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Christ is Risen!
Greetings to you all in the risen Lord, Jesus Christ our God.
I was searching for something completely unrelated to the thread topic this morning when I came across this article from 2017 in the New York Times titled "Feelings of Betrayal After Catholic Church is Leased to Coptic Parish". A brief excerpt from the full article will hopefully summarize the issue sufficiently, at least with regard to this specific case:
(End of excerpt)
I'm not sure whatever became of the plan or if it is still underway (searching "Coptic Orthodox Cathedral New York" brings up a Coptic Orthodox Church at a different address than Our Lady of Peace), but wikipedia also mentions the plan to sell (in their language; not lease, as in the NYT article) the building to the Coptic Orthodox Church.
It seems that in this particular case, the group that is protesting the sale/lease is feeling betrayed because Cardinal Dolan and/or Pope Francis essentially agreed to this without consulting the people for whom this particular parish is their home. I can understand that, but I cannot quite understand their rebuff of the compromise offered by the Copts, and their insistence that they be allowed to continue to hold Eucharistic services (I guess full masses and adorations?) in a church that has been sold/leased to a different Church. As a Coptic person who was formerly Catholic, I feel like I can sort of see why both sides feel as they do, but also must point out that a properly ordered and 'decorated' (for lack of a better word; I'll explain with an example below) Coptic Orthodox Church would actually not be very appropriate for Catholic worship.
I have seen this personally when I myself was in upstate New York in 2014 (where I even briefly met HG Bishop David, mentioned in the article; it was for just a minute, but he seemed like a very humble man; I doubt he would do anything to purposely antagonize Catholics, or anyone). The monastery in which I was staying was connected to several nearby churches and chapels, at least one of which was a historic Roman Catholic church that had been sold to the Coptic diocese some time earlier and was in the process of renovation. The deacon-monk who was in charge of me during my visit who took me there to see it said that the final choice for the Catholic diocese was between selling it to the Copts or selling it to a group of investors who wanted to turn it into a secular concert hall (the acoustics were amazing), and that they were grateful to the Catholics for choosing as they had, based on faith and not just money. Then one of the junior deacons said something that made me reflect on what the whole process actually entails beyond just buying the building: "I can't wait until we can move out all the statues and other Catholic things so that we can make it suitable for Orthodox worship" (by which I took him to mean take down the Roman Catholic paintings around the altar and replace them with a Coptic iconostasis with screen, install a Coptic altar in place of the Roman Catholic one, etc. The icons and such are what I meant by 'decoration' earlier -- it's a Coptic Orthodox Church now, so it won't look like a Roman Catholic one anymore, despite there being nothing that can be done about the architectural style, which is different than the traditional Coptic cruciform or ark-form churches.)
I felt a slight twinge at that like "Owww...those statues and paintings and such are the religious heritage of the people who owned this building before you; I hope you'll be respectful with them." (I'm sure they were; I spent nearly two weeks with these people, and they never had a bad word to say about any other church or people.)
That was my personal experience with this topic, but I have seen more and more examples of it online, as the Coptic Orthodox Church (and others, like the Syriac Orthodox) is growing in places where Western Christian traditions, including Roman Catholicism, seem to be shrinking.
As both an ex-Catholic and just someone who cares about others' feelings, I don't want to project even a hint of triumphalism at this, as there's no point in enjoying a 'victory' at the expense of one who should be a brother based on what we confess in common (the faith of the Nicene Creed and the first three councils; sure, you guys have a lot more, but my point is that the base is still there). It's certainly not a good thing that Catholic parishes are closing and merging and all this, but so long as it is reality, I wanted to get the sense of how Catholics themselves feel about this phenomenon.
(1) Understandable sadness at closures and mergers aside, how do you feel about the sale or lease of your no-longer-viable (according to your bishops who approve these deals, I mean) parish churches? Is it a case of "better it go to fellow Christians than be turned into a rec center or a nightclub or something", or would you rather fight the decisions of your bishops, as in the NYT story? (I recognize that there are unique circumstances in that case, as there would be in every case, that may motivate those particular individuals to protest; I don't/wouldn't take it personally, as a Coptic Orthodox person.)
(2) Is there a difference in your minds regarding what type of Church may obtain the property -- i.e., better Eastern Orthodox than Oriental Orthodox (because the former are Chalcedonian, like the Catholic Church is), but better either of them than Protestant or more directly schismatic Catholic groups, e.g., "Women Priests" movement types, "Old Catholics", etc.?
(3) In the case that some kind of compromise be made or olive branch be offered to Catholics angered by losing their parishes (as in the NYT story), would you take the 'new' Church up on it, say, if they offered something like what was offered to the Catholics of Our Lady of Peace: prayer is fine, but no Eucharistic services? Basically, how much if at all do you feel that you would still have a sense of 'ownership' over the parish, even if you don't technically own it anymore? Personally I find it inappropriate that anyone in that situation would demand the right to use the church as they did before, as though the sale/lease magically un-happened through the power of their being mad about it, but I can also understand the anger of the people who feel, in that specific case, that they had their home church pulled out from under them by the agreement of HH Pope Francis and HH Pope Tawadros II and HG Cardinal Dolan (is that the right honorific for a cardinal? "His Grace"? Apologies if it isn't; I don't mean to offend). So I see this as a complex issue, where many emotions may manifest themselves in different ways. Would any of you visit the 'new' church at all, and if so, under what circumstances?
