Weekend Entertainment #1 - September Test Drive Meme

[havetubawilltravel]

It's way too hot to be September right now where I am, but we're verging on October right now, and that means it's an app_this_plz weekend, and you know you've got characters you want to try out.


H O W T O P L A Y:

-->Reply to this post with any character, new or old, you wish to app into Milliways.
-->Scan the post and respond to any characters you'd like to interact with.
-->Milliways members: feel free to respond with your applied characters or post them
--> Have fun! Post is open until Monday's DE and/or until the next Test Drive Meme!

Comments

[witchfinder_general]

"Nobody doubted it," Father Harman says. "In my time, there are several Christian denominations that have branched off during the long history of our faith, and most of them had mass in their own language for centuries."

[a_rare_benedictine]

He nods. "The church of the East are already moving in that direction, I think."

[witchfinder_general]

"Yes, it was, in your time," Father Harman says. "To say nothing of the church in the orient -- the Coptic church in Egypt, the Aramaic church in Syria, and so on. They all use their own language."

[a_rare_benedictine]

"I've never travelled as far as Egypt, but as a young man I did spend some time in Antioch", he says with a nod. "Aramaic is an older language even than Latin, they have every reason to use it."

[witchfinder_general]

"It was the language Jesus spoke, after all," Father Harman says, smiling. "Latin was the language of the Roman oppressors."

The smile hides his amusement at who this man is likely to be, once he says 'Antioch'. Milliways loves its bizarre coincidences, so of course the ex-crusader monk will be Olivier's father.

[a_rare_benedictine]

He is indeed, and he's even met Olivier and liked him, but they haven't yet had the conversation that leads him to realize that.

"And so the one that spread, where Aramaic did not."

[witchfinder_general]

"Yes, it was the language of the realm," Father Harman nods. "That, and Greek, the language the New Testament was written in. By your time, nobody speaks Latin as their first everyday language any more, but the church and education still uses it as the language to connect them all. But it excludes the simple laypeople."

[a_rare_benedictine]

"In a sense. In another, it draws them in."

[witchfinder_general]

"It gives a sense of mystery, yes," Father Harman says. "But it puts a haze of necessary education over the relationship between humanity and God."

[a_rare_benedictine]

Cadfael smiles ruefully.

"Yes, I've never been quite fond of that. Others, I know, like it very much."

[witchfinder_general]

"It gives them power over the souls of faithful people who are nevertheless unable to study the bible and understand the sacred texts, having no Latin, and no time or chance to learn it," Harman says. "I don't like that at all."

[a_rare_benedictine]

"It would be very wrong of me to speak against my prior", he says, "so I will leave the comment there."

[witchfinder_general]

"A very wise, temperate and restrained comment," Father Harman says, smiling.

[a_rare_benedictine]

"I do strive to be", he says with twinkling eyes. "Would you tell me of this Jesuit order of yours?"

[witchfinder_general]

"We're missionaries and teachers," Father Harman says. "We have schools all over the earth, and value learning, which means we're just as willing to learn and respect the language, culture and religion of the people we're working with."

[a_rare_benedictine]

"Few would accept teaching that runs roughshod over their own ways", he says with a nod. "Few with any spirit, at least."

[witchfinder_general]

"And while the meek will inherit the Earth," Father Harman says, "we do like believers with some fire in their soul as well."

[a_rare_benedictine]

"And you give education of the general sort, not only on Scripture?"

[witchfinder_general]

"Of course," Father Harman says. "Education has to be useful, and purely religious education isn't, so they wouldn't want it."

[a_rare_benedictine]

"Done properly", Cadfael points out mildly, "it can be a guide to living well. But I can see that the poor would have greater concerns... such as living at all."

[witchfinder_general]

"If we give their children a good education that helps them to live better than their parents, they won't mind that said education contains religious elements," Father Harman says. "A famous motto of our order is, 'Give us a child until age seven, and we will give you the man', meaning to say that we form not only knowledge, but character -- and the latter, of course, by Christian values."

[a_rare_benedictine]

He nods, smiling. "It's a great thing, when a child can rise above their birth - even by a little."

[witchfinder_general]

"It's the one thing that brings the world forward and the poor out of their misery," Father Harman says, earnestly.

[a_rare_benedictine]

"Especially if it can be paid backwards, as it were, to have the child lift their parents out of misery too."

[witchfinder_general]

"That's part of the general bargain," Father Harman nods. "It works, generally speaking; but even by my time, we still have many places in the world that are desperately poor and need our work. More than ever, it seems."