"A bit of a misnomer"?: Ecumenical Meddling

Rename it, then.

Definition: "A cleric subject to Ecumenical Meddling either has his sermons pre-written by another person and is forced to read them as is, or has his own sermon heavily edited. Usually, the meddler is either the cleric's direct benefactor (owns the parish building) or a lay leader who finances the church. Even if the meddler has no material means to bully the priest in this way, he usually has such force of personality (aided by the priest being young or insecure) that he can get away with it. "

No idea for a name.

I thought ecumenical was the church word referring to the lay people in the but it's not so find the word that is and use that.

It's Ghostwritten Sermons.

That was phrased with such descriptivism that I googled it and that is actually a thing. People get struggling young writers to write their sermons for them.

"Ecclesiastic Meddling"?

Sounds too much like "Meddling Priest", it'll give half the tropers bad flashbacks to endless threads with multiple crowners >.>

I'm guessing it was snowcloned off of Executive Meddling because someone wanted to be clever.

Sounds to me like someone mixed up "ecumenical" and "eccelesiastic".

Ghostwritten Sermons is fine by me.

Let's wrap this thread up. Is anyone opposed to Ghostwritten Sermons?

edited 16th May '11 11:40:29 AM by pokedude10

I'm positively in favour of it.

As am I

Should we even bother with a crowner, then?

If Ghostwritten Sermons is a pre-existing term, then I do not know if that is totally necessarily. However, I thought that if something was ghostwritten, one tended to support that effort and just kind of outsourced it. From what I can tell, the trope is about someone's sermons being subject to another person's edits or idea without that the original person approving them. I think that is fairly different from what Ghostwritten Sermons would seem to mean or at least I think so.

edited 16th May '11 1:40:16 PM by LouieW

I had the same perception about ghostwriting. Even it seems to be a profession, if I'm reading into it correctly. One hires one of those guys to write what one wants to write but can't. This trope is different in at least three levels.

Given the subject, Ecumenical Meddling sounds like almost the right name, but IMHO, it should be made into something that more clearly incorporates sermons.

edited 17th May '11 11:08:05 AM by SilentReverence

Bump.

I don't like this title. It sounds too much like meddling by the church (and is an awkward Snow Clone to boot, and even the trope page itself points out that it's a misnomer). Ghostwritten Sermons sounds about right to me.

Oh God, whenever a trope actually admits in its own description that the name sucks, it needs to be changed.

Yeah, swap with the redirect. Ghostwritten Sermons FTW.

Ghostwritten Sermons seems to leave out the whole meddling/forced to use it aspect of this trope that seems like a very significant part of it.

I also see a broader trope here that would cover, say, political speeches where the politician isn't allowed to use his own words. Do we have that?

When it was YKTTW'd, this trope was called Approving The Sermon, according to the archive. Would that be better than Ghostwritten Sermon? It does carry the connotation of executive meddling.

Someone must have picked the word "ecumenical" under the impression that it sounded "churchy," without realizing what it meant.

Meddling With The Preacher? Preacher Is A Puppet? The heart of this trope is that someone else is making the preacher say things or espouse ideas that he doesn't agree with.

Yeah, that sounds a whole lot closer. Since I'm not coming with anything myself, I could live with either of those..

I suggest we crowner and clock this one.

There is now an alternative titles crowner for this trope here. Feel free to tell me if you think it is too early for that type of crowner. I figure that since there has been no opposition to renaming the trope in this thread, it probably is okay to just start with that type of crowner though.

edited 1st Sep '11 11:36:55 AM by LouieW

Locking the crowner: New name is Pre-Approved Sermon, with a unanimous tally of +6; Meddling With The Preacher to be a redirect, at 3:1. All other options were at zero or negative.

Let's finish this up.