Recent communication between EO and OO?

Thanks!

I had wrongly for a while assumed that was "Coptic" ... but I am happy to know better now. Thank you!

The Orthodox Tewahedo are still sometimes known as Copts today (e.g., "Ethiopian Copts"), since the Ethiopian Church was governed by the Copts for some 1,600 years before it was granted autocephaly c. 1950s during time of Pope Joseph II, so it's understandable to think that.

dzheremi said:

The Orthodox Tewahedo are still sometimes known as Copts today (e.g., "Ethiopian Copts"), since the Ethiopian Church was governed by the Copts for some 1,600 years before it was granted autocephaly c. 1950s during time of Pope Joseph II, so it's understandable to think that.

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Thank you.

I think that's possibly what confused me - hearing variously others referred to as Copts. And I'm still figuring out EO, so I haven't been able to really delve into what's what with OO either.

I do so sincerely wish our schism could be healed, though I am starting to see that it goes deeper than I'd realized. I have a few OO friends online through FB and two of them separately approached me trying to understand our differences. We (in both cases) talked about everything we could think of to explore and couldn't find any, other than the "two natures". And they were both laymen and myself not particularly educated so we couldn't even really explore that beyond just the basic statement our respective Churches give us.

Mary of Bethany said:

Yes, it's hard to get more beautiful than the Sitka Icon of the Theotokos & Child, and it's western.

https://oca.org/saints/lives/2017/07/08/101965-icon-of-the-mother-of-god-our-lady-of-sitka

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I’m with Gurney on this one It’s not my favorite rendering.

gurneyhalleck1 said:

Not a fan of that style. But like Father Matt said, there is a style for everyone.

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This is the one of the styles I love


(Source Fr Andrew Tregubov)

All4Christ said:

I’m with Gurney on this one It’s not my favorite rendering.

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That's not my favorite style either.

This is my favorite icon of the Theotokos, though all I have is a 4x6 photo I had wal-mart print and I put in a frame. I don't know what the style is exactly, but I like her face in exactly this one.

~Anastasia~ said:

Thank you.

I think that's possibly what confused me - hearing variously others referred to as Copts. And I'm still figuring out EO, so I haven't been able to really delve into what's what with OO either.

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It's okay. I'm not an ethnic Copt or from another 'OO ethnicity' (blehhhh...that felt gross to type), so I don't mean to talk for anyone who is, but in my personal experience Copts (Egyptians) and Orthodox Tewahedo (Ethiopians and Eritreans) don't tend to mind the confusion, because it's a technical matter that they don't generally expect others to understand. Just don't call Eritreans Ethiopians and you'll be fine.

I do so sincerely wish our schism could be healed, though I am starting to see that it goes deeper than I'd realized. I have a few OO friends online through FB and two of them separately approached me trying to understand our differences. We (in both cases) talked about everything we could think of to explore and couldn't find any, other than the "two natures". And they were both laymen and myself not particularly educated so we couldn't even really explore that beyond just the basic statement our respective Churches give us.

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Yes, I definitely hear you on this! I am also a layperson and have had that same discussion with Greeks and other Chalcedonians in Albuquerque when I lived there (both in real life and online). Many times, in fact. It is to the point where I will walk away not because I am offended or angry, but just because there isn't anything left to say, you know? I think you are on to something about the statements our respective churches give us. I have come to the conclusion personally (again, as a layperson; this is not an "official OO stance" or whatever) that it is more a matter of mindset and approach to things than necessarily differences in faith. HH Pope Shenouda III of thrice-blessed memory declared back in the 1990s that, as far as we are concerned, the technical Christological controversy is resolved. You can hear it from his own mouth at 1:38 in the following video:


The issue now is, of course, that it is not as simple as having theologians meet and agree on whatever level they can (and I think HH knows this, obviously; I take his comment to be more like "Thanks be to God this advancement in our relations has happened", not "Voila! The schism is over!" or anything like that). It is, as HH puts it in the very end of the video clip, the matter of "going in the way of unity", or if you will, in a practical sense, doing exactly what you are already doing on FB and I'm going to assume in real life with your OO friends: Having these kinds of difficult talks. Trying to figure out where the differences are, and if they are surmountable, and what they 'mean' in terms of the life of the Church you are looking at. Not every OO person or even every OO Church looks at the schism in the same way, though we all want it to end. The Armenians, for instance, were late to condemn the Tome (in 506, in a council at Dvin), but early to call for reunion after the breakdown of the Henotikon and so forth (e.g., the reunion attempts of HH Catholicos Nerses Shnorhali in the 12th century). The Copts and Tewahedo, for our part, have been a tougher nut to crack, for various reasons related to their particular histories which I have to say as someone who converted to this Church I feel woefully unworthy to even touch. But all of this goes into how we view the schism, and our Church and tradition, and your Church and tradition.

