Saint Macarius Monastery in Egypt’s Beheira governorate, November 2010. / Berthold Werner via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Alexandria, Egypt, May 10, 2021 / 18:01 pm (CNA).
Wael Saad, a former monk of the Coptic Orthodox Church, was executed on Sunday for the 2018 murder of Bishop Epiphanius, the abbot of St. Macarius Monastery.
Saad’s brother told Reuters the family was told to receive his body from a morgue in Damanhour, 40 miles southeast of Alexandria, May 9.
Raymond Rasmi Mansour, another monk who assisted in the crime, has been sentenced to life imprisonment. Mansour had also been sentenced to death, but his sentence was reduced after winning an appeal.
Bishop Epiphanius’ body was found July 29, 2018, with injuries to his head and back that suggest that he had been hit by a sharp object.
Saad, whose monastic name was Isaiah al-Makary, was charged with the bishop’s murder Aug. 11, 2018, and confessed to the murder the following day. Saad said that Mansour, whose monastic name was Faltaous al-Makary, assisted in the crime. Mansour attempted suicide in August 2018.
Saad was expelled from the monastery Aug. 5, 2018 for “inappropriate actions which violate monastic behavior and way of life.” The Coptic Orthodox Church said that his dismissal had been decided on before the bishop’s death.
The bishop’s murder highlighted tension in the Coptic Orthodox Church over monasticism, ecumenism, and reform, and led to the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate issuing several decrees on monasticism.
The Coptic Orthodox Church is an Oriental Orthodox Church, meaning it rejected the 451 Council of Chalcedon, and its followers had historically been considered monophysites – those who believe Christ has only one nature – by Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox.
Tawadros II, Coptic Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria, announced Aug. 1, 2018 that the Church’s monasteries would stop accepting new brothers for one year. Those who established monasteries unapproved by the patriarchate were to be stripped of their priesthood and monastic state. No new monasteries could be founded except as a revival of old monasteries, and this was to be done under the care of a recognized monastery.
The Church also instructed its monks to close their social media accounts, and suspended the ordination of monks for three years. Permissions for monks to attend outside functions was also restricted.
Later that month the Church announced that unrecognized monasteries would have one month to submit to the supervision of the patriarchate.
Samuel Tadros, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told the New York Times that Bishop Epiphanius was “a senior figure in a reformist Coptic movement” that has been favored under Tawadros.
“His appointment, in May, to position in which he would work as a liaison with the Catholic Church was seen as a sign that conservatives were being sidelined, Mr. Tadros said.”
Pope Francis visited Egypt in 2017, and signed a joint declaration with Tawadros announcing that their Churches would recognize the validity of each other’s baptisms.
Previously, the Coptic Orthodox Church had repeated baptism if a Catholic had sought to join it.
Conservative members of the Coptic Orthodox Church have reportedly resisted such reforms under Tawadros. According to a commentary by Engy Magdy in the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn’s The Tablet, these conservatives are associated with Shenouda III, the immediate predecessor of Tawadros as Coptic Orthodox Patriarch.
The dispute goes back to tensions between Shenouda and Fr. Matta El Meskeen.
Fr. Matta was tasked by Cyril VI in 1969 with reviving monastic life at St. Macarius Monastery. The monk was focused on the spiritual life, openness to the thought of other Churches, and ressourcement.
While Shenouda was a disciple of Fr. Matta early on, after he was elected Pope of Alexandria in 1971 the two came into conflict. Shenouda restricted Fr. Matta to his monastery, and discouraged the reading of his books, according to an essay by Mina Thabet in Middle East Eye.
It was during this time, in 1984, that Epiphanius joined St. Macarius and became a monk. Epiphanius was a disciple of Fr. Matta, and was involved in ecumenism.
St. Macarius Monastery was long independent of the Coptic Orthodox hierarchy, but Shenouda restored it under the Church’s authority in 2009, and appointed some 70 conservative monks, among them Saad and Mansour.
In the year after Shenouda’s 2012 death, Epiphanius was elected abbot of St. Macarius, and consecrated a bishop.
