Regarding Egyptian Coptic martyrs
Why I have hope for them
Not our usual fare
The other day the pope did something that the world is applauding him for (a bad sign) but that has serious Catholics seriously concerned - simply put, why is a Catholic pope apparently canonising non-Catholics, schismatics and/or heretics? Has this ever been done before, and what does it mean with regards to the Church’s claims of papal infallibility and the prohibition against schism?
What follows is a post consolidating those questions and concerns and offering a possible answer by a learned friend, a response that I found very helpful and which he has given me permission to publish.
This isn’t the sort of thing I want to make regular feature of this site, but I thought the issue important, and vexed, enough to warrant a fuller treatment, and this seemed the easiest way to do that. But it’s a bit of insider Catholic baseball, so I’ll understand if you find it skip-able. I’ll still be producing the regular weekend Post, about the life of St. Charles de Foucauld, the last Catholic hermit of the north African desert.
More little gifts of controversy from the pope of ambiguity
The Vatican News website carried the story on Thursday, May 11th, that Pope Francis had announced “that 21 Coptic Orthodox martyrs will be inserted into the Roman Martyrology of the Catholic Church as a sign of the spiritual communion of the two Christian Churches”. These were the 21 young men who were murdered by Islamic fanatics on a beach in Libya in 2015. This horrific incident, that was filmed by the perpetrators, highlighted for the whole world the plight of Coptic (native Egyptian) Christians suffering centuries persecution by their Islamic neighbours.
Vatican News says:
The Patriarch of the See of St. Mark has spent the last three days in Rome to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Joint Christological Declaration, a milestone in relations between the Coptic Orthodox and Catholic Churches.
In his address, Pope Francis said 21 Coptic Orthodox martyrs would be inserted into the Roman Martyrology “as a sign of the spiritual communion that unites our two Churches.”
During the visit, new precedent was set with the Coptic Orthodox Pope, Tawadros II, joining Pope Francis on the dais during the Wednesday General Audience.
During his speech he referred to the “Martyrs of the Coptic Church, who are ours…”
These gestures raise a great many questions, none of which are being forthrightly addressed by anyone official in Rome. So, I guess we’re left to wonder, because Pope Francis Bergoglio is not exactly renowned for his eagerness to clarify his statements in light of traditional theological lexicon: “Does that mean the 1500 year old schism between the Coptic Orthodox and Roman Catholic Church has ended? And if not, how can these non-Catholics be included in the canon of Catholic saints?”
Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t Pope Francis who offered clarity on the question, but Pope Tawadros. He gave a speech to journalist that included “four steps to follow along the path toward reconciliation and Christian unity.”
Pope Tawadros said the first step is that of fraternity in Christ, expressed through joint activities. The second step, he added, includes mutual understanding through the study of traditions, sacraments and “everything that has to do with the Churches.”
The third step, he said, involves liturgical and informal dialogue, including dialogue among young people and members of the Churches’ respective clergy. The fourth step is prayer, “because prayer can work miracles.”
“Once we have completed these four steps,” said the Coptic Pope, “we arrive at the heart of Christ, and this takes a long time. But we believe that the Holy Spirit is with us on this journey.”
So, we’re not there yet, at least for their part.
This button will take you to my studio blog, Hilary White; Sacred Art, where you can see a gallery showing my progress learning how to paint in the traditional Byzantine and Italian Gothic styles. It includes a link to my PayPal where you can make a donation or set up a monthly support to become a patron. Many thanks to those who have already contributed. At the moment, patronages, one-off donations and occasional sales of paintings are my sole source of income. If you’ve enjoyed this site, I hope you’ll consider donating so I can keep doing it.
Martyrs for which faith? - the Coptic Orthodox Church
The word “martyr” (μάρτυς) means “witness” and in the past it was applied less strictly to mean any person who gave witness to Christ with his life, including confessing Him by word or by blood. In current Catholic usage, “martyr,” is someone who confesses the fulness of the Catholic Faith, meaning it is impossible for a heretic or a schismatic (often the same person) to fulfil this meaning.
