dzheremi - Thank you for your perspective.
Hi Rebecca - Thanks for the link!
Vivisection is the live dissection of an animal, cutting it apart while it’s still alive. In this sense, since Christ is living, it is separating a physical part of Christ from His totality and venerating it alone in disunity with the rest of His being.
When we first moved into our house, a neighbor told us “the Greeks” lived in it before us. My daughter found an icon that was left in her bedroom by the previous owners. The responses in this thread explain so much.Hi Rebecca - Thanks for the link!
Yes, we always enjoyed going to our sons basketball games against GOYA at their home court at St. Sophia School. It is really nice to get a little ethnic flavor once in a while here in Utah.
And those kids are really serious about basketball.
Haha. Okay, I don’t mean to argue about it either way, just to provide some perspective as to why Orthodox aren’t comfortable with it and don’t have it as part of their worship. Lots of Copts have RC religious art in their homes, and even sometimes in their churches here in the USA (similar to how you can see a lot of Roman Catholic religious art if you search for Ethiopian Orthodox videos on Youtube or something…it’s there, even if it really shouldn’t be), but that is a result of the unfortunate state of Coptic appreciation of/knowledge of traditional iconography, not actual adoption of Catholic practices. I remember I explained to a friend once that the image they had of the Sacred Heart is a part of RC devotions, and they were really confused; they thought “oh, it’s a picture of Jesus!” They didn’t think about it as part of a devotion or anything. Most Copts know very little or nothing about Roman Catholicism. This is probably why the EO are better about this stuff (traditional iconography, especially), since they have a lot more history of defending and in the process defining icons as an integral part of worship. The Copts and the other OO with them never really had to deal with iconoclasm, and the influx of Protestant and Catholic ideas was really rather late (Portuguese weren’t in Ethiopia until c.16th century, Scottish Protestants only made it to Egypt in the 1860s, and Roman Catholics maybe only a century or so earlier, judging from the date of the creation of the Coptic Catholic Church, in 1871 when Anba Athanasius of Jerusalem was appointed by the Roman Pope to be “Vicar Apostolic” of the Coptic Catholics; Anba Athanasius eventually returned to the COC, just as an interesting historical footnote…).dzheremi - Thank you for your perspective.
I am particularly fond of the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (I have several in my home) because I always thought it represented Jesus’ perfect love for us. I love to look at it during the day.
I will have to read more about it. Of course, I do not *worship *the Sacred Heart.
Like I said before, I am not going to argue about these things. If we argue then we can’t be totally honest with each other about how we think and why we do what we do. I want to keep an open dialogue and learn about Orthodoxy. There are going to be differences - at least I can get a behind-the-scenes look without getting my nose out of joint!
There are some Coptics that are Catholic, right? Maybe there is a little of this and a little of that going on?
I wasn’t aware of the importance of protecting the idea of icons. Thank you for explaining. It is very interesting.
Yes, there are a small number of Copts who are in union with Rome. The Coptic Catholic Church is tiny, however (~164K in the whole world), especially compared their much larger Orthodox mother church (~12 to 18 million around the world, with about 10-14 million in Egypt and about 2-4 million abroad…“in the diaspora”, if you will
). According to this thread, there are only two Coptic Catholic churches in the entire U.S. (I think they’re in Los Angeles and Maryland), though I’ve heard numbers as high as five (maybe including Canada?)…at any rate, they have almost no formal presence outside of Egypt, and very little even in Egypt proper (where over 90% of Christians are Coptic Orthodox).No, I don’t think so. It appears to be more a matter of ignorance than anything.
Yes, iconoclasm was at one time a very big problem in the Byzantine Church, but by contrast the Oriental/Non-Chalcedonian church never really had a problem with it.
I know this is way off topic, but do you happen to know the name of the Coptic Priest or Bishop who has been evangelizing the Muslems? I have seen him on youtube and now I can’t seem to find it.Yes, there are a small number of Copts who are in union with Rome. The Coptic Catholic Church is tiny, however (~164K in the whole world), especially compared their much larger Orthodox mother church (~12 to 18 million around the world, with about 10-14 million in Egypt and about 2-4 million abroad…“in the diaspora”, if you will
I was not aware of iconoclasm, thank you for explaining.
I assume you’re thinking of Fr. Zakaria (Botros). He’s probably the most famous in the West, anyway. He used to have a TV show on al-Hayat TV channel, if I recall correctly, but I don’t think it’s on anymore (his newer videos are from something called “Al-Fady TV”, which I’ve never heard of before; might be an internet-only channel?). He still has his personal website, though.
