"I am the door. By me if any man enter in he shall be saved, and shall go in and out and find pasture." - John 10:9 At every parish where I have had the pleasure of attending services, there is always a small group of people who find their way all the way up to the church building but don't actually attend services. At one parish it was a group of male gypsies who talked on cellphones or smoked cigarettes. At another it was a few Protestant husbands who, though they never attended services, opened the parish doors for people as they filed in. At yet another parish the men stood in the narthex and chatted until it was time to receive and then got in line. Latin or Greek Catholic, Eastern or Oriental Orthodox I see the same small throng of men standing next to the front door, but not standing, sitting, or kneeling amongst the people. If it were me (and I can only speak for myself here) this option would be an unsavory one. The boredom would be immediate. The anxiety of som...
THe article is poorly written or translated, so it's unclear to outsiders what is going on. Am I right in assuming this relates to the early 1990s split between the Holy Synod of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church-in-Exile (HSEOTCE) led by Archbishop Abba Yesehaq in The Bronx, NY and the then newly elected Patriarch Abuna Paulos of the Holy Synod of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church in Ethiopia (HSEOTC) based in Addis Ababa? If so, here's more on the schism:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/22/nyregion/us-branch-leaves-ethiopian-orthodox-church.html
https://digitalscholarship.tsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=assr
Or, is this a different split, perhaps a divide between Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox?