[quote author=Timothym link=topic=12378.msg147109#msg147109 date=1320440588] irishpilgrim, all I have to say is that thank God you are not my bishop! And I mean that with as much love as possible.
Hi Timothym,
Thank God for everything. Your prayers and mine are answered favorably. I consider that God has provided us with the Orthodox bishops that He wants to be responsible to teach us His commandments and how to live in obedience to them, especially in our families, who are responsible for propagating our Orthodox Faith and Church.
Thank you for responding and showing your experience with and seeming concern for the rising rate of Coptic divorces. I understand that just a few years ago there were practically no divorces in the Coptic Church. Now you acknowledge that you know of several divorcers, presumably just in your parish and circle of friends. From your tone, you seem to imply that all of these divorces were initiated or sought by the dissatisfied wife. That has been the case in most of the Texas, New Jersey and California Coptic divorces that I am familiar with. I also think this is the typical case in the general population throughout the U.S.. It is more profitable for the divorce industry to encourage women to file for divorce and take their profits and the children from the husbands. Not many women would seek divorce if it risked paying the cost and losing the long term financial and control rewards of young child custody. You also seem to indicate that you prefer a bishop who without questions accepts divorces and their broken homes and separated innocent children with mercy and love for the woman divorcer.
Who is your bishop? How many divorces do you think he has been asked to help prevent in the last twenty years? Has he written and published any principles to help prevent these divorces that he has personally experienced? Are his principles based on the Holy Bible and the writings of our Holy Orthodox Fathers? Are his principles based on secular (freudian) principles? What website or publisher provides access to his divorce counselling publications?
[quote author=Timothym link=topic=12378.msg147109#msg147109 date=1320440588] We don't live in a Barbie and Ken fantasy land you know.
It is interesting that you use feminist, as opposed to patriarchal, scriptural order even for fantasy land couples. Easy to tell who wears the pants, even in your fantasies. Where were you propagandized this deeply? What Coptic parish led you so far from God’s word? I know that feminist opponents of God’s family and gender commandments have many trite, irrelevant insults and excuses. To me, your Barbie and Ken fantasy land is a new insult to God’s scriptural marriage provisions and to the promises and conditions of the Coptic marriage liturgy. The rude, screaming Houston feminists complained that God’s 2000 year old marriage commandments required them to be Muslims, to be old fashioned, to be like Egyptians, to be Sahidi, to be slaves, etc. If God’s requirements, the only provisions that I have ever stated, are not acceptable to you and your divorcer friends, what are the specific marriage provisions you do recognize as valid. Are your marriage provisions printed in some book so that your bishop, priests, family, spouse, and friends can be aware of and expect your marriage behavior principles? Do you have a printed marriage liturgy that is specific and acceptable to you, to your divorcer friends, to your present or future spouse? Does it clearly state the terms upon which you will seek divorce? Did your divorcing friends provide such a fair notice to their spouses before they married? Were your divorcing friends married under the promises and conditions of the Coptic marriage liturgy? What are the specific reasons that they filed for divorce? What provisions of the promises of the Coptic marriage liturgy approved of those reasons for divorce?
[quote author=Timothym link=topic=12378.msg147109#msg147109 date=1320440588] Who really wants to be divorced?
It seems to me that every mentally competent person, including deceptive feminists, who, against God’s specific instructions not to divorce and against their own promise to remain married until death, who seeks and hires a divorce attorney, who approves of the divorce filing and who appears in court and asks for divorce, really wants to be divorced. In my experience, every divorce judge always asks the person seeking a divorce if she wants to be divorced, and will not grant the divorce if both parties state that they do not want the divorce. In my experience, in most current Coptic divorces, the husband (and, of course, the children) do not want to be divorced.
[quote author=Timothym link=topic=12378.msg147109#msg147109 date=1320440588] Do you think that women leave their husbands just because they want to 'wear the pants' in the family??
In my experience of about 15 recent Coptic divorces in Texas, New Jersey and California this has always been the case. In most of the cases that involved violence, the raging, controlling Coptic woman committed the only violence in the case. Some of these feminist trained schemers accused their husband of causing the bruises and abrasions that their own violence inflicted on themselves. Some divorce promoting feminist women’s centers, that Coptic feminist divorcers visit, must have dish, knife and pan throwing classes.
