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Old 09-27-2016, 07:27 AM   #111
ak_aramis
 
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Default Re: bending stereotypes

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Originally Posted by ericthered View Post
Ok, so if I have everything right:

  • Friars work among the people of the world, but live a strictly religiously regimented life
  • Cenobites are secluded from the world but not from each other.
  • Monks (Cloistered Monks if you want to avoid ambiguity) are secluded from interacting with each other but live in close proximity, probably for reasons of logistics and to encourage discipline
  • Hermits live in what's pretty much full solitude

Are those fair statements?
Not quite...

St. Benedict's definitions
  • cenobites - a community of monks under an abbot superior and a rule;
  • anchorites - hermits within the authority of an abbot;
  • sarabites - monks living as 2 or 3 without abbot or rule;
  • gyrovagues - wandering monks or hermits
He didn't mention Eramites, but they are communal hermits as well, but under a bishop and sometimes without an abbot. They overlap anchorites and sarabites, but often exceed St. B's "2 or 3" for sarabites.

Church use has essentially eliminated gyrovagues as wandering monks, only as hermits. The only allowed Gyrovagues are diocesan approved hermits, and they are subject to a rule negotiated with the bishop, and supervised by the bishop.

Most Monks are cenobites, but not all.
Most cenobites are monks, but not all.
They're separate issues.

A rule, here, refers to a prayer rule - a specific charter which details the life of those in the community.

Monasticism is inherently about life apart from the rest of society. Monks live their lives on the abbey. Cenobitic Monks live, work, and pray together. Non-cenobitic monks (usually Anchorites) live under an abbot, but not under a rule.
non-monastic Cenobites often work away from the abbey, but live by a prayer rule and live in community at their abbey. Most such orders have died out, but in the middle ages, many such orders existed - the most common examples were diocesan right abbeys whose religious were working outside the abbeys - often with orphans and/or the sick.

Friars are not cenobites. They neither have abbeys nor abbots. They DO have a rule. Their superiors are Priors. They are itinerant - they go where their prior sends them, and all current friary orders are also communal. They live in smaller communities, from 2 to 20, and larger orders are often rotated through different "houses" within their priory.

Not all priories are friary, either. A priory can be...
  • the chapter house of a chapter of Friars or other itinerant orders. Some groups use Province interchangably.
  • A separate house of a cenobitic order which is not yet large enough and/or stable enough to be granted separation
  • A house of non-cenobitic monks, especially diocesan sarabites
A prior/prioress is the superior of any of these.
In the case of subordinate priors of a cenobitic order, it's supposed to be a temporary situation; as soon as the priory stabilizes, it's supposed to get an abbot.

Other forms of religious exist as well...
The Jesuits, for example, are Itinerant, but not mendicant, have no priors, no abbots, but have chapters... They do not live in community, but have a rule. They are not monastic, but scholastic.

Modern orders tend to be either Monastic, Scholastic, or Mendicant, but a few Anchorite orders exist, and many diocesan monastics are technically sarabites. The diocesan sarabite monastics are generally provided a rule by the bishop, and the bishop functions in the place of an abbot, but not being an abbot, they're not cenobites.

And, just to make things more confusing... Cenobite, when not used as an adjective, usually refers to non-monastic cenobites, rather than monastic ones.
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Old 09-27-2016, 07:27 AM   #112
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Default Re: bending stereotypes

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A science fiction character who is pious.
Poul Anderson has a number of those from various religions. He has a wodenite Catholic and a wodenite Buddhist. A human from a descendant of Eastern Orthodoxy, several Ythrians worshiping God-the-hunter and so on.

Most Graysons are pious in Honor Harrington.

All Fremen in Dune are pious.

It is as common as any. More to the point I am not in the cases above talking about the stereotyped religious police state(in Harrington Graysons are like Space Mormons, and Masadans like Space ISIS; the later obviously counts as a religious police-state, but the former is simply a feudal state that plays heavy on religion).