But unless something has been definitively changed in the last week, Coptic Orthodox Christians aren’t Roman Catholics, meaning, they aren’t in union with the pope in Rome. From their point of view, they don't need to be.
The Christian Church in Egypt is one of the world’s most ancient, having been the episcopal see of St. Mark, the Evangelist, founded in Alexandria about AD 421. Of the most ancient local churches still remaining in the world, only Rome itself is older, with St. Peter being recorded in the New Testament as the formal head of the Church there in AD 39.
But in the following centuries a host of controversies arose throughout the Christian world, most importantly about the nature of Christ and the Holy Trinity and the constitution of the Church,2 that resulted finally in a series of schisms, fracturing the original unity of the Christian faith. These small schisms culminated in the Great Schism of 1054, and to this day we have what we term the "Eastern Orthodox" or Byzantine or simply the Orthodox"3 Churches, to distinguish them from the Latin rite, Roman Catholic Church.
The Egyptian Coptic Orthodox Church, also called the Coptic Patriarchate of Alexandria4, is among the earliest of these to start getting entangled in schism through heretical movements, namely Arianism and Monophysitism. After more controversy and politics than I care to think about, the Egyptian Coptic Church of Alexandria settled on a doctrine called Miaphysitism - the idea that "in the one person of Jesus Christ, Divinity and Humanity are united in one nature ('physis'), the two being united without separation, without confusion, and without alteration."
As the interesting and useful site, "Orthodoxwiki" tells us, "Miaphysitism has often been considered by Chalcedonian Christians5 to be a form of monophysitism, but the Oriental Orthodox Churches themselves reject this characterization, a position which the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches have begun to take more seriously.”
So, technically they remain both schismatic - refusing submission to the Roman Pontiff - and heretical, though this last is still being discussed.
What is the Roman Martyrology?
Very simply, it is a list, compiled from many ancient sources, of people who suffered martyrdom for their Catholic Faith, whether by word or by their blood. It’s the most official list of who is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church, and is the definitive standard for inclusion of saints in the Catholic Church’s liturgy. In traditional Benedictine monasteries, the martyrs and saints of the day, along with a brief description of their life and martyrdom, is read every day. It is constantly updated, but is one of the oldest and most important historic documents of Christianity in the keeping of the Church.
Because the Martyrology predates the schisms, it contains a great many saints and martyrs that the undivided universal Church shares. The Roman Martyrology, first published as a single volume in the 16th century, is a compilation of such lists that were kept locally throughout Christendom. Some of its most ancient sources are still preserved, and date to the 4th century.
The Catholic Encyclopaedia says it is
“a catalogue of martyrs and saints arranged according to the order of their feasts, i.e., according to the calendar. Since the time when the commemorations of martyrs, to which were added those of bishops, began to be celebrated, each Church had its special martyrology. Little by little these local lists were enriched by names borrowed from neighbouring Churches...”
Inclusion of a new saint or martyr is a regular occurrence, but it is not the same as a formal papal declaration or canonisation. The Catholic Encyclopaedia article notes that the Roman Martyrology “has become an official book, its revision being reserved to the Roman Curia”. NB: it’s the official list, but it’s not exhaustive.
The Vatican News report notes that in 20016 - in the later days of John Paul II - several Orthodox saints were added to the list. “These include the Slavic saints Theodosius and Anthony of Pečerska (11th century), and Stephen of Perm and Sergius of Radonezh (14th century).”
“Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus”: what is “EENS” and why does it still matter?
So, obviously Bishop Farrell hasn’t been keeping up. It’s not the “first time,” but the question remains, is it OK to include “modern-day martyrs of another church in the Catholic liturgical calendar” whether it’s being done by Francis Bergoglio or “Saint” John Paul II? Because, outside the bubble of enthusiastic Bergoglian Modernists, the Church herself maintains very firmly that “outside the Church there is no salvation.” And that “Church” is very specifically defined as those who give submission to the Roman Pontiff, which is definitely not the Coptic Orthodox, as Tawadros himself said above.
This teaching, usually referred to as “extra ecclesiam nulla salus” (or “EENS” on Twitter,) has been a major stumbling block for contemporary advocates of “ecumenism,” whose aims appear to be a kind of external, administrative “unity” without regard to doctrine7.