I'm trying to put myself into that situation as mental exercise but it's hard to do because for the past 1,400 years all of the churches and monasteries we have lost were either just completely demolished or turned into mosques, which is to my mind an entirely different kettle of fish. But again, as I see these kinds of transfers happen more and more (and again, not just to Copts but to other OO as well; I'm not sure about this, but it seems like EO prefer to build their own buildings from scratch; indeed that is the ideal for everyone, but economically we find it usually unfeasible in the extreme, as we are much poorer than the EO, obviously, since we are much smaller and have fewer state backers), I do wonder what effect it might be having on our relations, both on an official Church level and on an individual level.
Thanks for any responses to what I assume will be a sensitive topic. Please remember I am posting this in charity and try not to attack my Church directly in your replies. I only ask this because in the past when I have posted in happiness about a positive event in the history of OO-CC relations (the return of the relics of our father and evangelist St. Mark to Egypt from Rome in the 1960s), the replies were along the lines of "Why are we giving our precious relics to heretics?" That sort of thing makes a guy unsubscribe from his own thread real quick. I'd prefer to discuss the issue, rather than dump on each other for obvious differences that we all know we have. Again, we have a lot of similarities at a very basic level.
Thank you.
Greetings to you all in the risen Lord, Jesus Christ our God.
I was searching for something completely unrelated to the thread topic this morning when I came across this article from 2017 in the New York Times titled "Feelings of Betrayal After Catholic Church is Leased to Coptic Parish". A brief excerpt from the full article will hopefully summarize the issue sufficiently, at least with regard to this specific case:
For nearly 600 consecutive evenings, a group of worshipers has prayed the rosary outside the locked doors of Our Lady of Peace, a Roman Catholic Church on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, trying to keep their church alive.
Since their church was shut down in a round of parish mergers in 2015, the group has been fighting to reopen it through prayer vigils and a continued legal appeal before the Vatican. But the archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, has been pursuing a different plan, taking the matter of this East 62nd Street chapel to the pope himself.
On Sunday, the jewel-box-like sanctuary of Our Lady of Peace was opened for a Divine Liturgy service, a weekly sacrament of communion, but not a Roman Catholic one. At Cardinal Dolan’s direction, the archdiocese has granted a one-year lease to the local parish of the Coptic Orthodox Church, an ancient Christian denomination based in Egypt. The lease is the first stage of a plan to transform the church into the Coptic Church’s New York cathedral, an idea that both Cardinal Dolan and Coptic leaders say Pope Francis has blessed.
Since their church was shut down in a round of parish mergers in 2015, the group has been fighting to reopen it through prayer vigils and a continued legal appeal before the Vatican. But the archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, has been pursuing a different plan, taking the matter of this East 62nd Street chapel to the pope himself.
On Sunday, the jewel-box-like sanctuary of Our Lady of Peace was opened for a Divine Liturgy service, a weekly sacrament of communion, but not a Roman Catholic one. At Cardinal Dolan’s direction, the archdiocese has granted a one-year lease to the local parish of the Coptic Orthodox Church, an ancient Christian denomination based in Egypt. The lease is the first stage of a plan to transform the church into the Coptic Church’s New York cathedral, an idea that both Cardinal Dolan and Coptic leaders say Pope Francis has blessed.
(End of excerpt)
I'm not sure whatever became of the plan or if it is still underway (searching "Coptic Orthodox Cathedral New York" brings up a Coptic Orthodox Church at a different address than Our Lady of Peace), but wikipedia also mentions the plan to sell (in their language; not lease, as in the NYT article) the building to the Coptic Orthodox Church.
It seems that in this particular case, the group that is protesting the sale/lease is feeling betrayed because Cardinal Dolan and/or Pope Francis essentially agreed to this without consulting the people for whom this particular parish is their home. I can understand that, but I cannot quite understand their rebuff of the compromise offered by the Copts, and their insistence that they be allowed to continue to hold Eucharistic services (I guess full masses and adorations?) in a church that has been sold/leased to a different Church. As a Coptic person who was formerly Catholic, I feel like I can sort of see why both sides feel as they do, but also must point out that a properly ordered and 'decorated' (for lack of a better word; I'll explain with an example below) Coptic Orthodox Church would actually not be very appropriate for Catholic worship.
