14 May 2022

Pope Francis attacks the Copts

 Proclaiming the Scriptures in a non-vernacular language is, according to our Holy Father, "like laughing at the Word of God".

I find this a remarkable insult to hurl at the 21 Coptic Martyrs of Egypt. It is a good thing that, some years ago now, after reading S John Henry Newman on the Suspense of the function of the Ecclesia docens, I concluded that we must now be in precisely just such a period of Suspense. I cannot see how else one can fit PF into any sort of Catholic ecclesiology.

Readers will remember that, on 15 February 2015, "Islamic militants" beheaded, on the shore of Libya, twenty Coptic Christians and an Egyptian who identified with them. I expect the video is still somewhere on the Internet. A week later, they were canonised by the Pope of Alexandria. The liturgical language of the Copts is, of course, Coptic, which is no longer a spoken vernacular.

The strange thing is, at the time, PF wrote with sympathetic feeling to the Patriarch. Clearly, he has changed his mind now, having convinced himself that these twenty one peasant construction workers, who confessed Christ with their last breaths, were really "laughing at the Word of God."

Perhaps those more expert than me in the arcane mysteries of Bergoglian hyperultrapapalism can explain: does that cult require that, if one day PF says X, and the next day he says Anti-X, the faithful believer is required to give equal and equally absolute assent to each conflicting proposition as it emerges from the Sacred Mouth?

 

12 comments:

Unknown said...

My credibility has been assured by heaven and earth with signs thanks to the Lord Jesus Christ the Son before the eyes of everyone, your opinion is wrong in the darkness .

Unknown said...

My credibility has been assured by heaven and earth with signs thanks to the Lord Jesus Christ the Son before the eyes of everyone, your opinion is wrong in the darkness .

Richard said...

Commanding we assent to one truth one day, and to the opposite truth the next, who does that remind you of? It makes me think of the marital status of Anne Boleyn and the bastardy or otherwise of her daughter.

Archimandrite Gregory said...

Nothing wrong with bergolio that a roll of duck tape wrapped around his mouth wouldn't cure.

Dr. Adam DeVille said...

This post is unworthy of you and your droll erudition, which I greatly enjoy. I have had close Cairo-born Coptic friends for a quarter-century now and all the Copts I know and parishes I have attended show them to be pioneers in using the vernacular as their parishes opened up across North America--I've attended Coptic liturgy in French in Quebec, English in Ontario and Staten Island; and in addition to the foregoing the Copts use Arabic, the "vernacular" of almost all Egyptians today, as the dominant language of all the liturgies I've attended. Their use of Coptic tends to be minimal.

Robster said...

'Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.'
Don't you know?!

From Fr. Khouri said...

Bravo,Father.

danaalexandra said...

Right on, Father Hardwicke. Who can remember that image and not admire those simple men who had found "the one thing necessary." The intelligence of these men was adequate to their task, to proclaim the one true God; but the intelligence of our Pope is struggling with it.

Brad Karpenko said...

Kyrie eleison !

Michael Leahy said...

Dr DeVille, given your inside knowledge of Egyptian Christianity, might you kindly tell us whether or not the use of Coptic in the liturgy has been banned?

From Fr. Khouri said...

I'm not clear on how what the pope said really relates to the Martyrs of Egypt (or to any sensible Copt or Catholic).

As Dr Deville stated,in the diaspora the vernacular dominates, with some Coptic, Greek and Arabic thrown in. Some of the monasteries in the deserts of Egypt and in California use Coptic more in Services. These are monastic communities who speak and understand Coptic. But generally in Parishes the the vernacular is used. No, Coptic is not forbidden by the Church.

The Coptic mission that meets in my Latin parish uses almost exclusively English.

Above all, in this situation who cares what the bishop of Rome says, he has no say in the life and worship of the Coptic Orthodox Church. God be praised. His utterances are more and more bizarre.

coradcorloquitur said...

So, it's now the Copts. Is there any group---outside fellow Modernists and sundry Western-Civilization-destroying nihilists---that "Jorge Furioso" does not attack and malign? Has anyone ever witnessed such psychopathy so publicly displayed? That Argentinian lady psychologist (of a certain affiliation) must have done a very poor job in her therapeutic treatment of young Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio. If still alive, I call for a revocation of her license to practice! If not alive, may she rest in peace, but I still think her license should, for symbolic value, be revoked posthumously (is there such a practice?).