Basically, we still don't necessarily know each other well enough. I have read comments on this board and in private about how "I could never go to a Coptic church; why go there, when I have the real thing?", which, yeah, fine, obviously that's how the Church that you're in views things, so I won't knock it (we sometimes express similar sentiments), but you are then missing a chance to connect with these people who you at least want to bring to Orthodoxy if you don't think they're already believers and practitioners of it (or however you'd put it). So there is a kind of barrier that comes from a "those people over there are X, we are Y; stick with Y" attitude, like when I was still just a catechumen and I mentioned that I might go to the local OCA when I was home for Christmas to visit family (St. Seraphim of Sarov in Santa Rosa, CA; I recommend it highly, if you are in the area, in addition to a trip to historic Fort Ross...if you can trust the word of a dirty miaphysite ), and one of the little old ladies (I believe you'd call them yiayias or babushkas; for us they are طنط tunt/tant -- meaning 'aunty') took me aside and very sweetly said "You know we are not in communion with them, right?", with a vibe of like 'You should not go there'. I did not tell her that I had already been there before I ever knew the Coptic Orthodox Church was.

I do not believe the schism will end until this kind of thing because so rare as to be seen as inappropriate, even when it comes from Tant Hoda or Tant Mary or whoever (or a yiayia, or a babushka, etc) . We need to see our faith and ourselves in one another's churches, on both a higher-level theological plane, for those who are gifted in that manner of insight into things, and in a practical, real-world sense -- i.e., Coptic people should go to EO liturgies, and vice versa, while respecting the reality that we are not yet officially in communion. Tasbeha should ring out in Greek churches with Egyptian visitors, and our monasteries should welcome the equivalent prayers from Greek visitors, even in the cave of St. Anthony himself, as he is our common spiritual father (I don't think its current occupant, Fr. Lazarus El Antony, would object, as before he came to the Coptic Orthodox Church he had been in a Serbian Orthodox Monastery).

God-willing, this will happen by the Lord's strength and in His time, but in the meantime we have a lot of work to do. Again, I really do think it is a matter of different mindsets by this point. I do not want to anger anyone, but there is a certain sense among OO (or maybe it's just the ones I've talked to/known?) that on a certain level, you guys are to us as the Roman Catholics are to you: 'intellectual' in a way that is foreign to us, seeing councils differently, being rigid and cold to anything that is not from within your own tradition, etc. I don't think such a characterization is necessarily very fair or accurate in all cases, but I have definitely run into EO individuals (including some who presented themselves online as priests; NOT FATHER MATT -- a different guy I tried to talk to on CAF, before I was banned there for not being friendly enough about Islam and Roman Catholicism) for whom it is absolutely fitting, at least with regard to the kinds of statements they would make (with full 'knowledge' of OO practices and/or history that they clearly did not understand or even describe correctly in a secular/temporal/non-polemical fashion; I dunno...maybe they read a Wikipedia or Orthodoxwiki article about them once, and then they're an expert; there's an Egyptian saying that's meant to be about reading the Bible, but I think also applies here, in a slightly different way: "The letter kills" ). I am 1,000% sure that the same phenomenon exists among OO, though I have not personally run into anything from priests beyond skipping one of the commemorations in the Tasbeha for a saint who they said was "added under Byzantine pressure", which I thought was weird at the time and my priest thought was weird when I got back home and told him about it (it was when I was visiting a different state, in another diocese), since the saint is definitely recognized within our communion, and has been since forever. Lord have mercy. Again, so much work to do. Sorry this post was so long. That probably doesn't help.

"Oh, are you Serbian?" "Oh, are you Jewish?" "Orthodoxy, huh? Never heard of it." "Is that like Catholic?"

These are the common replies I get when I tell people I'm Orthodox and attend a Serb parish.

I can only imagine the heck Jeremy gets for having converted to Coptic Orthodoxy!!?! Yeesh. Even I think that is a massive leap for a typical white dude to have jumped. Talk about ethnic central! Jeremy must get all sorts of weird replies!

