Reading through a dicoesan newsletter I was surprised and baffled when the bishops of Anglican churches in Africa were called primates in an article. Giggling a little, thinking of apes, why of earth would a bishop be called a primate?
Primate means "first" in Latin, so in Catholic, Anglican (in the Unites States - the Episcopal Church), and in Eastern Orthodox churches, some bishops or archbishops are called primates - the first bishop, meaning the most important, not numerically the first, but the
one currently most important, and not only that, some primates are metropolitan primates - which I thought were only in San Diego or New York or Cleveland zoos.
Let's consider monkeys, apes and humans. A primate is a member of the biological order Primates, a group consisting of the commonly related species consisting of lemurs, monkeys and apes, with the last (or first, since we are primates) category including humans, some of which are metropolitan, others rural or suburban, which a religious primate can be as well.
Today MSNBC Live Science reportred that Jared Taglialatela, a bioligist at the Yerkes Nation Primate Research Center in Atlanta siad, "we share many profound likenesses with our closest animal relations. They posesss remarkable language capacities, have the ability to make and use tools, and even to learn behaviors from other members of their community - all traits once thought to be the hallmarks of humanity."
In the UK there is a court case in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France to declare primates human. According to Sarah Brosnan of Georgia State University, "One of the hard things is there is no single characteristic that has been found that makes humans truly unique."
According to MSNBC, about 96 to 98 percent of 100 DNA structures of chimps and humans
match up.
Then Primates would truly be Primates!
Maybe we should combine religious and biological primates into one group called the Order of Primates - since apes are primates and many primates have behaved like apes, or their cousin the monkey, especially some Catholic or Episcopal ones, which is a totally different topic. Makes a good movie title - The Order of the Primates - and would definitely have innumerable sequels.
The locale could be the Conferenza Episcopale Italiana and focus on primates run amok in Rome - the Amalfi coast is more scenic, but Rome has more sneaky little hiding places. Or Florence. Florence would be good.
KayeShannon
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