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View from the Pew  Mary Adamski |
Tending the flock
The 10 million-member Coptic Orthodox Church
has been led by Pope Shenouda III since 1971
The leader of one of the oldest Christian denominations in the world was in Honolulu this week for a special celebration with his small local flock.
He used the occasion for a little ecumenical socializing and a repeat of his favorite message about nurturing religious faith in young people.
"I have said many times that a church without youth is a church without a future," said Pope Shenouda III, 81, who has headed the 10 million-member Coptic Orthodox Church since 1971.
The head of an Egyptian Christian branch that claims St. Mark the Gospel writer as its founder, Shenouda III made his sixth trip to Hawaii to consecrate the altar of St. Mark's Coptic Church in Alewa Heights Tuesday. He spread blessed oil across the white marble altar in a colorful ceremony dedicating the sanctuary, which the 60-member congregation made its own in May. They bought the site, formerly Grace Bible Church, after 15 years of meeting in a Kaimuki Catholic chapel.
Christian unity has been another favorite theme of the patriarch, and he made an effort to implement that in a small way in Hawaii.
Clergymen and members from three other Orthodox denominations and Catholic and Protestant church members were among the crowd at the three-hour morning liturgical celebration.
The guest list for the evening banquet at Hilton Hawaiian Village showed an ecumenical gathering unmatched here since September 2001 events brought diverse faiths together in prayer.
There were Episcopal Bishop Richard Chang and the Rev. Thomas Gross, administrator of the Catholic diocese. The Rev. Veryl Henderson, executive of the Hawaii Baptist Convention, attended, as did the Revs. Ruth Peterson, a Lutheran; Buddy Sommers, of Disciples of Christ; James Tweedie, a Presbyterian; Barbara Grace Ripple, a Methodist; Grant Lee, of United Church of Christ; Anatole Lyovin of the Russian Orthodox Church; and Stephen Sykes of the Inclusive Orthodox Church.
Military chaplains attending were the Revs. James Danner, Catholic; Henry Nixon, Baptist; and Isaiah Gillette, Antiochean Orthodox.
The patriarch of the Egyptian church told reporters that he carries on a continuing "theological dialogue" with various Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant church leaders worldwide. His church is a member of the World Council of Churches and the National Council of the Churches in Christ in the U.S.A.
"We are coming nearer to each other," he said. Christians "have one shepherd" in Christ, he said. In talks with other leaders, he customarily stresses unity of faith and not unity in jurisdiction. One such connection made history: He was the first Coptic Orthodox pope to visit the Vatican in 1,500 years when he met with the late Pope Paul VI in 1973.
Also being celebrated during his visit was the pontiff's 50th anniversary of becoming a monk. He was a teacher, president of the Coptic theological seminary and bishop of Christian education before being chosen to head the church. He is the author of more than 100 books, many of which have been translated into English and other languages.
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Orthodox churches are a minority in the West among the vast array of Catholic and Protestant Christians. Splintered into ethnic and geographical divisions in Asia and the Middle East since the fifth century, they are not well understood by Americans.
Their unique ethnic character was demonstrated in the Tuesday liturgical service, which used the ancient Coptic language along with English and Arabic. The staccato music of small Egyptian cymbals accompanied chanting. Gilded icons of apostles and saints cover the walls, including one showing the Holy Family on its flight to Egypt to escape Herod's slaughter of infants soon after Jesus was born.
St. Mark's is one of 100 American Coptic congregations. There are 200,000 Coptic church members in the United States. The church has grown in America and Europe in the last 30 years, in part because of migration of Christians from the Middle East.
Shenouda's flock is a small minority in its homeland, where more than 90 percent of the population is Muslim. The previous president put him under house arrest in a desert monastery in 1981 in retaliation for critical comments that the government seemed to support Islamic extremists by not acting to curb them.
The pope is in accord with current President Hosni Mubarak, according to biographical material on the Coptic Orthodox Church Network.
"There are moderate Muslims and fanatic Muslims. Moderate Muslims are our friends," he told reporters here. "The fanatics are against even the state itself.
"Now in Egypt they are less dangerous than before because some are in prison or have left Egypt or have died."
Nearly everyone in the crowd Tuesday approached the patriarch, bowing and kissing his hand. At the end of the three-hour service and a 12-hour fast, he patiently sat as dozens of people grouped themselves around him for snapshots.
"I lived in Egypt for 22 years, and I never met him face to face," said Ragui France, 27, one of a dozen deacons at the altar. "In Egypt there are 200,000 people where he does a service. He is treated with protocol like a government head."
The University of Hawaii senior brought friends along for the service.
"I'm interested in the roots, how Christianity began," said Moani Sitch, who is active in a UH evangelical Christian campus ministry. She said she found the rituals fascinating, "what it was really like in the past."
At the altar were small boys robed as servers, and in the communion line were small children, and these the pope pointed out as the goal of his 1,940-year-old church. "When they hold the candle and they sing, when they are accustomed to coming to church every day, they feel a part of the church.
"Our hearts are open to the youth. We try to help them solve their problems in a spiritual way."
Email her at madamski@starbulletin.com.