Of course a few Coptic divorces, that I am not personally aware of, may be filed by Coptic husbands for sinful reasons. Usually the legal and financial bias against men in U.S. divorce is so high that common men do not file for divorce unless his wife also wants an agreeable divorce, and they do not have any minor children. I know Coptic men who filed for divorce because their Coptic wife was so destructive of their family and/or family business that they could not reasonably tolerate her dishonesty and destruction any longer. Their FOC or bishop approved two of these divorces.
[quote author=Timothym link=topic=12378.msg147109#msg147109 date=1320440588] Probably some do, but I know for a fact that physical, emotional, and verbal abuse has A LOT to do with it as I personally know a few divorced couples extremely well.
General, unspecific false claims of physical, emotional and verbal abuse are common subjective feminist litanies that usually have no reasonable basis in fact. Divorce is usually a contest for family power. The husband’s God given power should need no abusive defense. The wife’s illegitimate disobedience is the only reasonable cause for these abusive forms of aggressive demand for control.
[quote author=Timothym link=topic=12378.msg147109#msg147109 date=1320440588] Divorce is not a pleasant thing, but the key word here is 'mercy' rather than 'law'. Thank God for grace!
It seems to me that a rebellious, feminist family destroying divorce (which you seem to be defending) is usually a lifelong, continuing, daily repeated, unrepented very serious sin and scandal against the witnessed promises of her marriage liturgy to her husband, against her own children, against her own and her husband’s family and friends, and against her entire church community. Nearly 2000 years of all levels of Christians, in all nations of the world, including Egypt, Ireland, U.S., Canada, Australia, Europe, etc. were taught and believed that Jesus taught these principles of marriage to the Apostles, who taught them and passed them on to all of the various christian churches, and NOBODY, except some self-important disobedient royalty, dared to divorce their Christian marriage spouse. There was practically NO christian divorce, anywhere. The Coptic missionary monks taught the long faithful Irish women their,until recently, traditional belief and practice: NO DIVORCE, NO MATTER WHAT.
Now someone, probably your favored Coptic bishop, has assured you that this previously unthinkably fearful God’s ‘law’ against His HATED DIVORCE, is no sweat, because the key word is now ‘mercy.’ Did your ‘merciful’. bishop provide you and your feminist divorcer friends with any specific references from God’s Holy Bible to support this conclusion which proves the foolishness of the Holy Apostles’ teaching and 2000 years’ of their christian followers’ near perfect obedience? What are the Bible verses that specifically support your gracious conclusion?
I encourage you and your misinformed feminist divorcer friends to demand that your Coptic bishop teach you and your entire parish the eternal truths of all of God’s gender, marriage and family commandments just as they are explained by our Holy Orthodox Fathers. He should also teach you God’s requirements for seeking repentance, forgiveness and making restitution, to all those that the divorce that you caused and/or encouraged injured or offended, for all sins concerning God hated divorce .
If you, and/or your divorce supporting friends, clergy, or bishop, have any further specific interests in this evil issue of Coptic and/or other Orthodox divorce, I hope you will give me and other interested readers an opportunity to consider your specific points of view and to discuss them further with you and with each other.
God bless your repentence. Please pray for me. I am a sinner. But I believe that the gender, family and marriage commandments and principles that I have stated here from God's Holy Bible, in order to disclose to and/or to share them with you and other readers here are righteous, holy and compulsory for peaceful, beneficial Orthodox Christian life for all of us.
I'm not going to respond to you anymore irishpilgrim because your style is just too weird for me to keep up with your twists and turns and run-on sentences. And you should watch what you say about Coptic bishops...if you know Coptic bishops at all, you would know that they do not often grant ecclesiastical divorces just like that. There is a tedious process and in the Orthodox church, the Coptic hierarchy seems to be one of the most ardent to keep the family intact and away from divorce as much as possible. And you and I both are not part of the inquisition where we could go and be the religious police over other people's lives. We'll let God and the consciences of the people do the patrolling. After all God gave us free to will to follow Him or not to follow Him, and Christianity especially does not coerce its members to follow certain religious/moral actions lest the heart of the person being forced is not true to these actions and lest the one enforcing the actions falls into hypocrisy.
