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Tenants of the Church?
Mar. 2nd, 2012 05:55 amI keep coming across an error that drives me nuts; mixing up ‘tenants’ and ‘tenets’. Writers mention the ‘tenants’ of various religions and it’s not what they mean at all.
Tenants live in property owned by a landlord or an organisation. The tenants of the Catholic Church would live in church property, possibly farming lands owned by the church, and paying rent or doing service (in a Medieval setting) in return.
The beliefs and principles of a religion are its TENETS. The tenets of the Catholic Church are laid out in the Catechism and in Pope Paul VI’s ‘Creed of the People of God’.
Please, fic writers, stop confusing them because it results in your story confusing me. When a Forgotten Realms writer talks about the ‘tenants of Tyr’ I expect the writer then to mention peasant farmers, or perhaps an order of paladins housed in a Tyrran temple, not to go on about Truth and Justice and so on. If you obey the tenets you will defend the weak, punish the unrighteous, and uphold justice for all; if you obey the tenants you will mend the leaky roof, repair the holes in the access road, and fix the broken water-pump.
It’s a big difference.
Tenants live in property owned by a landlord or an organisation. The tenants of the Catholic Church would live in church property, possibly farming lands owned by the church, and paying rent or doing service (in a Medieval setting) in return.
The beliefs and principles of a religion are its TENETS. The tenets of the Catholic Church are laid out in the Catechism and in Pope Paul VI’s ‘Creed of the People of God’.
Please, fic writers, stop confusing them because it results in your story confusing me. When a Forgotten Realms writer talks about the ‘tenants of Tyr’ I expect the writer then to mention peasant farmers, or perhaps an order of paladins housed in a Tyrran temple, not to go on about Truth and Justice and so on. If you obey the tenets you will defend the weak, punish the unrighteous, and uphold justice for all; if you obey the tenants you will mend the leaky roof, repair the holes in the access road, and fix the broken water-pump.
It’s a big difference.
