Coptic Orthodox Church Declares Three Days of Fasting and Prayers
September 30, 2012 7 Comments
Cairo: The Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria has announced fasting and prayer 3 days in order to select the New Pope of Alexandria & Patriarch the Holy see of St. Mark
Divine Liturgy at all Churches on Sunday 30 September will prepare the faithful for the three day fasting and prayers. It will begin on Monday 1st October, continue on Tuesday 2nd October and will end on Wednesday 3rd of October 2012. The Church has requested one all to pray and fast for the complete success of the Papal elections.
God Bless you all.
I certainly hope it goes better for them than it has with the deadlocked Canterbury Anglicans.
A Church of England panel meeting in secret to choose the next Archbishop of Canterbury has failed to reach agreement on who should be the new leader of the world’s 80 million Anglicans, a newspaper reported on Sunday.
After three days of talks behind closed doors in an undisclosed location, officials narrowed the field to three candidates, but will need to meet again to finish the job, the Sunday Times said, citing an unnamed senior cleric.
The choice of a replacement for Rowan Williams, who steps down in December, is critical for a church in danger of splitting over divisive issues such as gay marriage and senior women clergy, and facing a rising threat from secularism.
The Crown Nominations Commission (CNC), a church panel with 16 members whose chairman is appointed by the prime minister, had been expected to pick a preferred candidate and a second choice on Friday, a church source said last week.
The names were then due to be passed to Prime Minister David Cameron and Queen Elizabeth, supreme governor of the Church of England, before an official announcement within days, possibly on Wednesday.
Strange, all these different election traditions. How the Holy Spirit works. How He exercise His will. And of course, the spiritual discernment of man. ‘Deadlocked’. Come to think of it, I read of no such call to fasting from the Anglicans. Instead, we have things like: Critics attack secrecy of Archbishop selection.
About Fr Stephen Smuts
Now we know what’s going wrong with the selection of a new ABC!
Nice! Btw, the Coptic Orthodox (and I have a few friends there myself) are Miaphysite. And the miaphysite is the doctrine that Christ has “one united” nature out of two: divinity and humanity. ‘The one nature of God the incarnate Logos.’ (Cyril of Alexandria)
It seems to me more or less that our difference between them is a matter of language. We say “Two nature through hypostatic union in One Lord Jesus Christ” They say: “One nature from two in One Lord Jesus Christ” I guess in trying to split hairs, we end up with situations like that and the “Filioque”.
….At least the Copts don’t have secular authorities telling them who their next bishops are.
John Paul II, saw this as a further mystery and did not press it into Chalcedon. But allowed the position here of the Coptic’s, Oriental Orthodox, etc., as orthodox. It is in reality quite viable in itself, as Cyril of Alexandria.
But, the Filioque is another matter, there are many Anglicans that agree with the EO generally on the issue, as I do myself. The Father is the regal and monarchy of the Godhead!
From what I understood about the Filioque, it was at least a valid theological opinion even among the Orthodox that only was put into the Creed when too many people were talking about “Brother Jesus” rather than “Lord Jesus”
I am also of the opinion that there is no harm in removing the Filioque and restoring the Creed to its original form. But if it’s there, then it’s there, until it’s not. (If it were not the case that the Filioque is a hard and fast rule, then it’s a wonder that the Filioque does not exist in some Eastern Catholic churches.)
Here is a nice link on the Filioque, I hope this link will help you, you appear to be confused…
http://orthodoxwiki.org/Filioque
To change the topic a little: I read the post and the comment from Fr. Smuts,‘Deadlocked’: my first impression, until I had managed to get my eyes in focus, was that this erudite committee had selected Bob Marley as the next AofC: forgetting the little problem that Mr. Marley is, like the parrot of Monty Python fame, dead.