Editor: While I can appreciate 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 SRT Syndrome?
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 are celibate, and that they have what they call ecumenical
councils when only the Metropolitan of Rome is present.
According to Brittanica, 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’s History 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.