"If we allow prayer over him, we break God’s commandment."
It is known that Pope Shenouda is a popular person to all. He deals with those around him in a friendly manner and he lives a simple life. That is why the number of those who love him increases. But this friendliness and love did not appear plainly in the case of Ibrahim Abd Al-Sayed, who died early last month and the church issued a declaration not to pray over his body. This is a decree which stirred up a wide-spread dispute. What is the ambiguity for issuing this declaration? This is the question the Pope answered to in this interview.
Q: Why did you deprive the priest Ibrahim Abd Al-Sayed from prayers?
He is not the first person to be deprived from prayers over his body after death. There was a priest who conducted illegal marriages. We considered it a real adultery to the extend that he, at one time, was imprisoned for forgery. We invited him to repent and regret before his death, but he refused, so we forbade prayers over his body. The priest Ibrahim Abd al-Sayed and his associates in the opposition should have learnt a lesson from this incident, but they complained against the decision and his turn has come and he died suddenly without repentance and we forbade prayers over him.
Q: Some do wonder; what does prayer over the dead mean, especially because there are those who ridicule it.
Prayer over the dead means that the dead person is legitimate [in Arabic: ’hal’] in the eyes of the church. We say in our prayers over the dead: "Oh God, open for him the doors of mercy, open for him the doors of heaven so that he could enter and be there and the angels of light take him to life." How can we say such things about a person stopped by the church from the service of priesthood for so many years? He did not repent, but continued to attack the church in everything. He even went beyond the orthodox doctrine.
Q. It was said that the priest Abd al-Sayed considered prayer over the dead as a routine work and he commanded his relatives not to care about this practice. If the issue is like that, why did they break his commandment?
What is the benefit of a prayer if the dead man did not believe in it.
Q. God is forgiving and merciful. God forgives his servants. Can’t a church forgive one of her sons for what he did?
True, God is forgiving and merciful but he forgives the sins of those who repent, but those whose hearts are haughty and refuse repentance, they do not have forgiveness. The Bible says, more than once, in the Gospel of Luke "But unless you repent, you too will all perish" [Luke 13:3]. If God forgives those who repent and unrepentant people, there would be no justice, an issue which would lead to looseness and would make a person to commit whatever sin he wants because he is convicted that all his sin will be forgiven without repentance. Believe me, I do not have the authority to allow prayer over him, otherwise I would be breaking God’s commandment and anyone would be able to do what the priest did, knowing that death will obliterate everything, while the Bible says in more than a place: "He will reward each person according to what he has done" [Matthew 16: 27. Also other verses refer to the same theme.]
Q. But -contrary to what the opposition repeated- you did not deprive him, excommunicate him or refuse to pay his salary.
That is because at that time I pitied him and I did not deprive him from priesthood because of his sin and I did not issue a declaration forbidding him from praying. I did not stop him from getting his salary from the church. He used to get the same salary every month non-stop, despite of what he did, not stopping to attack the church sharply and violently. Perhaps in this matter I used to tell myself and those around me: This man has sinned, but what is the crime his family has done for the monthly salary to be stopped from them? All what happened was forbidding prayer over his body. Despite all of this, he wrote a book and published it under the title "Church Terrorism".
Q: Is it not possible to sentence him for what appeared in this book?
It was of course possible, but we were patient with him hoping that he would retract. He published another book accusing us of financial corruption. The title of the book is "Who takes and who gives?" Despite all of this we did not do anything against him. Yet, he continued to publish articles that agitates our people. Among these is an article entitled "Why doesn’t the patriarch get married?" And it is possible to choose the patriarch from among laymen and businessmen. In another article [he wrote] why doesn’t a widowed priest get re-married? The law of the church forbids this matter because all the women in the church are considered children to him and how can a priest marry one of his daughters? But he marries before his ordination as a priest.
Q: The priest Ibrahim also adopted an opposing stand towards Personal Status Law.
When we presented the Personal Status Law, all the heads of the Christian churches in Egypt signed it and those responsible for churches with their headquarters outside [Egypt] also signed. But the priest Ibrahim started to attack this law and gave a number of reasons for divorce despite the teaching of the Gospel regarding this point. He seemed in all this to be breaking the teaching of the Gospel and the tradition of the church.
Q: Perhaps he inclined to that because of ignorance?
It cannot be out of ignorance, because the Bible says ["For the lips of a priest ought to preserve knowledge, and] from his mouth men should seek instruction’ [Malachi 2:7]. Priests are considered teachers of religion. They preach to the people and guide them and explain to them where the truth and falsehood is in all matters. We cannot say he did not know, especially when newspapers presented his articles and mentioned he was one of the intellectuals in this country [Egypt]. One opposition newspaper put his name as if he was one of the symbols of Christianity in Egypt. He was taken by the sin of self-esteem. He continued in his way without taking precautions of how the end would be.
Q: Wasn’t there someone from the church Council to confront him in bringing him back to the right way?
There is the Clerical Council but we refrained from judging him because he considered that we are away from the truth and not him.
Q: What are the important charges he was subjected to?
He was subjected to all charges.
Q: Maybe he was looking for a higher post.
The church does not allow this. He could not reach another rank than that of a priest. He was maybe compelled by the love of fame and pride by attacking the patriarch. For this we kept quiet and we did not take any step which he had deserved. But in his death, we stood for our conscience which did not allow us to give the legitimacy [in Arabic: ’hal’] to a person who went outside the doctrine of the church and did not repent.
Q: What does repentance mean to you?