"Coptic? Were they like law enforcement Christians?"

Yeah, I've gotten the "a church for cops?" reply. I guess I really need to (over) enunciate.

The parish in which I was baptized, St. Mark's in Scottsdale AZ, was very mixed, though (entire white families with no Egyptians in them, Hispanics, Ethiopians, Iraqis, etc.), so I don't know if every parish is "ethnic central" or not. My own home parish in Albuquerque was very Egyptian, but I think that was mostly because it was so small, since nobody actually wants to come to Albuquerque and live there (it's like a more stabby, drug-addled AZ). I've heard that since I left they have received a Saudi lady (!), and there were already the Sudanese Copts who were always part of the parish, though I don't know how much that counts as a different ethnicity, since the Copts in Sudan are either very, very old and mixed with the Nubians, or more recent immigrants who you wouldn't know were actually Sudanese if they didn't tell you. And while I was there we had regular visitors from Jordan, Ethiopians, etc., and the occasional white person or family, like the poor Lutherans who came once. I think the culture shock was too much, in that case.

It's perhaps good to remember that Coptic Orthodox Church itself as a thing is very new to America, with the very first churches built only in the 1960s, despite Copts being in America more generally since the 1940s. What can I say? Everything Coptic people do takes forever. "A day with the Lord is as a thousand years" really fits.

That was some tripped-out chanting, Jeremy! Dang. That gave me a headache, bro! LOL....

There is a really good-sized Coptic parish in my town, as I've mentioned in the past. It's totally Egyptians. Nice folks. Most of them are pharmacists. It grew steadily over the past 20 years. They finally knocked over the Protestant church they had bought and used, and completely rebuilt that sucker. It looks like ancient Egypt over there now! Beautiful. The icons inside are odd, but that's just me. The priest there is a super nice guy, friendly bunch.

I must say (in my best Seinfeld voice), "what's the deal with the deacons banging on triangles!?"

http://deacontube.com/index.php/other/rites-instruments/96-basic-triangle-tutorial-mauricecyril

dzheremi said:

Yeah, I've gotten the "a church for cops?" reply. I guess I really need to (over) enunciate.

The parish in which I was baptized, St. Mark's in Scottsdale AZ, was very mixed, though (entire white families with no Egyptians in them, Hispanics, Ethiopians, Iraqis, etc.), so I don't know if every parish is "ethnic central" or not. My own home parish in Albuquerque was very Egyptian, but I think that was mostly because it was so small, since nobody actually wants to come to Albuquerque and live there (it's like a more stabby, drug-addled AZ). I've heard that since I left they have received a Saudi lady (!), and there were already the Sudanese Copts who were always part of the parish, though I don't know how much that counts as a different ethnicity, since the Copts in Sudan are either very, very old and mixed with the Nubians, or more recent immigrants who you wouldn't know were actually Sudanese if they didn't tell you. And while I was there we had regular visitors from Jordan, Ethiopians, etc., and the occasional white person or family, like the poor Lutherans who came once. I think the culture shock was too much, in that case.

It's perhaps good to remember that Coptic Orthodox Church itself as a thing is very new to America, with the very first churches built only in the 1960s, despite Copts being in America more generally since the 1940s. What can I say? Everything Coptic people do takes forever. "A day with the Lord is as a thousand years" really fits.

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I think all their liturgy and vespers are in the Egyptian tongue. Man, that would be fish out of water action for me!

I went to their website, since the live stream is just the church sitting there, existing (no services right now), and I must say, they did a really good job on the remodel of that church! I love the traditional cruciform (or when it's not that, arc form; whatever that would be called) architecture of Coptic churches.

And yes, the triangle. and the chanting, and the Coptic language all take some getting used to. I think there's probably less of an obvious connection between these things and the Western approach to music that you find in other churches, so it definitely feels more foreign and disorienting (or headache-inducing). Copts like to say that their style of chant dates back to the Pharaohs, though of course that's not really proveable one way or another (since it was always passed down orally, as it still primarily is), though I have read some academic papers that have tried to connect certain features of it to descriptions of ancient Egyptian chant, like the elongation of vowels as in that chant, which they tied to the pre-Egyptian belief in some kind of magical property in chanting particular vowels. Obviously that's not a belief that anyone in the Church actually has, but I guess they were still fine with continuing it as an art form, since by that point they would have been chanting all of their prayers that way anyway, for potentially thousands of years (if you buy the thesis that it dates back to the Ancient Egyptians and their religion and temple practices, that is).

