Mixed Marriage in the Coptic Orthodox Church (documentary)

[dzheremi]

Related to the recent thread on mixed marriages where one spouse wants to convert and the other might not, but different enough to warrant its own thread, I think. I sort of agree with one of the comments on the original YouTube page that says the way that this material is presented seems a bit...apathetic (maybe?) regarding religious choice, but that's just in the presentation, which I agree could be better/stronger, but is not deceptive so much as perhaps overly gentle (perhaps with good reason; maybe they made this because the non-Orthodox potential spouses of congregation members were nervous about being received? Who knows...at any rate, this will be increasingly normalized as more and more generations of Copts are born in the West, where most people they meet are not fellow Egpytians/Sudanese/Libyans. Today there are entire national churches that are "Coptic" where no one is ethnically Egyptian except for the clergy and the bishop, like in Bolivia...and that's only the case with regard to the leadership because the Church there is not even 20 years old yet, so they have yet to raise a full generation up to leadership age). Obviously we are ourselves as a Church are not apathetic on this question, as the very first couple shows when the Coptic half (Tony) does say explicitly that his lovely wife was told that if they wanted to get married to him, she would need to be baptized in the Coptic Orthodox Church. (Though this information may be out of date as relates to that particular couple, given the recent agreement with Pope Francis to receive converts from Catholicism without baptism, as is in keeping with the historical norm of the Egyptian Church in the immediate aftermath of Chalcedon; see here, e.g., the letters of HH St. Timothy II, the immediate successor of HH St. Dioscorus, on the welcoming back of the Chalcedonians into communion.)

 

[archer75]

Interested to watch this.

 

[Pavel Mosko]

Related to the recent thread on mixed marriages where one spouse wants to convert and the other might not, but different enough to warrant its own thread, I think. I sort of agree with one of the comments on the original YouTube page that says the way that this material is presented seems a bit...apathetic (maybe?) regarding religious choice, but that's just in the presentation, which I agree could be better/stronger, but is not deceptive so much as perhaps overly gentle (perhaps with good reason; maybe they made this because the non-Orthodox potential spouses of congregation members were nervous about being received? Who knows...at any rate, this will be increasingly normalized as more and more generations of Copts are born in the West, where most people they meet are not fellow Egpytians/Sudanese/Libyans. Today there are entire national churches that are "Coptic" where no one is ethnically Egyptian except for the clergy and the bishop, like in Bolivia...and that's only the case with regard to the leadership because the Church there is not even 20 years old yet, so they have yet to raise a full generation up to leadership age). Obviously we are ourselves as a Church are not apathetic on this question, as the very first couple shows when the Coptic half (Tony) does say explicitly that his lovely wife was told that if they wanted to get married to him, she would need to be baptized in the Coptic Orthodox Church. (Though this information may be out of date as relates to that particular couple, given the recent agreement with Pope Francis to receive converts from Catholicism without baptism, as is in keeping with the historical norm of the Egyptian Church in the immediate aftermath of Chalcedon; see here, e.g., the letters of HH St. Timothy II, the immediate successor of HH St. Dioscorus, on the welcoming back of the Chalcedonians into communion.)

Yes I watched a few minutes of the video and will have to come back to it later. In my old parish this seems pretty common. It was quite common for a Coptic guy to find himself a good looking Catholic girl, and occasionally the reverse was true on the woman side where a former Catholic or Protestant became Alexanderized. It seems like it was the norm though for folks to go Coptic rather than have husband and wife go their separate ways on Sunday.