[quote author=LoveisDivine link=topic=12378.msg147060#msg147060 date=1320360830] Hi Irish Pilgrim,
This will be the last time which I have any correspondance on this matter; here is the reply from Fr. Lawrence speaking in his own words:
Hi Father,
How are you?
I have a simple query that I was hoping you could help me with; I'm currently discussing with a concerned Orthodox man about some gender and sexuality issues on a Coptic forum tasbeha.org.
My brief question is that he keeps referencing a blog post which you wrote and posted on an OCA news site:
He believes quite strongly that your post was written to correct the Coptic Church for a subversive corruption which is happening to its marital traditions at the highest levels because of the infiltration of feminists.
Since I couldn't see the Coptic church mentioned explicitly in the blog or even the site for that matter, and the accusation sounded quite implausible, I was hoping that you could help by putting some context around the post in your own words.
Also as an ancillary question is the blog related to the ordination of deaconesses; should consecrated females working in these kinds of services play a role in Church life and is there a historical basis in tradition for this?
Thanks in advance and please pray for me,
andrew (a copt in Melbourne, Australia)
And Fr. Lawrence's reply:
Dear Andrew: Thank you for your email. I am glad that you wrote, so that I have the opportunity to correct and clarify. I know very little about the internal workings of the Coptic church, which church I admire as an outsider. My blog post to which you refer was written entirely as a reply to the internal debate about feminism in the OCA and the Eastern Orthodox jurisdictions, especially in North America. It had absolutely nothing to do with the situation within the Coptic Church, about which, as I said, I know less than nothing. SVS Press will be soon publishing a book of mine about the ordination of women in the Eastern Orthodox Church, including the ordination of deaconesses. In this book, I reference the deaconesses in the Coptic and Armenian churches, and suggest that they are essentially a monastic phenomenon, quite different in nature from what is being proposed in the OCA and other Eastern Orthodox churches. I have no objection whatsoever to Coptic deaconesses as currently constituted; I have every objection to the OCA ordaining deaconesses as currently proposed. But this had nothing to do with the blog you cited. God bless and guide you, dear brother. Write any time you wish. Yours in the Lord, Fr. Lawrence
I would strongly urge you to take your queries up with Fr. Lawrence directly as you're not representing his opinions accurately, the repeat claims made each time his blog has been reposted; that it is about the Coptic Church are inaccurate and he admits to being an admirer of the Coptic Church.
Your posts are by your own admission unclear and I am sorry to do this but I must also add in need of greater consideration and accuracy. I recommend that you do continue your search for and concern for truth please use more discrete lines of inquiry and exhibit more care not to misrepresent faithful sons of the Church in this way.
I am sorry if you have been through a painful divorce with a strong minded woman, may God grant you the healing to help you one day love again; and may the Coptic Church forever continue its witness to the truth. Amen.
Please pray for me,
LiD
Hi Pinnochio, sorry I mean LoveisDivine,
I’m going to be off the web for a couple of weeks, so I’ll work on a more complete response to you when I return. In the meantime, I hope you will seriously consider the following correction to your duplicitous, self-serving fabrication that you used to attempt to illogically deceive Fr. Farley and our own Coptic readers of this discussion.
How do you even imagine love without truth? What kind of divinity is deceptive? What a typically feminist, trashy disappointment your “final” post is. Don’t you think you should repent to Fr. Farley and to me for your seeming self-serving feminism serving fabrications? It is your call, your conscience. I hope you will clean-up this mess before you finally sign-off this important discussion. Otherwise, don’t you expect that God will eventually compensate for your slanderous disobedience.
I suggest that a more honest restitution letter to Fr. Farley, and message to all of us intended dupes, would be the following:
Hi Father,
How are you?
I misstated some crucial relevant facts in my earlier inquiry to you. I request your forgiveness for misstating facts to create an answer from you to benefit my argument and feminist philosophy.
