The First Estate

Early Theramin 

This post does not describe the real-world Catholic Church. It describes a similar church that might exist in a fantasy-medieval Western Europe.

In theory, God's representative on earth is the Holy Lord who lives better than any king in his estate far away. But it can take a year or longer for any news to get to him, another year to decide anything, and another year for the news to get back to the people. In practice, the big decisions are handled by the Archbishop over on the other side of the Realm. The actual regional authority, the man who you or even your peasants might actually meet, is the Bishop. 

Bishops oversee a diocese which is like the religious analog of a barony. They are theoretically arranged roughly by population but in practice they line up very closely with political centers. The greater the importance of an area, the more bishops you will find.

Almost anyone can start as a member of the First Estate. Knights and Nobles must of course be Second Estate, but that's a class feature. Druids are heretics. Being of the First Estate means you are a monk or a nun or a lay servant of the vicar. Or if you are ordained, you are the vicar. You might pray a lot if it strikes your fancy, you have a different justice system, you never pay taxes or retain wealth, and you theoretically gain deference from the peasantry and some nobles. You pay rent but you will always have a safe place to sleep and a bowl of barley soup to eat for your dinner. You also read and write Common and Lawful, know stories of the early church (accurately remembered on a 1-3 on 1d6) and have probably read the Vulgate prayer book.

You do not swear fealty to your Bishop, but you take a vow of obedience. In theory, it is your privilege and joy to obey. If you are repeatedly insolent or intentionally heretical (and therefore an embarrassment), both secular and ecclesiastical authority will come for you and it will be very bad.

You are required to send donations up the chain of command, presumably for wars and cathedrals and paying off the Big Guy.  Most of it gets pocketed by Bishops, who often live like the nobles they serve. See Table 2.

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If you are good at church politics, you end up on the other end of that bargain. Bishops (required to be ordained, and at least give lip service to being Lawful) get 10 GP x character level per month (CuS) to spend as they wish. Mad money. Upon attaining level 8, PCs gain XP from this stipend. It would be very rare for a PC to ascend to a higher rank because everyone above a Bishop is a full-time politician. Your Character Level has nothing to do with your ecclesiastic Rank, just as a King isn't a 12th level Noble with 58 hit points or whatever.

Additionally if you are a Bishop you never have to explain why you have a castle. Just call it an abbey instead. (Normal abbeys are not fortified, but yours can be.)

"And to this very day, nobody knows exactly when
we're supposed to celebrate Easter."

 Tenets of the Church

Requirements:

1. You don’t get to have more than one religion.  It’s this one, or you’re a pagan and you’re fair game. You don’t have to be particularly devout (even as a priest) but if you speak up against the church, you’d better run.
2. If you have any money, you give 10% of it to the church – preferably once a week but at least during each season’s festival. If you need a holy service such as a blessing prayer or confession, you should expect to pay a little for it. If it’s a marriage, baptism or burial, expect to pay a little more than you have on hand. Remember the local clergy are essentially working for negative pay.
3. Observe the four seasonal Festivals. There are many Holy Days, and every day of the year is a day to remember some martyr or saint and their birth, miracle or death. Each day theoretically has restrictions on diet and activity. But in reality only about 5% of people are strict about that. All the Lord asks for real is that you observe the seasonal fests.

Justice:

1. Priests, like knights, seek law and fairness. But beyond those, priests seek truth. Usually this means the Revealed Word of God and how that relates to and informs the secular world. But it also means solving mysteries and seeking to know the world. In this capacity, some deacons and initiates are turned out into the world essentially as adventurers. If some of these truths contradict doctrine, then that’s a real hoary chestnut for you to deal with, isn’t it?
2. Men are fallible. They may be biased, blinded or bribed. The Lord is infallible. In trials, trust the Lord. And even if you die, it is a just death and the Lord will shepherd you to the afterworlds.

Kindness:

1. Kindness is peace, as in lack of war. The priesthood will engage in just wars in foreign lands or in the defense of the homeland. It will not prosecute wars against other coreligionists. In practice this fails more often than it succeeds but it’s the stated goal.
2. Kindness is comfort for the old, lame, sick and dying. The rich make donations to the priesthood to endow Abbeys (not exactly hospitals, hospices or flophouses, but something in this range.) The disadvantaged are allowed to make limited use of these resources and the clergy provide the staffing.  In practice the best of these exist in politically-important places, and the ones in the borderlands and countryside are of varying poor quality. Clerics who build castles call them Abbeys but one usually has little to do with the other.
3. Kindness is protecting Men of the Realm from the Fourth Estate. The clergy are meant to work with secular authorities to capture and kill or expel Outlaws. Members of the Third Estate may try for Sanctuary in a church or abbey but the priesthood is not usually disposed to provide it. Even if they are, they are then responsible for dispensing the God’s judgement in lieu of that of the Lord of the Realm.

Humility: 

1. You take a vow of poverty. All your money over 10 GP (copper standard; 1000 GP gold standard) is sent up the chain to be spent unwisely and uncharitably by the bishop and his cronies.  Your best bet is to invest in equipment before you go back home.
2. You encourage others to do the same – mostly through holy mendacity, simony, sales of indulgences, overcharging for services, etc. It turns out that an important skill for a clergyman to possess is grifting.  And that’s OK with God.