Editor: While I canappreciate the need for stability for those leaving the Episcopal and Anglican Churches for Rome their ethos is not the same, nor is the behavior of the Roman Catholic Church acceptable.
Is Roman Catholicism Suffering from SRTSyndrome?
By Canon Frederick Bentley OHI
Saint Timothy’s Anglican Catholic Church, Charleston
According to my definition: “Seditious Religious Triumphalism is the attitude or belief that a religion, is superior to and should triumph using any means to accomplish it. Many of these means are cloaked in what appears as “defending the faith”.
The term triumphalism is what anthropologists call an "observer's category"; it is generally taken as having a pejorative sense (see the Oxford English Dictionary) and few members of groups would identify themselves as being triumphalist.The Oxford Dictionary continues: “excessive exultation over one’s success or achievements (used especially in a political context):an air of triumphalism reigns in his administration.
What is going on and continues to go on in the Roman Catholic Church is what I will call Triumphalism. What has in the past years accrued in relationships with Catholic Anglicans and Catholic Romans is seditious triumphalism.The fact that they are almost a billion strong does not afford the opportunity to be always right(“Athanasius against the world”). Triumphalism has the papal touch throughout with the common practice of intimidation of other groups. Catholic Anglican orders are not valid, Orthodox Churches are valid but somehow outside the true Church of Peter. When really as the Orthodox Church of America puts it: “Roman Catholicism sees Orthodoxy as a “sister church”, Orthodoxy sees herself as the fullness of the Church, not the “other half” of the Church, as implied in the notion of a “sister church.”
This Seditious Religious Triumphalism requires not just Conditional Ordination of recent Anglican converts but the parading of them in the newspaper for the benefit of a intimidation message. What is that message?“Catholic Anglicans are not Catholic.” Brought to you by the same Catholic Romans that said: “only valid Priests arecelibate, and that they have what they call ecumenical councils when only the Metropolitan of Rome is present.
According toBrittanica, triumphalism is defined as: "the doctrine, attitude, or belief that one religious creed is superior to all others."In the tenth century, East & West split, till then there was no Roman Catholic Church but Catholic Romans.Their Bishop was “first among equals”and was treated as such at early Councils of the church.The Councils viewed the pope as subject to the authority of the Council.
Triumphalism in all it’s
Glory,Bishop Mercer in
his lay attire(a humble
& good man) A summary of canon 6 of the Council of Nicea states:
The Nicene fathers passed this canon not as introducing anything new, but merely as confirming an existing relation on the basis of church tradition; and that, with special reference to Alexandria, on account of the troubles existing there. Rome was named only for illustration; and Antioch and all the other eparchies or provinces were secured their admitted rights… The bishoprics of Alexandria, Rome, and Antioch were placed substantially on equal footing, yet in such tone, that Antioch, as the third capital of the Roman empire, already stands as a stepping stone to the ordinary metropolitans.
By the “other eparchies” of the canon are to be understood either all provinces, and therefore all metropolitan districts, or more probably, as in the second canon of the first council of Constantinople, only the three eparchates of Caesarea in Cappadocia, Ephesus, and Asia Minor, and Heraclea in Thrace, which, after Constantine’s division of the East, possessed similar prerogatives, but were subsequently overshadowed and absorbed by Constantinople. In any case, however, this addition proves that at that time the rights and dignity of the patriarchs were not yet strictly distinguished from those of the other metropolitans. The bishops of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch here appear in relation to the other bishops simply as primi inter pares, or as metropolitans of the first rank, in whom the highest political eminence was joined with the highest ecclesiastical”
Schaff’sHistory Of The Christian Church
What Catholic Anglicans want if anything is to be left alone and treated with dignity. Most Catholic Anglicans have a high regard for the reality of a Church that was meant to be undivided and not subjected to whim of Seditious Religious Triumphalism (SRT), especially when it has added to the Faith once delivered, without the authority.