Knighthoods! Get Yer Knighthoods Right Here!

What strikes home to me is the number of corrupt or easily corruptible clergy and religious (?) organizations. It's all MONEY. And in many unfortunate incidents - sex. Often sexual victimization. My eyes were first opened to this as a teenager, more than 60 years ago. Obviously, nothing - repeat, NOTHING has changed.

If schools and teachers were in the same sad moral shape as is found among clergy and churches - they'd all be closed by now. I say "closed," only because I tend to overuse "burned to the ground." This fake knighthood business is nothing. No threat, just a diversion for the vain, the self-absorbed and the silly.

 

I'll go off on a tangent here. While it's true that Joseph Smith was self-anointed, I feel that he more than made up for this little short coming by giving the Mormons holy underwear with secret symbols on it. I will guess that Mormonism is the ONLY church that offers holy underwear to their members. That has to be worth something!

 

Nope - Sikhs have it too. The Khacchera. Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kacchera
They got cool turbans as well - and Mormons don't. To a fashion guy - this is important.

 

Very nice! True the turbans are very cool. But, turbans don't qualify as underwear and Mormon underwear does have symbols which have changed meanings over the years but I think makes a nice addition to holy underwear. On the other hand, Sikh underwear was introduced in 1699. Mormon underwear wasn't bestowed on the faithful until 1842. Because of that I must admit that Sikh Khacchera has a slight edge over Mormon underwear, IMHO.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_garment

 

Fashion-wise, I think the Sikh undergarment has an edge over the Mormon one too. And some optional lace trim for the ladies might be nice -- but hey, I'm not Simone Pérèle, or Kiki de Montparnasse --- yet! (But I'm working on it! )

 

This is pretty much true. I've got to know a couple of Sikhs and they were very nice. I know too many Mormons though. Most are very nice. But, I have previously mentioned my estranged brother, who is Mormon, that tricked little old ladies out of their savings by convincing them they had won a sweepstakes which they needed to pay taxes and fees on and then they would be rich.

 

"Blessed be thy Fruit-of-the-Looms."

 

In this case, we have a fake clergyman harming a religious community. Not exactly the same thing.

 

Okay. We have two different evils, then. A few cases of the one you cite here - and many, many cases of what I alluded to. Doesn't look good from any direction.

 

Say, Johann, didn't Canada at some point ask the Monarch to cease granting titles of nobility or knighthoods to Canadians? What was that all about?

 

Thanks, Steve. I had no idea how to answer nosborne48. I remembered about Lord Conrad Black of Crossharbour, but his was just one incident in the story. Lord Black and I are nearly the same age, but he's way more interesting than I am. And even though I've never landed up in jail, as he did, I have to concede that he's a trifle smarter than I am, as well. Yep, I really think so. He writes and speaks eloquently, as a Lord should. (And he has a very fine education. McGill & Laval Universities. Two of our best.)

 

In mainstream Churches that teach and recognize apostolic succession (ie. those we discussed in the other thread), the general argument goes that valid orders (ie apostolic succession) are not sufficient for membership in the "One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church". That's why the Latins (and several others) point to the 'four marks', that is that the Church is 'one', 'holy', 'catholic' (universal), and 'apostolic'.

Some of these marks are tougher to prove than others, but the first ('one') is fairly simple: does said jurisdiction belong to the 'one' Church? Or is its leader off floating in his own universe, doing his own things, completely out of communion with the rest of Christendom? If so, the rest of the world typically doesn't recognize such a person nor his jurisdiction. So even if the leader or leaders of such a group were to be able to trace a line, they would still be in schism (and likely heresy), separating themselves off willingly from the rest of the Christian world.

Mind, this is were the ecumenical movement comes into play, and you saw examples of the late Pope Benedict welcoming Anglicans and others into communion with the rest of the Catholic world. I'm sure there are plenty of examples in the Eastern & Oriental Orthodox worlds as well, but unity is a very crucial element of apostolic ecclesiology. That's why you see the mainstream Churches emphasize it so very much.

