Why did the church oppose lay investiture?
Lay investiture describes the granting of religious offices by non-religious officials. This was fairly widespread in medieval Europe as kings or other powerful men would "invest" other laypeople with the trappings of religious authority. The Church opposed this practice because it tended to limit their authority in areas where many bishops had been appointed by kings. If lay (non-clergy) officials could grant these offices, they could control the people that accepted them, and this meant control over the Church itself. There also was considerable corruption involved in the dispensation of church offices, and many reformers sought to end the practice on these grounds as well.
One instance where this issue was especially heated was during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when the Holy Roman (German) Emperor Henry IV, notorious for abusing the power of lay investiture, saw this power stripped from him by Pope Gregory VII. After a protracted dispute,...
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the Church emerged victorious, and the Emperor's power was considerably weakened. The issue was an important one for papal authority, and the struggle over lay investiture continued over the next two or three centuries.
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How did lay investiture weaken the church?
Lay investiture is a practice in which a secular monarch appoints a religious official. This practice, however, was a contentious issue in the Middle Ages and resulted in a major conflict between the Church and state, known as the Lay Investiture Controversy. In 1073, Gregory VII became pope and argued that investiture weakened the Church because it made religious officials more loyal to the king than to Rome. As bishops and archbishops often held lots of land from their king, they had to swear loyalty to him, as a feudal lord, and involve themselves in local and national politics. For Gregory VII, lay investiture was also part of a wider issue: the papacy could never have supreme authority over the world, as God had intended, if secular leaders were allowed to dictate who occupies which position.
In the end, Gregory VII won the conflict and the practice of lay investiture was finally brought to an end in 1122, with the signing of the Concordat of Worms.