When I read this thread title I literally said to myself "This better not be another excuse to push for the acceptance of homosexuality in the church." Lo and behold... :-\
We were just discussing this after liturgy yesterday, because one of the men asked me when I was going to get baptized. The consensus was as imikhail has written. It is not symbolic.
It is funny how often this question comes up. When I was a Roman Catholic, the question came up about Protestants. Now that I am attending the Coptic Church, the question comes up about non-Copts. I guess I can repeat what I said when that question …
Thank you for your suggestion, Mikhail. I know there are a lot of examples of tasbeha on this website that are in GB, so now I will try to find the corresponding recordings in OB. If you know anywhere to find them other than Fr. Shenouda's parish we…
Software and music generally have some legal structure supporting their originators in one way or another, so pirating them is not really a gray area, legally-speaking. I wonder, however...in my field, a great many (I would say most) materials are s…
This was a big source of anxiety for me before I attended my first Coptic liturgy (last weekend! :)), because I knew that sitting was not the norm in Coptic churches, but also that my foot injury would require me to sit. Luckily the people were all…
(Hopefully) without getting into this myself, I would think that the important part of Remnkemi's post is the bit about not assigning value judgments to different pronunciations. In this, I completely agree with him. (And find no inconsistency betwe…
Zoxsasi, wouldn't your situation be a good example of economia exercised for you on behalf of your priest, and as such not a reason to posit that RC sacraments are "valid"?
I agree...I can be an anti-spam mod for the next...5 minutes or so. (Graduate classes at the university start tomorrow...maybe between classes and other work, somehow? I would hate to commit and then prove myself even less effective than doing nothi…
Yeah, the spam is really out of control here lately. For every one real post, there seem to be at least 5 spam messages, often in their own threads that just sit there cluttering the place up forever. Everybody's busy, of course, but it would greatl…
I've posted it several times before, but I still really love the English midnight praise recorded by the monks of St. Antony Monastery in California. I haven't heard much to compare it with, but it sounds amazing to me.
I sure wish I had a sixth sense for where all you folks find these great Orthodox commentaries on every subject that comes up, so that I didn't have to just spew my ridiculous, non-Orthodox words all over the place, but anyway... :-[
I can't say I…
I didn't think we were even talking about the written form. Isn't the OP about pronunciation? The written form is essentially irrelevant anyway, from a linguistic perspective. The written form is only a representation of a particular dialect (genera…
The general principle holds, imikhail. No doubt you've heard of Lebanese Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, Hijazi Arabic, etc. While the specific divergences of any given variety vary (I don't know if any form of Greek deviates from the standard as much as C…
I know how you meant it, Remnkemi, but I would be careful with the phrasing of that last sentence. Coptic is not simply Greek with some variations in pronunciation, but is its own language of Afroasiatic stock that is enriched by its heavy Greek inf…
If there is a hymn in our Church in Greek, why not go and ask a Greek person how it should be pronounced!!!???
This is an interesting question. I support Remnkemi's contention that there is only standard and non-standard, but even more so I would in…
It is easier than ever to not pray. The seemingly rising tide of all things that are anti-Christ (secularism, "humanism", Islam, consumerism, apathy, etc.) do not help nourish a feeling that prayer is even necessary for everyday life. After all, you…
I've posted about it before, but Fr. Mark Gruber OSB's "Journey Back to Eden" is a very good little book that helped me a lot in my transition from Catholic to Orthodox aspirant. I don't know what you, an already Orthodox person would learn from it,…
While I agree with the objections of the Orthodox people here, Pentecostalism is most definitely spreading throughout the world (though yes, Cephas, I would not agree that it is spreading the Gospel), particularly in Africa. By many estimates, it (n…
[quote author=Remnkemi link=topic=12070.msg143172#msg143172 date=1313380260]The one version of Mary I don't understand is the Syrian/Arabic "marta Mariam"
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It seems that "Mart" is just Syriac for (female) saint (cf. "Mari" Mina). Check it o…
Thank you, Cephas. I was thinking about that verse earlier, but I wasn't sure if maybe there could be something more applicable to a situation like this, where there is meat offered to idols (~ halal meat) but also non-idol meat. Obviously, if you a…
I don't think Henrik Hank has ever been a member of the Coptic church to begin with.
You are asking about what the relationship between the Catholics and the Coptic church is, right Henrik Hank? If so, Geomike is right: You won't really have any r…
This page has the words in Arabic, though the actual recording is in Coptic. I know it's not quite what you're looking for, but I don't know how these things work, if it is adaptable in Arabic to the same melody or not.
This begs the question if they would feel less marginalized simply by being around people of the same culture as they are. I thought that's what the this thread was against (confusing culture with Orthodoxy, thereby turning the church into an Egypti…