It goes a long way back, and has been repeated multiple times:
Pope Pelagius II (d. 590):
"Consider the fact that whoever has not been in the peace and unity of the Church cannot have the Lord … Although given over to flames and fires, they burn, or, thrown to wild beasts, they lay down their lives, there will not be (for them) that crown of faith but the punishment of faithlessness… Such a one can be slain, he cannot be crowned… [If] slain outside the Church, he cannot attain the rewards of the Church."
There’s quite a lot more in the same vein repeated again and again through the ages. The failed attempt at reunification with the Egyptian Copts came at Session 11 of the Council of Florence, with the Bull, “Cantate Domino,” that reaffirmed in clear terms that the Coptic Orthodox Church must seek formal union with the pope.
Despite subsequent “nuances” being applied, none of this has ever been abrogated by any pope.
So, the Catholic Church remains insistent that schism is a grave sin, and even if you’re not a “formal” schismatic, you’re still not in the Catholic Church if you belong to a schismatic ecclesial body, like the Coptic Orthodox Church. This might not preclude you being in heaven, if schism is definitely not your fault. But the Church founded by Jesus Christ is the Roman Catholic Church, “outside of which there is no salvation”. The Coptic Church has been in such a state of separation for nearly 1500 years. The men killed so brutally that day were not Catholics, not members of the Catholic Church. So how can a pope of the Catholic Church include them - or any other Orthodox Christian - in the Roman Martyrology?
(There is an answer. It’s coming below.)
Papolatry is bad
We’ve got a big problem in the modern Catholic Church. The idea that a pope can do whatever he wants, or even that he has a God-like power to alter reality at whim, was once upon a time a common accusation made against Catholics by Protestants. We “worship” the pope, they like to say, and grovel at his feet and slavishly obey his every whim as though it comes directly from heaven.
But in the last 100 years or so, for all sorts of complicated historical reasons, what was once an inaccurate slander by Protestant propagandists has slowly been adopted by Catholics themselves. From the 1870 formal definition of Papal Infallibility to the use of the papal power to completely abolish a bi-millennial rite of liturgy in 1965, Catholics have, mostly subconsciously, come to accept that the pope personally owns their religion and can do whatever he wants with it. Fast forward ~60 years and we have a pope who thinks he can rewrite Scripture and the Lord’s Prayer to suit his personal agenda.
I’ve said for some time that Pope Francis Bergoglio will serve in history as the “great clarifier,” a pope who has spent a decade forcing Catholics to clear away the mush-brained semi-conscious and papolatrous enthusiasms of the JPTwo-We-Luv-You period. Pope Francis’ pontificate has been to many of us like waking up, cold and wet and lying in a muddy field with a hangover following a World Youth Day rally, wondering soberly what the hell we’d been thinking. The same uncatholic enthusiasms that gave us the globetrotting rockstar pope, are being revealed to be grave and dangerous distortions of the truth. Those distortions could not have been thrown into such salvifically sharp contrast without the pope of “Who am I to judge?”
Fortunately, a decade in, the rot and disease that had been allowed for nearly 200 years to grow to catastrophic proportions, the festering abscesses of post-Tridentine, hyper-clericalist, bureaucratic Catholic culture, has finally come to a head and burst. We can all see it now, in the forms of clerical sex abuse scandals and a pope elected by cabal of sexual libertine criminals - openly boasting about having captured the papacy with a programme to break down and eradicate foundational Catholic beliefs. We are being forced now to look in the face what we have done to ourselves and think seriously about correctives.
Meanwhile, we have a pope who thinks, along with a great many Catholics, that being pope means you can do whatever you want, defy the metaphysical nature of reality itself, and it automatically becomes the will of God. And this includes our subject today, adding non-Catholics to the Church’s list of Catholic martyrs.
So today we have the least plausible representative of papal authority - a man whose every word and action, it seems, is in service of undermining the foundations of his own authority - saying that these members of a non-Catholic Church should be included in the Catholic martyrology, for veneration by the whole Church. It doesn’t seem that unreasonable to ask questions.
