along like a hand in a glove, then perhaps each side has compromised with the other, not so much to benefit the people, in whole, but rather specifically to benefit those that are at the upper echelons of power and influence within these respective domains. Indeed, there isn’t any good reason why religion shouldn’t be a constant thorn in the side of governance, in order then to stand strong for the people, and to see that necessary change is made on behalf of those same people, because when religion does not stand on principle for the poor and the voiceless, its legitimacy is suspect.