I dunno. I won't deny that it is a "weird" environment to be in, as a white person. There are probably things that are weird about adjusting to a Serbian, Georgian, Antiochian (though they're full of converts, aren't they?), etc. EO parish, too, but they may or may not be less weird than the Coptic situation. I just try to think of it like how it must've been back in the days before the Schism, when the monasteries in the Egyptian desert were among the most cosmopolitan places in the entire Roman world, with monasteries established by Romans/Westerners, and saints flowing from them (e.g., Abba Arsanios, who the board's auto-censor hates so much), and also Greeks, Persians, Arabs, Syrians, etc., all living in the models provided by St. Anthony, St. Pachomius, and the other monastic fathers. Egyptians were probably still weird then, too. We know from his Vita that St. Anthony spoke no Greek, and of course by the time you get to a figure like St. Shenouda (still ~100 years before the schism), that's darn near a point of pride. Yet I think it worked because it was never really about that: no doubt just like in the Holy Land, there must've been translators, different groups who developed together alongside the natives, etc. Everybody lived Orthodoxy first, all this other stuff second.

I dunno. I figure if I really cared so much about being around people like me (culture-wise) I would've just stayed Roman Catholic, since that was the case there. That's ultimately not important. I know it's super corny to put it this way, but I care a lot more about where everyone (including me) will end up than where we are from. Our life and our death are with our brothers.

Our parish is a real melting pot for sure. Many Russians, a handful of Serbs, a few Ukrainians, and the rest are white or Mexican converts from Catholicism or Protestantism. Honestly, it's nowhere near as foreign as the whole Coptic scene. It wasn't a culture shock at all for me. The whole liturgy is in English with the exception of the Dostoyno Yest and sometimes (rarely) the Our Father is in Slavonic. Occasionally the final blessings are in Slavonic. Overall, English. You'll hear some folks speaking Russian at coffee hour, but the vast majority is English. The music is not as foreign-sounding as the Copts at all. The Coptic Church is like stepping into the desert 2000 years ago in Egypt. I don't think I could handle such a foreign world. Way too much for this white boy! Although I will say I have been to Catholic masses in the not-so-nice parts of towns where they were Mexico City Part II, and I felt like I had been deported!

dzheremi said:

I went to their website, since the live stream is just the church sitting there, existing (no services right now), and I must say, they did a really good job on the remodel of that church! I love the traditional cruciform (or when it's not that, arc form; whatever that would be called) architecture of Coptic churches.

And yes, the triangle. and the chanting, and the Coptic language all take some getting used to. I think there's probably less of an obvious connection between these things and the Western approach to music that you find in other churches, so it definitely feels more foreign and disorienting (or headache-inducing). Copts like to say that their style of chant dates back to the Pharaohs, though of course that's not really proveable one way or another (since it was always passed down orally, as it still primarily is), though I have read some academic papers that have tried to connect certain features of it to descriptions of ancient Egyptian chant, like the elongation of vowels as in that chant, which they tied to the pre-Egyptian belief in some kind of magical property in chanting particular vowels. Obviously that's not a belief that anyone in the Church actually has, but I guess they were still fine with continuing it as an art form, since by that point they would have been chanting all of their prayers that way anyway, for potentially thousands of years (if you buy the thesis that it dates back to the Ancient Egyptians and their religion and temple practices, that is).

I dunno. I won't deny that it is a "weird" environment to be in, as a white person. There are probably things that are weird about adjusting to a Serbian, Georgian, Antiochian (though they're full of converts, aren't they?), etc. EO parish, too, but they may or may not be less weird than the Coptic situation. I just try to think of it like how it must've been back in the days before the Schism, when the monasteries in the Egyptian desert were among the most cosmopolitan places in the entire Roman world, with monasteries established by Romans/Westerners, and saints flowing from them (e.g., Abba Arsanios, who the board's auto-censor hates so much), and also Greeks, Persians, Arabs, Syrians, etc., all living in the models provided by St. Anthony, St. Pachomius, and the other monastic fathers. Egyptians were probably still weird then, too. We know from his Vita that St. Anthony spoke no Greek, and of course by the time you get to a figure like St. Shenouda (still ~100 years before the schism), that's darn near a point of pride. Yet I think it worked because it was never really about that: no doubt just like in the Holy Land, there must've been translators, different groups who developed together alongside the natives, etc. Everybody lived Orthodoxy first, all this other stuff second.