So I did:
Was this a canonisation?
Are canonisations infallible acts of the pope?
Are Coptic Orthodox still schismatics?
If yes to the above, does all that mean that EENS isn't a thing anymore?
If it isn't a thing now, was it a thing before?
If EENS was a thing then and isn't now, does that mean defined Catholic dogma can just be dissolved by a papal hand-wave?
If it can be, why can't we think that all the rest of it is equally ephemeral and, in essence, not real?
If all the rest of Catholic dogma is just a mist that can be papally fanned away, why doesn't that include papal infallibility/supremacy, the things that allegedly give him the power to do the hand-waving in the first place?
How does this act NOT make ALL Catholic doctrine irrelevant?
Of course, I knew the answers to these questions when I asked them. My purpose in the rhetorical device was to try to alert all those brainlessly cheering online to pay some attention to the seriousness of what was going on. Pope Francis’ declaration of inclusion in the Roman Martyrology is not a formal declaration of canonisation. There is no declaration of the Church stating that canonisations are infallible papal acts. Yes, the Coptic Orthodox are still schismatic. Yes, EENS is still a thing, and no, the pope hasn’t done anything formally declaring it nullified, and won’t.
The point is that these are the questions that such acts naturally raise, the confusion that he generates with these careless, politically motivated PR “gestures” is serious and is causing the (very few remaining) faithful Catholics serious confusion and distress. And no one seems to care.
.
Can we say martyrs?
So, what’s the answer? How can we seriously say that those 21 faithful, unimaginably courageous young men, who died with the name of Jesus literally on their lips, are not in heaven? I’m certainly not. I believe they’re enjoying the Beatific Vision right now, and can be legitimately venerated as martyrs in heaven, by Catholics.
As usual, while the Novus Ordo priests are busy either cheering everything Pope Francis does to undermine the Faith, or shaming anyone trying to ask questions, the SSPX are the ones offering the rare reasonable and charitable discussion. This comes from the year it happened, 2015:
It’s well worth a read.
But the thing that really helped isn’t available online. It came in the form of a long email from a learned and serious priest friend, a Benedictine theologian and parish priest. It was so good, I thought it important to do this post to share it. I hope it helps readers as much as it did me.
Dear Hilary,
Here are some thoughts on the issues that you have raised.
However, I am well aware that you're likely to see my response as hairsplitting and popesplaining that evades the larger issue: one might plausibly answer this or that difficulty, but the big picture is that the Pope is deconstructing the Church and the Catholic faith. Not just that, but he is using the full weight of his office to do so, while enforcing compliance under pain of sin, presupposing the most ultramontanist and Jesuit understanding of the obedience that is due to him and to his office.
And that is what I think myself. The cumulative effect is one of dissolution.
With that concession, I'll offer some considerations.
(1) Infallibility of canonizations.
Their infallibility is the common opinion, but this is not universally agreed among approved theologians.
Even if they are infallible, since canonizations are not directly matters of faith and morals (i.e., divine revelation or the natural and divine law), they would be deemed "free of error" in the sense of not irrevocably committing the Church to invoking and honouring someone as among the blessed who, in fact, is damned. Since canonization never meant sinless perfection in this life, one can accept the authorizing of a public cultus as honouring a person's virtues without denying the existence of faults or errors. One could, for example, honour St Bernard of Clairvaux for his holiness while disagreeing with him about the Crusades (though I don't).
One could also think that a particular canonization is ill-timed and likely to do more harm than good. The hasty canonization of John Paul II is an example. I can't say that someone who invokes his intercession is doing something erroneous or sinful. The Church doesn't make people saints in heaven; God does. The Church can authoritatively recognize the sanctification that God has effected in a particular person's life. Papal canonization is about 800 years old as a norm; so it belongs more to the legal-canonical realm than that of doctrine.
That does not mean that the Church should necessarily do so; or that, in the future, a public cultus may be discouraged or downplayed. In that sense, the act of canonization could be mistaken but not precisely contrary to the faith or to moral truth.
(2) Non-Catholic saints?
