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Coptic Church

Galations5:22Galations5:22
edited December 1969 in Coptic Orthodox Church
I was asked a question about the coptic church. Is it an Eastern Rite church? Is it a branch of the Catholic church? I am almost sure that that is not true. we are seperate. the question also asked if we are like the melikites who are eastern but are faithful to the Catholic Pope. i answered no considering we have a different H.H. Pope Shenouda. i was asked to do research on this topic and no better place to find out than here. please help me. What do we follow or are we our own thing? I always understood it as Eastern Orthodox. Are we eastern orthodox? do we follow the Catholics? i always thought no but i did some reasearch and i saw something about coptic catholics. this confused me.

Thank you so much. God Bless.

Comments

  • jydeaconjydeacon
    We are not catholic and we are not eastern orthodox either. We belong to the Oriental Orthodox Churches, which includes our sister churches from Eritrea, Syria, Ethiopia etc etc. Obviously you are right in that our pope is HH Pope Shenouda. We have no ties to the catholic papacy at all nor to any eastern papacies. I wouldn't say we are on our own, we are close to the Eastern Orthodox in dogma and faith but were separated over semantics that occurred at the council of Chalcedon. So technically we are not in communion with the eastern orthodox(yet) but we are definitely not in communion with catholics. The coptic catholics are just that, copts who are catholic. But as orthodox we are coptic orthodox..not catholic
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