 

Sad to say (as an educator myself), I've seen a number of articles over the years that suggested that child abuse in schools and amongst teachers is actually slightly higher than among the various clergy. A quick Google search turns up a number of articles to confirm the same. For example:

The best available data reports that 4 percent of Catholic priests sexually violated a minor child during the last half of the 20th century with the peak level of abuse being in the 1970s and dropping off dramatically by the early 1980s. And in the recent Pennsylvania grand jury report only two cases were reported in the past dozen years that were already known and dealt with by authorities (thus the grand jury report is about historical issues and not about current problems of active clerical abuse now).

Putting clergy abuse in context, research from the US Department of Education found that about 5-7 percent of public school teachers engaged in similar sexually abusive behavior with their students during a similar time frame. While no comprehensive studies have been conducted with most other religious traditions, a small scale study that I was involved with found that 4 percent of Anglican priests had violated minors in western Canada and many reports have mentioned that clerical abuse of minors is common with other religious leaders and clerics as well.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/do-the-right-thing/201808/separating-facts-about-clergy-abuse-fiction​

Or another example:

Considering this, 10% (roughly 4.5 million children) of public school students have experienced some form of sexual misconduct by the time they graduate high school, yet of the 77.4 million Catholics in the United States, .01% reported claims of child sexual abuse (10,667 children).

https://go2tutors.com/teachers-more-likely-abuse-kids/​

It's a pretty grim reality, regardless of whether we're looking at teachers, clergy, coaches, or otherwise.

 

This is waaaay outside my "wheelhouse" but lately I became interested in the legal conflict over the Catholic refusal to recognize Anglican orders despite the Church of England having carefully preserved apostolic succession and even including one or another Orthodox bishop present at episcopal consecration.

I'm neither a theologian nor a Canon lawyer but the gist of the Roman argument seems to be that whatever Anglican bishops and priests are ordained to do, it isn't the Catholic priestly function of offering the sacrifice daily. There is no intention to ordain "priests" in the ancient (Jewish) sense of the word.

Historically, there can be no question that this view is correct. The reformers said so repeatedly from the 16th to the 19th centuries and they acted upon that intention by physically removing stone "altars" and replacing them with wooden tables to show that there is no sacrifice taking place.

The conflict lies in the very well established principle that the subjective intent of the person conferring orders is irrelevant to the validity of the sacramental act. Has to be so otherwise every priest's and bishop's validity and actions would be subject to collateral attack at any time.

That's the downside to apostolic succession. The upside is power to enforce church discipline.

I just think it's interesting.

 

You would be correct. The Latins would not recognize the Eastern Orthodox as part of 'the Church'. The Eastern Orthodox would feel the same about the Latins. The Oriental Orthodox are hit or miss. Some have historically been more 'ecumenical' than others.

And while overlapping in many ways with the aforementioned communions, I don't think I've ever seen the Assyrians claim to be the sole Church. Though, seeing as they are only in communion with themselves, they practically do claim this.

Each, though, insists that *it* alone is *the* One. This, of course, is a source of much frustration for non-believers, Protestants, and even other apostolic Christians considering a conversion to one or more of the 3-4 Churches listed above.

So while we do lump these 3-4 Churches together as 'apostolic' (as they largely maintain the same theology, praxis, apostolic succession, etc. from time immemorial until today), that doesn't mean that any of them see the others as 'the Church'.

Our favourite Anglicans' solution to this problem is the Branch Theory, which posits that the larger Church is a collection of all believers who profess Christ and that the unity is merely invisible. Far as I recall (don't ask for sources as I haven't read up on this in some years!), it's only some Anglicans and certain other Protestant groups that subscribe to Branch Theory. The apostolic Churches, even some Protestants, and various outliers (Adventists, Mormons, etc.) reject this proposition, insisting instead that Christ founded a visible Church.