Hieronymus
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User ID: 419
Hieronymus
5d ago
The German state church is to Lutherans as the German R.C. bishops are to Catholics.
Hieronymus
6d ago
Anglicanism is in an interesting category because there are priests and bishops, and the Eastern Churches are relatively warm to them on that basis, but the longstanding view of Catholicism is that Anglican orders are null and void because the Church of England, especially in the 15-1800s, relativized its understanding of what the priesthood was to more of a ministry in the Protestant sense than a sacrificial office, while the Eucharistic sacrifice was described as a "sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving" (added to the first BCP communion rite by Cranmer).
It’s worth noting the counterarguments offered by the archbishops of Canterbury and York in response, alleging that this view was inconsistent.
There's an alternate universe perhaps where Edward's minority didn't give Cranmer an in to push his agenda, or Elizabeth had a desire to impose more of her own liturgical conservatism and insisted on maintaining sacrificial priesthood as a pillar of the English establishment, and in that universe the Church of England would probably be called a "Church" by Catholic doctrine.
Perhaps. But I think that there would have been the same incentives for the pope to create a Roman Catholic shadow hierarchy to mirror the Anglican one, and given such competing hierarchies there would have been the same incentive to deny the validity of Anglican orders.
Well, it's not an essay – it's a novel. I think the antagonist's weak grip on this Martian tongue (I don't recall which of the two they are speaking in this scene) is symbolic and not just to make his argument look weak.
It's justified in universe because the protagonist is a philologist, specifically J.R.R. Tolkein with the serial numbers filed off, while the antagonists are mad scientists who aren't particularly trained in languages. They built a working spaceship with 1930s tech, learned a non-human tongue to at least a broken level, and survived long enough to argue with a planetary archangel/god, so they might be fools but they aren't idiots.
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