I am not familiar with Hard Science Fiction as such, because I tend to prefer it as a vehicle for either narrative or sociology-fiction, tech-porn can be really cool but it does not take much to satisfy my suspension of disbelief. However there are plenty of pious characters in Space Opera. However a lot of the reason may simply be that readers of Hard sci fi are looking for scientific and technological speculation rather then character development.
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Old 09-27-2016, 07:33 AM   #113
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Commander Sisko isn't enough for you? ;)
I may not like religion, but it is odd just how few otherwise rational people are religious in hard science fiction settings. Advanced technology and cultural shift seem to reduce its prevalence, but complete elimination seems horribly far fetched without genetic modification.
Sisko isn't quite that. He has effectively shamanic powers but he almost treats The Prophets as contacts rather then religiously though admittedly some aspects of religion don't exclude that. Kira would better qualify.

Worf might or might not qualify depending on whether you define a religion as supernatural. His devotion to Klingon tradition, or at least his idea thereof seems to have an air of the religious.
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Old 09-27-2016, 07:39 AM   #114
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A god of death that is more psychopomp than psychopath.
A number of the death gods I have seen in stories seem to be more bureaucratic then malicious. Mandos for instance, simply does an unpleasant job effectively but he is not evil for he enforces just sentences and he has no hard feelings about the matter.
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Old 09-27-2016, 08:34 AM   #115
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Default Re: bending stereotypes

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A science fiction character who is pious.
Several of the characters in A Mote In God's Eye were devout Catholics - well, what Catholicism had become in the Second Empire of Man, anyway. And in the sequel, The Gripping Hand, the events Bury had gone through at the end of the previous novel had tipped him over the edge from determined agnosticism to fairly pious Islam (although to his credit he didn't insist that Sir Kevin adhere to his beliefs).
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Old 09-27-2016, 04:05 PM   #116
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Default Re: bending stereotypes

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Sisko isn't quite that. He has effectively shamanic powers but he almost treats The Prophets as contacts rather then religiously though admittedly some aspects of religion don't exclude that. Kira would better qualify.
...
Kira was as religious as most Americans, which is to say in word only for the most part.
Last season DS9 took Sisko down the rabbit hole to full on prophet supernatural genre jarring existence, in my opinion.
It was like King's The Stand where it starts off science fiction then 90 degree turns to lost book of the bible.
It's funny how DS9 became WAY too religious to me but apparently didn't come off as "really" religious to you.
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Old 09-27-2016, 04:56 PM   #117
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Reading a fanfic called It's Just a Habit where you have a female superhero who doesn't have a secret identity, doesn't intend to fight crime and doesn't wear a skimpy or any special costume. The title is because she is a nun who helps with emergencies, TK including ability to lift herself so she flies (yes she has heard all the Flying Nun jokes), and at lift least one other person for rescues with ability to use it shield herself agains fire and such. She has to keep telling people that she isn't wearing a superhero costume, it's just a habit.
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Old 09-27-2016, 05:13 PM   #118
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I kind of wanted to play a super that did wear cliche spandex in a setting where no one did that. She was a large woman that flew so didn't get much aerobic exercise. With powers of fire and ice, she went by CandyCane with tacky suit to match.
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Old 09-27-2016, 07:32 PM   #119
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Default Re: bending stereotypes