I dunno. I figure if I really cared so much about being around people like me (culture-wise) I would've just stayed Roman Catholic, since that was the case there. That's ultimately not important. I know it's super corny to put it this way, but I care a lot more about where everyone (including me) will end up than where we are from. Our life and our death are with our brothers.

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knowing some non-Chalcedonians from seminary, nothing would make me happier than to be able to commune with them. but reunion has to be done properly. we tried to unite back in the day by minimizing to what we already agreed on, and it went south.

I know it's my broken record stance, but I think it's worth repeating. a false union simply for its own sake would be a disaster.

I don't know, man. With all that triangle-twingling, the strange icons, and the scary chanting, I'm going to think over this reunion stuff....

ArmyMatt said:

knowing some non-Chalcedonians from seminary, nothing would make me happier than to be able to commune with them. but reunion has to be done properly. we tried to unite back in the day by minimizing to what we already agreed on, and it went south.

I know it's my broken record stance, but I think it's worth repeating. a false union simply for its own sake would be a disaster.

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gurneyhalleck1 said:

Our parish is a real melting pot for sure. Many Russians, a handful of Serbs, a few Ukrainians, and the rest are white or Mexican converts from Catholicism or Protestantism. Honestly, it's nowhere near as foreign as the whole Coptic scene. It wasn't a culture shock at all for me. The whole liturgy is in English with the exception of the Dostoyno Yest and sometimes (rarely) the Our Father is in Slavonic. Occasionally the final blessings are in Slavonic. Overall, English. You'll hear some folks speaking Russian at coffee hour, but the vast majority is English. The music is not as foreign-sounding as the Copts at all. The Coptic Church is like stepping into the desert 2000 years ago in Egypt. I don't think I could handle such a foreign world. Way too much for this white boy! Although I will say I have been to Catholic masses in the not-so-nice parts of towns where they were Mexico City Part II, and I felt like I had been deported!

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Hahahaha! Hey, watch it! My sainted grandmother was from Mexico City. And I much preferred Catholicism in Mexico to how it is in the United States. That's definitely for another thread, though.

gurneyhalleck1 said:

I don't know, man. With all that triangle-twingling, the strange icons, and the scary chanting, I'm going to think over this reunion stuff....

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I know you're kidding, but I think this brings up an important point. practice and theological articulation are good when distinct because they enrich the Church's expression. but, we must officially agree on theology with no differences.

are we at a point where we can say we agree? not yet.

You mean you don't like people clapping hands to "Go tell it on the Mountain" and "Ube Caritas" while priests in plain, drab robes skip the incense and give cheesy homilies all during which altar girls walk around in white, odd robes and you pray for a super liberal pope who has zero grip on Catholic morality? LOL

Or you cringe as the Mass begins to "Center of my Life" or "Here I Am, Lord"

dzheremi said:

Hahahaha! Hey, watch it! My sainted grandmother was from Mexico City. And I much preferred Catholicism in Mexico to how it is in the United States. That's definitely for another thread, though.

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Of course I'm kidding!! I wish to goodness that Orthodoxy and the Copts were united again! I'd love it!

My understanding, and I know I'm probably wrong because I'm no Father Matt here, but it seems that it just boils down to the Coptic Church back at Chalcedon was seeking to avoid NESTORIANISM. The errors of Nestorius were something they saw as so serious, that they didn't like the way things were worded. My understanding was that the Copts didn't want some kind of undercover Nestorian toxic residue to enter the Church with the Chalcedonian formula since it said Christ was one person with two distinct natures. To them it sounded Nestorian. That was always my understanding of it all. I might be wrong. But if so, then their motivation was good, but the final decision poor. Because Christ does have two distinct natures. I think the Coptics see the natures as blended into one?

This is above my spiritual pay grade.

ArmyMatt said:

I know you're kidding, but I think this brings up an important point. practice and theological articulation are good when distinct because they enrich the Church's expression. but, we must officially agree on theology with no differences.

are we at a point where we can say we agree? not yet.

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But "Gather Us In" and "Lord of the Dance" rank high in my book as the most cringe-worthy moments of stomach pain-inducing nausea in my life as a Catholic back in the day!

dzheremi said:

Hahahaha! Hey, watch it! My sainted grandmother was from Mexico City. And I much preferred Catholicism in Mexico to how it is in the United States. That's definitely for another thread, though.

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