Religion in the Third Imperium

[ak_aramis]

Originally Posted by Pomphis

Sure ? He may be forbidden to act as a priest, but isn´t the ordination as such irrevocable ?

The clerical state is not the same as the ordination's ontological change to the soul. One who has lost the clerical state commits a mortal sin by acting as a cleric.

And yes, sex changes male-to-female count the same as becoming an eunuch.

Note that monastics may be eunuchs... but clerics may not, unless mutilated to be so against their will*. Likewise, transgender individuals might be accepted into monasteries, but they're not eligible to be ordained. And are less likely to be superiors, let alone major superiors.

-=-=-=-=-

* Some pagans would intentionally do so to early Christian Clerics, so the council made it clear that victims of such as violence were living martyrs.

[Captain Midnight]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

If a Hiver tries to become a cleric of an alien religon, it's clearly up to something.

If a Hiver EXISTS, it's clearly up to something.

[jason taylor]

Oh heck, even it's nonexistence would prove it is up to something.

[Voidstar]

Does no one remember saint Elvis of Terra...

[jason taylor]

I do. Legends of his mysterious visits of St Elvis were mentioned in the works on the founding of the Imperium written by the noted historian Mark Miller.

[jason taylor]

Spacers versus Exposers:

By the time of the Third Imperium Zoroastrianism has made a comeback and is especially popular among Free Traders(some say because Parsis and Iranis took their mercantile traditions to the stars during the ISW era). Because of the lack of sufficient flying scavengers on some worlds and the sanitary laws of others, many have turned to spacing as a substitute. This is natural aboard ships. But it is also carried out in Starports by sending dead up into space in shuttles.

Traditionalists argue that as this means the corpses are eventually bound to disintegrate from radiation, this is an insult to Mazda whose symbol is fire. They still raise towers where they can, usually in wilderness areas, and the rich sometimes send their dead on pilgrimages to worlds known to be convenient for such funerals.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by ak_aramis

Not in any churches in union with the Pope of Rome. NO WOMEN PRIESTS is dogmatically declared. Can't be changed. .

A collapse like that of the Long Night could certainly be used to "adjust" an institutional memory.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

A collapse like that of the Long Night could certainly be used to "adjust" an institutional memory.

Catholicism has a mystical side to it that I don't always get(though I often get it better then Evangelical mysticism oddly enough) and sometimes seems to follow what I can only describe(with apologies for the rude description) as "rules magic". I assume it is not intended as such but somehow it looks like that. A woman can be a teacher but in some sense Mass supposedly "won't work" unless a priest does it and someone who gives mass has to have proper qualifications one of which is to be male. I don't really understand it, but I am not a Catholic.

To me the only doctrinal issue would be "husband of one wife" in Timothy which of course would also if taken that literally disqualify celibates. And various other vaguely patriarchal passages which are rather hard to understand even by a nonfeminist and may have been culture specific according to some interpretations. Other then that I can only say that a ritual has to have rules to it and it is also irrational that Britain's ceremony of state should have to be presided by the descendant of a petty franco-scandinavian thug. But rituals are not supposed to be rational at least not in that sense.

As far as the Long Night goes, yes. I should think that there will be a different flavor on different worlds even among Churches nominally in the same bureaucratic system. For the matter of that there already are in different nations in both the Roman and the Eastern Churches. Though the latter may be a bad analogy as no Patriarch was any thing like a Pope especially sense 1453.

While were at that sort of thing, one difference that might be thought of is the liturgical language. There might for instance be a Church that holds mass in High Vilani.

[combatmedic]

I'd be rather surprised if there weren't Catholic churches holding Mass in High Vilani (or some sort of Vilani, at any rate). Unless one assumes that all the Western Church has returned to Latin, then a service in the vernacular would be normal. With huge numbers of Vilani speakers to be converted...

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

A collapse like that of the Long Night could certainly be used to "adjust" an institutional memory.

Sort of. There could be a heretical sect that calls itself "Catholic" and ordains women. That's not the same thing as the actual RCC, no matter what label this hypothetical future sect decides to call itself.