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Kira was as religious as most Americans, which is to say in word only for the most part.
Last season DS9 took Sisko down the rabbit hole to full on prophet supernatural genre jarring existence, in my opinion.
It was like King's The Stand where it starts off science fiction then 90 degree turns to lost book of the bible.
It's funny how DS9 became WAY too religious to me but apparently didn't come off as "really" religious to you.
I don't watch the last season very often. The multi-sided intrigues of the fourth and fifth seasons take my interest better. However if you are a military officer and your state is clearly likely to be overthrown by superior military force and you can save it by supernatural contact you actually possess(and don't just assume as part of a creed) it is not odd to take advantage of the contact. It is no different then calling air support. I would not call Scipio religious because he asked Neptune's help before assaulting Cartagena, I would call him sensible according to his lights, tieing up all his loose ends. I would however call Epicetus religious and while he clearly believed in some idea of God he never seemed to be asking him for anything. it was hard to see in the episodes I saw how Sisko was more then utilitarian. I never thought of him as thinking of the Prophets as more then another tool of power politics. They did not seem to be something to pin his honor to. In any case his religiousity fit his character role so ill that it was one of the less likable aspects of it; he did not seem to have the knack for it. He was never devoted to the Prophets in the way Worf was devoted to Klingon honor, and I think Worf really comes off as more like a religious person. For instance Gowron was an honorable Klingon but he never took it nearly as seriously as Worf. Also Worf, and Kira, and even Spock are devoted to a tradition and I never noticed that about Sisko. Sisko never seemed to me to care about the prophets, he cared about being a Starfleet officer. He seems more like a magician then a religious person in his relations. Now it is more complicated then that as most American religious people including me would in fact have no problem soliciting God like a Patron and in fact it is an explicit if not the most subtle part of Christianity. However that is seldom the only part of their relation or if it is I would not call them particularly religious either.

As far as all that goes I come off as religious to you and would not come across as especially religious among religious people. Of course part of it is that I don't find conversation much fun when there is no disagreement. Another part is that though I can appreciate the aesthetic attractions of community(and like productions that emphasize it like Fiddler, Stranger among us and even Godfather), like you I don't have an instinct for running with the pack. Another part is that my idea of religion does not emphasize the emotional aspects and insofar as I do I would prefer High Church ritual on the whole(with some reservations) and I attend a Low Church which leaves me out of sorts. I could imagine myself as a monk and might even be a pretty good monk. But you could not tell from my conversation that I was one unless you knew me. Sometimes I do get hot under the collar, but other times I talk about religion because it is a subject like anything else. All that is neither here nor there. But perhaps the fact that your idea of what a religious person would look like and my idea are different is related. To put it another way, one of the characters(not sci fi) who seemed most religious was the end role of Berel Jastrow reciting Psalms in a gas chamber in War and Remembrance, not because he expected divine rescue but because-what better place?

For an idea of what I think religious sci fi character's would be like read Anderson's The Problem of Pain.
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Old 09-27-2016, 10:30 PM   #120
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Several of the characters in A Mote In God's Eye were devout Catholics - well, what Catholicism had become in the Second Empire of Man, anyway. And in the sequel, The Gripping Hand, the events Bury had gone through at the end of the previous novel had tipped him over the edge from determined agnosticism to fairly pious Islam (although to his credit he didn't insist that Sir Kevin adhere to his beliefs).
It's not made exactly clear what the official religion of the Empire is, it certainly looks to be more descended from Catholicism than not, complete with a papacy at New Rome. But the details are not revealed (just as we're not told the details of the Imperial aristocratic power structure, it's presumably similar to comparable states in the past, esp. in the 19C, but there are likely significant differences, too.).

Captain Blaine himself, who is heir to a fairly high-ranking aristocratic title, asks himself at one point during a service if he really believes in the doctrine of the Church or not, or just thinks it useful for morale and politics. He isn't quite sure himself, but he isn't sure enough to say he doesn't.

Interestingly, that setting also contains an example of something mentioned upthread, the arranged marriage. Rod Blaine and Sally fall in love, but when they get back into touch with the Empire, they receive what amounts to a politely-worded order to get married. It had been arranged in their absence by Rod's father, Sally's uncle, and the Emperor was on board, so the decision had been made for them.

They react rather differently, Rod is amused and Sally is furious, but Rod points out that it comes with the territory of their titles and privileges. As he adds, it was really just blind luck they loved each other, that was tangential to the issue of their respective marriage prospects.
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