[…]
Speaking interreligiously, the difference between fading Christianity and the rise of ISIS zealotry from within Islam is the revealed doctrine of original sin. Three points:
FIRST. this complex doctrine as examined by Ratzinger/Benedict in “An Introduction to Christianity”:
“Terms like original sin, resurrection of the body, Last Judgment, and so on, are only understood at all from this angle, for the seat of original sin is to be sought precisely in this collective net [!] that precedes the individual existence [!] as a sort of spiritual datum, not in any biological legacy passed on between utterly separated individuals. Talk of original sin means just this, that no man can start from scratch any more in a status intigritatis (completely unimpaired by history).”
SECOND, his meaning is, that for each and all of us, we all begin “within the framework of the already existing whole of human life [together!] that stamps and molds him.”
But Islam “start[s] from scratch” without either original sin or history, by dismissing even the era in Arabia prior to Muhammad as “the days of ignorance.” Likewise, in the West (!) we also disconnect and disintegrate into a resentful and post-progressive menagerie of superficial half-truths and worse–cancel-culture “ignorance,” mere intersectionality, and tribal identity politics. Where for Christians however, and as Benedict explains, God stands at both the beginning and at end of the totality of our entangling human history and situation: that is, before the “net” of radical Fallenness, and in the Giftedness of Redemption and Resurrection (Alpha and Omega, both).
THIRD, therefore, each person’s real dignity is found our spiritual and personal struggle–rather than in any accommodation (!) with a fallen world (e.g., by synodally undefining even morality?); or any un-accommodation (!) of our universal human community (e.g., under cultic jihad by ISIS). In our compact world a durable and lasting Fraternity depends, therefore, upon a complete understanding of our shared human nature and, ultimately, upon the reality of the incarnate and whole Jesus Christ.
All politics are ultimately theological…
Ethics and Islam are far apart. Though referred to as “the Religion of Peace”, if the designation wasn’t so unbelievable, it would be laughable. The true God of the Bible enjoins the believer to peace. It is a challenge at times, yet this is how we are to conduct our lives. Peace, not slaughtering our neighbours or those who disagree with us.
Psalm 11:5 The Lord tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.
Romans 14:19 So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding.
Matthew 10:28 And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
Jeremiah 22:3 Thus says the Lord: Do justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor him who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the resident alien, the fatherless, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place.
Proverbs 10:11 The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence.
Proverbs 10:6 Blessings are on the head of the righteous, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence.
If a Muslim would like to learn of Jesus and the salvation that comes with belief in His name, it would be an honour to discuss Him with you.
God bless all who read the words of theLord.
The Islamic State Muslims of Congo hereby demonstrate that they can be as savage and cruel as their co-religionists in Nigeria. Francis will offer weak condolences and a vague condemnation of generic religious violence and fundamentalism. Noting changes.
The reality of jihad has faded in Western consciousness in the years since 9/11 (and especially since the advent of the woke and covid madness), but the threat has only grown. Africans, Middle Easterners, and others feel the sword daily. Atrocities occur regularly in the West as well, but they are merely treated as unavoidable facts of life that we must learn to live with. If anything, appeasement and surrender policies have only intensified. The open and constant warfare waged on Christians in the Third World will reach the First soon enough. The question is whether our political and religious leaders will even then allow us to fight back.
Question to the editors: Why doesn’t William Kilpatrick write on Islam here any longer? If he has retired, someone else should pick up the baton. The subject needs attention.
“The subject needs attention.” Indeed!
Maybe we ought to dialogue with Isis and accompany them in their sin. At least that’s what Bergoglio would advocate.
Dear Edward:
Let us join our hearts in prayer for Muslims, that they come to know the exceeding joy of following Jesus Christ, the saviour of mankind.
We are being tested and if we proclaim the Gospel to the follower of Islam, through God’s hand, some will find the truth that is in the Bible and put their confidence in Jesus Christ.
Ephesians 2:8-9 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 3:23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
Acts 4:12 And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”
Thank you for your sincerity and desire to strengthen the Church through the excellence that is Jesus Christ.
Yours in Christ,
Brian