I have seen this personally when I myself was in upstate New York in 2014 (where I even briefly met HG Bishop David, mentioned in the article; it was for just a minute, but he seemed like a very humble man; I doubt he would do anything to purposely antagonize Catholics, or anyone). The monastery in which I was staying was connected to several nearby churches and chapels, at least one of which was a historic Roman Catholic church that had been sold to the Coptic diocese some time earlier and was in the process of renovation. The deacon-monk who was in charge of me during my visit who took me there to see it said that the final choice for the Catholic diocese was between selling it to the Copts or selling it to a group of investors who wanted to turn it into a secular concert hall (the acoustics were amazing), and that they were grateful to the Catholics for choosing as they had, based on faith and not just money. Then one of the junior deacons said something that made me reflect on what the whole process actually entails beyond just buying the building: "I can't wait until we can move out all the statues and other Catholic things so that we can make it suitable for Orthodox worship" (by which I took him to mean take down the Roman Catholic paintings around the altar and replace them with a Coptic iconostasis with screen, install a Coptic altar in place of the Roman Catholic one, etc. The icons and such are what I meant by 'decoration' earlier -- it's a Coptic Orthodox Church now, so it won't look like a Roman Catholic one anymore, despite there being nothing that can be done about the architectural style, which is different than the traditional Coptic cruciform or ark-form churches.)
I felt a slight twinge at that like "Owww...those statues and paintings and such are the religious heritage of the people who owned this building before you; I hope you'll be respectful with them." (I'm sure they were; I spent nearly two weeks with these people, and they never had a bad word to say about any other church or people.)
That was my personal experience with this topic, but I have seen more and more examples of it online, as the Coptic Orthodox Church (and others, like the Syriac Orthodox) is growing in places where Western Christian traditions, including Roman Catholicism, seem to be shrinking.
As both an ex-Catholic and just someone who cares about others' feelings, I don't want to project even a hint of triumphalism at this, as there's no point in enjoying a 'victory' at the expense of one who should be a brother based on what we confess in common (the faith of the Nicene Creed and the first three councils; sure, you guys have a lot more, but my point is that the base is still there). It's certainly not a good thing that Catholic parishes are closing and merging and all this, but so long as it is reality, I wanted to get the sense of how Catholics themselves feel about this phenomenon.
(1) Understandable sadness at closures and mergers aside, how do you feel about the sale or lease of your no-longer-viable (according to your bishops who approve these deals, I mean) parish churches? Is it a case of "better it go to fellow Christians than be turned into a rec center or a nightclub or something", or would you rather fight the decisions of your bishops, as in the NYT story? (I recognize that there are unique circumstances in that case, as there would be in every case, that may motivate those particular individuals to protest; I don't/wouldn't take it personally, as a Coptic Orthodox person.)
(2) Is there a difference in your minds regarding what type of Church may obtain the property -- i.e., better Eastern Orthodox than Oriental Orthodox (because the former are Chalcedonian, like the Catholic Church is), but better either of them than Protestant or more directly schismatic Catholic groups, e.g., "Women Priests" movement types, "Old Catholics", etc.?
(3) In the case that some kind of compromise be made or olive branch be offered to Catholics angered by losing their parishes (as in the NYT story), would you take the 'new' Church up on it, say, if they offered something like what was offered to the Catholics of Our Lady of Peace: prayer is fine, but no Eucharistic services? Basically, how much if at all do you feel that you would still have a sense of 'ownership' over the parish, even if you don't technically own it anymore? Personally I find it inappropriate that anyone in that situation would demand the right to use the church as they did before, as though the sale/lease magically un-happened through the power of their being mad about it, but I can also understand the anger of the people who feel, in that specific case, that they had their home church pulled out from under them by the agreement of HH Pope Francis and HH Pope Tawadros II and HG Cardinal Dolan (is that the right honorific for a cardinal? "His Grace"? Apologies if it isn't; I don't mean to offend). So I see this as a complex issue, where many emotions may manifest themselves in different ways. Would any of you visit the 'new' church at all, and if so, under what circumstances?
I'm trying to put myself into that situation as mental exercise but it's hard to do because for the past 1,400 years all of the churches and monasteries we have lost were either just completely demolished or turned into mosques, which is to my mind an entirely different kettle of fish. But again, as I see these kinds of transfers happen more and more (and again, not just to Copts but to other OO as well; I'm not sure about this, but it seems like EO prefer to build their own buildings from scratch; indeed that is the ideal for everyone, but economically we find it usually unfeasible in the extreme, as we are much poorer than the EO, obviously, since we are much smaller and have fewer state backers), I do wonder what effect it might be having on our relations, both on an official Church level and on an individual level.
Thanks for any responses to what I assume will be a sensitive topic. Please remember I am posting this in charity and try not to attack my Church directly in your replies. I only ask this because in the past when I have posted in happiness about a positive event in the history of OO-CC relations (the return of the relics of our father and evangelist St. Mark to Egypt from Rome in the 1960s), the replies were along the lines of "Why are we giving our precious relics to heretics?" That sort of thing makes a guy unsubscribe from his own thread real quick. I'd prefer to discuss the issue, rather than dump on each other for obvious differences that we all know we have. Again, we have a lot of similarities at a very basic level.
Thank you.
