Pope Shenouda III Dies

The 117th Pope of Alexandria and the Patriarch of All Africa on the Holy Apostolic See of Saint Mark the Evangelist of The Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. Memory Eternal.

Egypt’s Coptic Christian Pope Shenouda III has died at the age of 88, state television has announced.

The leader of the Middle East’s largest Christian minority was reported to suffer from cancer that had spread to several organs.

Coptic Christians make up 10% of Egypt’s population of 80 million.

After attacks on Coptic Christians in recent years, Pope Shenouda urged officials to do more to address the community’s concerns.

Pope Shenouda led the church, one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, for four decades.

His political adviser Hany Aziz told Reuters news agency that Shenouda “died from complications in health and from old age”.

He had returned recently to Egypt after seeking treatment abroad.

Pope Shenouda was born Nazeer Gayed into a devout Christian family on 3 August 1923 in Asyut, Upper Egypt, and became a monk in 1954, taking the name Shenouda.

After Pope Cyril died in 1971, Shenouda was enthroned as Pope of Alexandria.

He fell out with President Anwar Sadat, who in 1981 sent him into internal exile. He was allowed back to Cairo by President Hosni Mubarak four years later.

The BBC’s Jon Leyne in Cairo says Pope Shenouda sought to protect his Christian community amid a Muslim population by striking a conservative tone and lending tacit to President Mubarak’s rule.

Whoever succeeds him now faces the task of reassuring the Coptic community as the Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood look on the verge of sharing power in Egypt for the first time, our correspondent says.

Many younger Copts will now be looking for a leader who can help redefine their community’s role in a rapidly changing post-Mubarak Egypt, our correspondent adds.

The BBC also has his obituary here.

 

Belief in the Resurrection in Ancient Context

Dr Christopher Rollston:

BELIEF IN THE RESURRECTION IN ANCIENT CONTEXT: LATE SECOND TEMPLE JUDAISM, EARLY POST-BIBLICAL JUDAISM, AND EARLY CHRISTIANITY

There is often a great deal of misunderstanding about this subject generally.  That is, people who do not work in ancient history or ancient religion often assume that a belief in a resurrection was some sort of distinctively Christian belief.  That, however, is a serious misconception.  The fact of the matter is that within various segments of Late Second Temple Judaism, as well as within Early Post-Biblical Judaism, the notion of a resurrection was warmly embraced by many.  The locus classicus in the Hebrew Bible is arguably the following text from the mid-2nd century BCE: “Many of those sleeping in the dust of the earth shall awaken, some to everlasting life and some to everlasting peril” (Dan 12:2; notice here that the correlative of “damnation” or “hell” is also present in some fashion, of course).  Within the Old Testament Apocrypha, the notion of a resurrection is embraced at times as well, with the narrative about the martyrdom of “the mother and her seven sons” being a fine exemplar of this.  Thus, according to the narrative, one of the sons said during the torture that preceded his death: “the King of the universe will raise us up to an everlasting renewal of life, because we have died for his laws” (2 Macc 7:9).  Similarly, the mother herself says within the narrative, as an exhortation to her martyred sons: “the Creator of the world…will in his mercy give life and breath back to you again” (2 Macc 7:23).  2 Maccabees arguably hails from the first half of the 1st century BCE.   Regarding the dead, the Wisdom of Solomon also affirms that the dead “seemed to have died,” but “they are at peace,” and “their hope is full of immortality,” and they will ultimately “shine forth” and “will govern nations and ruler over peoples” (Wisdom 3:2-8 passim, with the Greek future tense being used here).  The Wisdom of Solomon arguably hails from the second half of the 1st century BCE.  Significantly, all of these texts antedate the rise of Christianity and they all affirm a belief in a resurrection.  In short, many Jewish people believed in a resurrection long before Christianity came along.  To be sure, a belief in a resurrection was not universally accepted by all Jewish people in the Second Temple period.  Some Jewish people did not believe in a resurrection.  For example, the traditionalist Ben Sira rejected the notion of eternal bliss for the righteous and eternal punishment for the wicked.  Thus, he wrote: “Who in the netherworld can glorify the Most High, in place of the living who offer their praise?  No more can the dead give praise than those who have never lived; they glorify the Lord who are alive and well” (Sir 17:27-28).  In sum, although not all Jewish people of the Late Second Temple period accepted the notion of a resurrection, there are texts from this period that demonstrate that a fair number did…

Furthermore, the Jewish historian Josephus (lived ca. 37-100 CE) also discusses the subject of the perishability and imperishability of the soul, with regard to some of the major strands of Judaism during the first century of the Common Era…

Read on here.

And from the conclusion:

Thus, in the final analysis, the cumulative evidence is decisive: There is nothing distinctively “Christian” about a belief in a resurrection.  Rather, some segments of Late Second Temple and Early Post-Biblical Judaism believed in a resurrection and some segments did not.  Christianity, as an heir to apocalyptic branches of Judaism, was quite consistent in always affirming a belief in a resurrection, but the fact remains that belief in a resurrection is well attested prior to the rise of Christianity, and this belief also persists in certain segments of Judaism after the rise of Christianity.

Christopher Rollston

 

St Patrick’s Day

Today is St Patrick’s Day, after the 5th century Christian bishop and missionary who is credited with bringing Christianity to Ireland.

Here is an ancient prayer for the day:

O God, by whose providence the blessed Patrick was chosen to be the apostle of the Irish; that thus the people of Hibernia, who had gone astray in darkness and in the errors of the Gentiles, might be made children of the Most High by the laver of regeneration: Grant, we beseech thee, that by his intercession, we may hasten without delay to the paths of justice. Through Christ our Lord - Amen.

- From the Breviary of Armagh.

Well, you know what they say… Everyone is Irish on St Patrick’s Day.

 

 

Vatican Statement on SSPX Ultimatum

A Communique the Society of St Pius X for those following these matters:

Given below is the text of a communique relating to the Society of St. Pius X, released this morning by the Holy See Press Office.

“During the meeting of 14 September 2011 between Cardinal William Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and president of the Pontifical Commission ‘Ecclesia Dei,’ and Bishop Bernard Fellay, superior general of the Society of St. Pius X, the latter was presented with a Doctrinal Preamble, accompanied by a Preliminary Note, as a fundamental basis for achieving full reconciliation with the Apostolic See. This defined certain doctrinal principles and criteria for the interpretation Catholic doctrine, which are necessary to ensure faithfulness to the Church Magisterium and ‘sentire cum Ecclesia.’

“The response of the Society of St. Pius X to the aforesaid Doctrinal Preamble, which arrived in January 2012, was examined by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith before being submitted to the Holy Father for his judgement. Pursuant to the decision made by Pope Benedict XVI, Bishop Fellay was, in a letter delivered today, informed of the evaluation of his response. The letter states that the position he expressed is not sufficient to overcome the doctrinal problems which lie at the foundation of the rift between the Holy See and the Society of St. Pius X.

“At the end of today’s meeting, moved by concern to avoid an ecclesial rupture of painful and incalculable consequences, the superior general of the Society of St. Pius X was invited to clarify his position in order to be able to heal the existing rift, as is the desire of Pope Benedict XVI.”