My brief question is that irishpilgrim keeps referencing that blog post which you wrote and posted on an OCA news site:
Irishpilgrim believes quite strongly that your article accurately describes the similar subversive corruption of Orthodox marital traditions which is now happening at the highest levels of the Coptic Church through the influences of seeming similarly related demonic feminist/ freudian philosophy and theology.
In his discussion of your article he acknowledged your probable ignorance of the growth of similar heretical demonic feminism in the leadership of the Coptic Church by stating: “Here Fr. Farley reveals the crux and spiritual purpose of his article. North American Orthodoxy is well on its way down the same demonic road to anti-patriarchal apostate feminist perdition. Fr. Farley may not even conceive of the Coptic Church as an element of his concept of North American Orthodoxy, but the entire leadership of the Shenouda Church, although now lagging behind somewhat, are obviously committed fellow feminist travelers on this feminist heterodox misadventure.
Also as an ancillary question is the blog related to the ordination of deaconesses: Should modern fork-tongued feminist word manipulaters, such as I have demonstrated here, be ordained to “play” a role in church life and is there a historical basis in tradition for official installation of raging feminist rebel deaconesses against traditional Orthodox patriarchal order?
Does this factually corrected inquiry change your impression of me or change any of your earlier comments?
Comments
irishpilgrim, all I have to say is that thank God you are not my bishop! And I mean that with as much love as possible.
Hi Timothym,
Thank God for everything. Your prayers and mine are answered favorably. I consider that God has provided us with the Orthodox bishops that He wants to be responsible to teach us His commandments and how to live in obedience to them, especially in our families, who are responsible for propagating our Orthodox Faith and Church.
Thank you for responding and showing your experience with and seeming concern for the rising rate of Coptic divorces. I understand that just a few years ago there were practically no divorces in the Coptic Church. Now you acknowledge that you know of several divorcers, presumably just in your parish and circle of friends. From your tone, you seem to imply that all of these divorces were initiated or sought by the dissatisfied wife. That has been the case in most of the Texas, New Jersey and California Coptic divorces that I am familiar with. I also think this is the typical case in the general population throughout the U.S.. It is more profitable for the divorce industry to encourage women to file for divorce and take their profits and the children from the husbands. Not many women would seek divorce if it risked paying the cost and losing the long term financial and control rewards of young child custody. You also seem to indicate that you prefer a bishop who without questions accepts divorces and their broken homes and separated innocent children with mercy and love for the woman divorcer.
Who is your bishop?
How many divorces do you think he has been asked to help prevent in the last twenty years?
Has he written and published any principles to help prevent these divorces that he has personally experienced?
Are his principles based on the Holy Bible and the writings of our Holy Orthodox Fathers?
Are his principles based on secular (freudian) principles?
What website or publisher provides access to his divorce counselling publications?
[quote author=Timothym link=topic=12378.msg147109#msg147109 date=1320440588]
We don't live in a Barbie and Ken fantasy land you know.
It is interesting that you use feminist, as opposed to patriarchal, scriptural order even for fantasy land couples. Easy to tell who wears the pants, even in your fantasies. Where were you propagandized this deeply? What Coptic parish led you so far from God’s word?
I know that feminist opponents of God’s family and gender commandments have many trite, irrelevant insults and excuses. To me, your Barbie and Ken fantasy land is a new insult to God’s scriptural marriage provisions and to the promises and conditions of the Coptic marriage liturgy. The rude, screaming Houston feminists complained that God’s 2000 year old marriage commandments required them to be Muslims, to be old fashioned, to be like Egyptians, to be Sahidi, to be slaves, etc. If God’s requirements, the only provisions that I have ever stated, are not acceptable to you and your divorcer friends, what are the specific marriage provisions you do recognize as valid. Are your marriage provisions printed in some book so that your bishop, priests, family, spouse, and friends can be aware of and expect your marriage behavior principles? Do you have a printed marriage liturgy that is specific and acceptable to you, to your divorcer friends, to your present or future spouse? Does it clearly state the terms upon which you will seek divorce? Did your divorcing friends provide such a fair notice to their spouses before they married? Were your divorcing friends married under the promises and conditions of the Coptic marriage liturgy? What are the specific reasons that they filed for divorce? What provisions of the promises of the Coptic marriage liturgy approved of those reasons for divorce?