There are actually quite a few cases of Eastern Orthodox saints since 1054 who are invoked in the Catholic Church and given a public cultus. I think the Ukrainian Catholics in Canada have a church dedicated to St John of Kronstadt, a Russian saint. St Gregory of Narek, who belonged to the Armenian Apostolic Church, has been papally declared a Doctor of the Church. St Gregory Palamas is venerated and invoked among Eastern Catholics, and I think he is depicted in mosaic in the Pope's Redemptoris Mater chapel. I think Chaldean Catholics venerate St Isaac of Nineveh.
Fr Aidan Nichols wrote a book called Rome and the Eastern Churches: A Study in Schism, in which he addresses this issue. Fr Nichols says that one who happens to be born into a schismatic situation is inculpable for that; so a saint who is objectively in a schismatic body is possible. An author of schism, or a heresiarch, cannot be a saint: that would be a contradiction in terms.
The history of the Western Church itself suggests this possibility. St Vincent Ferrer was a saint yet supported the Avignon antipopes. So did others like St Colette. One could be mistaken about the visible Church's head and yet not schismatic in a personal and formal sense.
Earlier Catholic writers like Donald Attwater, long before Vatican II, pointed out that Rome has never excommunicated the Eastern Churches as a whole. Technically, the excommunications of 1054 affected only the Patriarch and the papal legates (whose commission to deliver the excommunication had canonically expired with the pope's death, of which they were unaware).
Also, in the first millennium and even after, particular Eastern Churches might be out of communion with Rome while being in communion with other Eastern Churches that were in communion with Rome. So it was in the early days of Kiev: it was in communion with Rome though Constantinople was not. To the Eastern mind, this is entirely possible (cf Moscow and Constantinople today); and Rome itself has not excluded this as conceivable. Still today, it's not entirely clear which patriarchs of Antioch were in communion with Rome, and which were not.
In fact, in the 14th and 15th centuries, Dominicans often preached and heard confessions with the approval of the Orthodox bishops in some of the Greek islands, jointly participating in Corpus Christi processions and the like. This situation continued in some parts of the Christian east well into the 17th century.
Also, the popes for centuries have considered the Orthodox clergy to have been conceded extraordinary faculties for the sake of their own faithful, rather as Bergoglio has done for the SSPX.
The Vatican II statements of "partial communion" are an attempt (perhaps not very useful) to express this reality. As far as I am aware, those Eastern Churches that have entered into communion with Rome after centuries of separation were not required to disavow as saints those whom they venerated as such before the reunion.
I think there are cases in the early Church even of a few Arians who were martyred as Christians by pagans and were honored as martyrs in a popular cultus by Catholics.
(3) Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus.
Even the most stringent understanding of EENS acknowledges that someone can be validly baptized by a non-Catholic minister; and if the child dies before the age of reason, he goes to heaven. Such a baptized person has never assented to heresy or schism in any conscious way, despite the circumstances of his baptism.
St Augustine thought it possible that the Sybil dwelt in the City of God, despite not being a member of God's visible people. St Thomas thought it possible for an inculpably ignorant person to receive grace by an interior illumination or the ministry of an angel (like Cornelius), that would orient him toward Christian faith interiorly. St Justin Martyr thought those who lived before Christ who followed the Logos as far as they knew it, might encounter grace and salvation. The Jesuit theologican Juan de Lugo, writing during the Council of Trent, thought it possible (though not necessarily likely) that one who is outside the visible Church's communion (objectively a heretic, schismatic, pagan, or Jew) might be saved by God focusing that person interiorly in whatever elements of truth and openness to grace existed in their religion.
The key point is that only truth and grace can save, and therefore only Christ saves. The visible Catholic Church alone is the Ark of Salvation.
Again, you may dismiss that as hair-splitting, but these are serious names, predating Vatican II and the modernist revolution of our times. As early as 1691, the Pope condemned the Jansenists for saying that "heretics, pagans, Jews, and such can receive no influence from the grace of Christ." Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus" (no salvation apart from the visible Church or in deliberate rejection of that Church) is not the same as "extra Ecclesiam nulla gratia conceditur."
