Template:Clergy defined
Clergy defined
- CLERGY. "the body of all people ordained for religious duties, especially in the Christian Church." All who are attached to the ecclesiastical ministry are called the clergy; a clergyman is therefore an ecclesiastical minister.
- 2. Clergymen were exempted by the emperor Constantine from all civil burdens. Baronius ad ann. 319, 30. Lord
- Coke says, 2 Inst. 3, ecclesiastical persons have more and greater liberties than other of the king's subjects, wherein to set down all, would take up a whole volume of itself.
- 3. In the United States the clergy is not established by law, but each congregation or church may choose its own clergyman. Bouvier's Law Dictionary Revised Sixth Edition, 1856
To understand who or what is clergy you would have to understand who the "body" is, the requirements to be counted as "ordained", and what would a list consist of or to include as "religious duties". If you are going to limit those characteristics to the "Christian Church" as legally defined you would have to look to Jesus Christ for what qualifies as His "ecclesiastical minister" and not to Constantine and his "exempted" ministers.
The "ecclesiastical ministers" are those called out by Christ to be in the world but not of the world.
- "CHRISTIANITY. The religion established by Jesus Christ." But also, "2. Christianity has been judicially declared to be a part of the common law of Pennsylvania;"[1]
The term Clericalism is the application of the formal, church-based, leadership or opinion of ordained clergy in matters of either the Church or broader political and sociocultural import. There could be numerous distinctions between different forms of Clericalism such as the terms laid down by Christ and explained and exemplified by the Apostles and ministers of the early Church and those terms accepted by the ministers of the church established by Constantine. And then there are the thousands of denominations born out of the protestant movement.
Then there is clergyism which is a much more modern term often used by those who reject the idea of any clergy of the Church established by Christ.
- ↑ 11 Serg. & Rawle, 394; 5 Binn. R.555; of New York, 8 Johns. R. 291; of Connecticut, 2 Swift's System, 321; of Massachusetts, Dane's Ab. vol. 7, c. 219, a. 2, 19. To write or speak contemptuously and maliciously against it, is an indictable offence. Vide Cooper on the Law of Libel, 59 and 114, et seq.; and generally, 1 Russ. on Cr. 217; 1 Hawk, c. 5; 1 Vent. 293; 3 Keb. 607; 1 Barn. & Cress. 26. S. C. 8 Eng. Com. Law R. 14; Barnard. 162; Fitzgib. 66; Roscoe, Cr. Ev. 524; 2 Str. 834; 3 Barn. & Ald. 161; S. C. 5 Eng. Com. Law R. 249 Jeff. Rep. Appx. See 1 Cro. Jac. 421 Vent. 293; 3 Keb. 607; Cooke on Def. 74; 2 How. S. C. 11-ep. 127, 197 to 201.