[quote author=Timothym link=topic=12378.msg147109#msg147109 date=1320440588]
Who really wants to be divorced?
It seems to me that every mentally competent person, including deceptive feminists, who, against God’s specific instructions not to divorce and against their own promise to remain married until death, who seeks and hires a divorce attorney, who approves of the divorce filing and who appears in court and asks for divorce, really wants to be divorced. In my experience, every divorce judge always asks the person seeking a divorce if she wants to be divorced, and will not grant the divorce if both parties state that they do not want the divorce. In my experience, in most current Coptic divorces, the husband (and, of course, the children) do not want to be divorced.
[quote author=Timothym link=topic=12378.msg147109#msg147109 date=1320440588]
Do you think that women leave their husbands just because they want to 'wear the pants' in the family??
In my experience of about 15 recent Coptic divorces in Texas, New Jersey and California this has always been the case. In most of the cases that involved violence, the raging, controlling Coptic woman committed the only violence in the case. Some of these feminist trained schemers accused their husband of causing the bruises and abrasions that their own violence inflicted on themselves. Some divorce promoting feminist women’s centers, that Coptic feminist divorcers visit, must have dish, knife and pan throwing classes.
Of course a few Coptic divorces, that I am not personally aware of, may be filed by Coptic husbands for sinful reasons. Usually the legal and financial bias against men in U.S. divorce is so high that common men do not file for divorce unless his wife also wants an agreeable divorce, and they do not have any minor children. I know Coptic men who filed for divorce because their Coptic wife was so destructive of their family and/or family business that they could not reasonably tolerate her dishonesty and destruction any longer. Their FOC or bishop approved two of these divorces.
[quote author=Timothym link=topic=12378.msg147109#msg147109 date=1320440588]
Probably some do, but I know for a fact that physical, emotional, and verbal abuse has A LOT to do with it as I personally know a few divorced couples extremely well.
General, unspecific false claims of physical, emotional and verbal abuse are common subjective feminist litanies that usually have no reasonable basis in fact. Divorce is usually a contest for family power. The husband’s God given power should need no abusive defense. The wife’s illegitimate disobedience is the only reasonable cause for these abusive forms of aggressive demand for control.
[quote author=Timothym link=topic=12378.msg147109#msg147109 date=1320440588]
Divorce is not a pleasant thing, but the key word here is 'mercy' rather than 'law'. Thank God for grace!
It seems to me that a rebellious, feminist family destroying divorce (which you seem to be defending) is usually a lifelong, continuing, daily repeated, unrepented very serious sin and scandal against the witnessed promises of her marriage liturgy to her husband, against her own children, against her own and her husband’s family and friends, and against her entire church community. Nearly 2000 years of all levels of Christians, in all nations of the world, including Egypt, Ireland, U.S., Canada, Australia, Europe, etc. were taught and believed that Jesus taught these principles of marriage to the Apostles, who taught them and passed them on to all of the various christian churches, and NOBODY, except some self-important disobedient royalty, dared to divorce their Christian marriage spouse. There was practically NO christian divorce, anywhere. The Coptic missionary monks taught the long faithful Irish women their,until recently, traditional belief and practice: NO DIVORCE, NO MATTER WHAT.
Now someone, probably your favored Coptic bishop, has assured you that this previously unthinkably fearful God’s ‘law’ against His HATED DIVORCE, is no sweat, because the key word is now ‘mercy.’ Did your ‘merciful’. bishop provide you and your feminist divorcer friends with any specific references from God’s Holy Bible to support this conclusion which proves the foolishness of the Holy Apostles’ teaching and 2000 years’ of their christian followers’ near perfect obedience? What are the Bible verses that specifically support your gracious conclusion?
I encourage you and your misinformed feminist divorcer friends to demand that your Coptic bishop teach you and your entire parish the eternal truths of all of God’s gender, marriage and family commandments just as they are explained by our Holy Orthodox Fathers. He should also teach you God’s requirements for seeking repentance, forgiveness and making restitution, to all those that the divorce that you caused and/or encouraged injured or offended, for all sins concerning God hated divorce .