Pio Nono wrote an encyclical to the Italian bishops an encyclical entitled Quanto Conficiamur Moerore (August 10, 1863): ". . . they who labor in invincible ignorance of our most holy religion and who . . . live an honest and upright life, can, by the operating power of divine light and grace, attain eternal life, since God . . . will by no means suffer anyone to be punished with eternal torment who has not the guilt of deliberate sin."
Strictly speaking, the Vatican II and post-V2 popes have not said anything binding that goes beyond that (though the tone and tenor of their pronouncements seems unduly optimistic, as does everything since Vatican II). I suppose you could say that even the pre-V2 popes were going soft on this, but that would have to include Pio Nono himself. Doctrine does have to be interpreted and handed down by a living body.
Still, it seems presumptuous for the Pope to elevate to the altars those who were not legally and canonically his subjects. It's like presuming to administer the domestic justice system in someone else's country. One may express honor for those died for the Christian name at the hands of anti-Christian fanatics while not thinking oneself qualified to do something like this. Those non-Catholic Christians who are sanctified are known to God. We don't have to raise them to altars ourselves. That is for the Coptic Church to do.
However, even that does have some precedent, as the Eastern Catholic Churches often "claim" the saints of their visibly separated Eastern counterparts. So I guess Coptic Catholics can claim a share in the saints of the Coptic Church who never deliberately separated themselves from Catholic unity and sought to remain faithful to the theological legacy of St Cyril of Alexandria (whom we all honor).
Having made all those qualifications: yes, the de facto deconstruction of Catholic doctrine, the effective rupture with tradition as regards praxis, is real. Even to quote the Declaration Dominus Iesus or Paul VI's Evangelii Nuntiandi is to run the risk of being cancelled and silenced for resisting the neo-Unitarian tide that is sweeping the Church under the Bergoglian pontificate. Bergoglio allows just enough continuity to keep the whip hand over the faithful who still believe in the duty of preserving visible communion with even an abusive Successor of St Peter.
Fr. A.
~
Thanks for reading down to the bottom. We’ll be getting back to nicer things tomorrow.
If you would like to help me continue to do this work, you can click on my studio blog here: Hilary White; Sacred Art, where you can make a one-off donation or set up monthly support.
Many thanks to all who have contributed to make it possible to keep working - the “struggling artist” thing doesn’t last forever, but it is a struggle for a while. Stay tuned.
Currently based in Cairo.
The Christological Controversies and the historical events and movements they prompted, including many schisms, are fiendishly complex and totally above my paygrade. Those wanting to dive in are encouraged to do so with caution. And I won’t be getting into them here.
Anyone can dive into the commbox and add as many details about terminology as they like. These distinctions are important, but for the purposes of this article, we have to move on.
Not to be confused with the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria and all Africa. See? It gets ridiculously complex right away.
This includes the Roman Catholic Church. The Council of Chalcedon, in the mid-5th century, is considered in the western Church and many of the Eastern Churches as the definitive answer to these early Christological controversies. If Christianity were a Venn diagram, the “Chalcedonian Christian” circle would include Latin Catholics and all who adhere to Rome, as well as most of the Orthodox world. Those who don’t accept the Chalcedonian definitions are called the “Oriental Orthodox” churches, that include the Egyptian Copts.
The fact that it happened, isn’t the same thing as saying it’s a good thing that it happened.
This is by way of approximation of what ecumenists aim at. In reality, when pressed, they themselves seem not to know what they intend or hope to happen, usually drivelling out some anti-rational nonsense about “the journey” being the goal. In fact, no one has any idea because ecumenism is its own goal, usually well recompensed and undertaken by professional bureaucrats. It effects nothing salvific, nothing real.
"These small schisms culminated in the Great Schism of 1054, and to this day we have what we term the "Eastern Orthodox" or Byzantine or simply the Orthodox"3 Churches, to distinguish them from the Latin rite, Roman Catholic Church."
Don't forget the Eastern Catholic Churches ! Depending on how they're counted, there are 22-24 Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church. The One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church has 20+ particular Churches each with its own liturgical, theological and spiritual patrimony (c.f. Orientalium Ecclesiarium).
Otherwise it was a very educational post.