If you, and/or your divorce supporting friends, clergy, or bishop, have any further specific interests in this evil issue of Coptic and/or other Orthodox divorce, I hope you will give me and other interested readers an opportunity to consider your specific points of view and to discuss them further with you and with each other.
God bless your repentence. Please pray for me. I am a sinner. But I believe that the gender, family and marriage commandments and principles that I have stated here from God's Holy Bible, in order to disclose to and/or to share them with you and other readers here are righteous, holy and compulsory for peaceful, beneficial Orthodox Christian life for all of us.
Hi Irish Pilgrim,
This will be the last time which I have any correspondance on this matter; here is the reply from Fr. Lawrence speaking in his own words: And Fr. Lawrence's reply: I would strongly urge you to take your queries up with Fr. Lawrence directly as you're not representing his opinions accurately, the repeat claims made each time his blog has been reposted; that it is about the Coptic Church are inaccurate and he admits to being an admirer of the Coptic Church.
Your posts are by your own admission unclear and I am sorry to do this but I must also add in need of greater consideration and accuracy. I recommend that you do continue your search for and concern for truth please use more discrete lines of inquiry and exhibit more care not to misrepresent faithful sons of the Church in this way.
I am sorry if you have been through a painful divorce with a strong minded woman, may God grant you the healing to help you one day love again; and may the Coptic Church forever continue its witness to the truth. Amen.
Please pray for me,
LiD
Hi Pinnochio, sorry I mean LoveisDivine,
I’m going to be off the web for a couple of weeks, so I’ll work on a more complete response to you when I return. In the meantime, I hope you will seriously consider the following correction to your duplicitous, self-serving fabrication that you used to attempt to illogically deceive Fr. Farley and our own Coptic readers of this discussion.
How do you even imagine love without truth? What kind of divinity is deceptive? What a typically feminist, trashy disappointment your “final” post is. Don’t you think you should repent to Fr. Farley and to me for your seeming self-serving feminism serving fabrications? It is your call, your conscience. I hope you will clean-up this mess before you finally sign-off this important discussion. Otherwise, don’t you expect that God will eventually compensate for your slanderous disobedience.
I suggest that a more honest restitution letter to Fr. Farley, and message to all of us intended dupes, would be the following:
Hi Father,
How are you?
I misstated some crucial relevant facts in my earlier inquiry to you. I request your forgiveness for misstating facts to create an answer from you to benefit my argument and feminist philosophy.
My brief question is that irishpilgrim keeps referencing that blog post which you wrote and posted on an OCA news site:
http://www.ocanews.org/news/Farley7.26.11.html
Irishpilgrim believes quite strongly that your article accurately describes the similar subversive corruption of Orthodox marital traditions which is now happening at the highest levels of the Coptic Church through the influences of seeming similarly related demonic feminist/ freudian philosophy and theology.
In his discussion of your article he acknowledged your probable ignorance of the growth of similar heretical demonic feminism in the leadership of the Coptic Church by stating: “Here Fr. Farley reveals the crux and spiritual purpose of his article. North American Orthodoxy is well on its way down the same demonic road to anti-patriarchal apostate feminist perdition. Fr. Farley may not even conceive of the Coptic Church as an element of his concept of North American Orthodoxy, but the entire leadership of the Shenouda Church, although now lagging behind somewhat, are obviously committed fellow feminist travelers on this feminist heterodox misadventure.
Also as an ancillary question is the blog related to the ordination of deaconesses: Should modern fork-tongued feminist word manipulaters, such as I have demonstrated here, be ordained to “play” a role in church life and is there a historical basis in tradition for official installation of raging feminist rebel deaconesses against traditional Orthodox patriarchal order?
Does this factually corrected inquiry change your impression of me or change any of your
earlier comments?
Thanks in advance and please pray for me,
andrew (a copt in Melbourne, Australia)
I have nothing to hide and I am not manipulating anything.
Another broken servant of the Lord,
LiD