To confess that he had done many wrong thing in his behavior and requested forgiveness.
Q: How?
Through an open confession, even if through an article in which he should say ’’I have been mistaken by what I have written and I am asking for forgiveness."
Q: Perhaps people say that difference in opinion does not spoil friendship.
Difference in any opinion can be considered freedom of thought, but difference in doctrine will send him out of its creed. Because when he was ordained as a priest, he vowed in front of the people that he would hold fast to the faith of the church, its doctrine, teachings and traditions until his death. He is free to abandon the doctrine of the church, so the church is free to expel him. So the church is free and should not be asked to pray over his body.
Q: Did you call for his attention to his mistakes, especially that the church bears the responsibility for its children to bring back all those who have been mistaken.
He knew very well the doctrine of the church which he attacked because before his ordination as a priest, he was a student in theology. That is to say, he was our student. He knew very well the meaning of the saying; it is contrary to the teaching of the church. For example: explaining problems which are self-evident. That is to say, a self-evident matter does not need explanation.
Q: It was said, they allowed prayer over his body to be conducted at the Qasr Al-Doubara Evangelical church and pastor Menis Abd Al-Nour agreed.
When I read this in newspapers, I was astonished. Was this serious or a joke? It is known from the Protestant Evangelical doctrine that it does not believe in the prayer over the dead at all. How can a Protestant church allow prayer over him while it does not believe in that. Unless it has abandoned its doctrine and this is what I doubt, because they do not use prayers except, the phrase, "God have mercy on him". The body is taken into the church, they read chapters for the advantage of the funeral attendants but not for the mercy of the dead.
Q: There are those who protest against not praying over his body. Why was the saying of the gospel "Bless those who curse you" [Luke 6: 28] not applied here.
The commandment of the Gospel is for personal treatment, not for public rights or God’s right. For example, a Christian judge cannot bless a criminal who is sentenced. Similar, we cannot bless the apostate and those who blaspheme God and those who break the commandments intentionally and knowingly. For this, the Lord Jesus who said this commandment did not bless the teachers of the law and pharisees who were misinterpreting the law. He said to them "Woe to you Pharisees" [Luke 11: 42, 43]. And he said they were blind leaders "Woe to you, because you are like unmarked graves which men walk over without knowing it". They were stinking bones. So he did not bless them because they were against the law and the public rights. And the same he did to the Jewish priests and described them as wicked vine gardeners and said to them that the kingdom of heaven will be taken away from them and given to another nation bearing its fruit. He did not bless these [Jewish priests] nor those [Teachers of law and pharisees] and also he did not bless Herod the Jewish governor.
Q: So the reference of the verse "Bless those who curse you", does not apply to the situation of Ibrahim?
Yes, because this verse does not apply to the right of God and the public. Jesus’ disciples followed the same way Saint Peter did. He did not bless Ananias and Sapphira but punished them violently. Also Saint Paul did not bless Bar Jesus but stroke him with blindness [Acts 13:6]. Saint Stephen, one of the first deacons, did not bless the Jews who brought false witnesses to testify against him of blasphemy and stoned him to death, but he said to them, "You stiff-necked people...you are just like your fathers: you always resist the Holy Spirit" [Acts 7:51. Saint Stephen, however, also said "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." Acts 7:60] The problem is, whoever argues about this Gospel verse [meant "Bless those who curse you"] interprets it alone, separating it from the rest of God’s teaching.
Q: Archpriest Sergius was subjected to excommunication but the Pope allowed prayers over his body as an honor to his old age.
He repented in the last days of his life.
Q: Musa Sabry was subjected to church excommunication.
I did not issue an excommunication to Musa Sabry.
Q: Talaat Younan wrote a hot article against you. Bishop Gregerious responded to his wife’s [Talaat Younan’s] request and conducted prayer over him.
He was criticized by all the Copts about this. Generally, Talaat Younan wrote the article against me during the time of president Anwar Sadat and by then I was in the monastery and he died the next day after publishing the article and some considered his death as [a sign of] the anger of the pope for him, but I did not issue an excommunication against him.
Q: Priest Daniel Wadia was taken to Mansura and Bishop Philippus received a letter from the pope forbidding the completion of the prayer.
Bishop Philippus refused to pray over him.
Q: Going back to the priest Ibrahim. You say no decree was issued of his deprivation but of his suspension and no decree was issued to take him away from his priesthood.
Only his suspension from church service for many years implies the church was not satisfied about him anymore.
Q: One of the men of the opposition went to the extend to say that the authority of deprivation was given to the apostles so that the church can be protected from personal sacking.
This is historically a wrong statement because all the Ecumenical Church Councils, with hundreds of fathers, patriarchs, archbishops, bishops and representatives of the churches met and decreed the deprivation of those who rebelled against the right teaching of the church and history is full of these examples. Churches have also deprived other churches.
Q: There are those who say that the pope [Shenouda] does not put clear rules and laws people can refer to as is the case with the [rules] in the Vatican.
These rules, which they are demanding, are present in the law of the church and were published in books and many volumes. It is not an accusation that those opponents did not read the laws or do not know them, because they are not specialists and they do not want to know. If they would ask they would find. These laws are taught in our Theological College. The late priest, Salib Surial published a lot of books on these laws. He also published them in a group of books of Ibn Al-Asal and in other books where Ecumenical Church Councils, regional councils, and local council-laws are mentioned. This proves the words of a writer who said "The enemies of people are their ignorance".
Q: There are those who demanded you to agree to a "after-40-days prayer" over priest Ibrahim with the consideration that it is a humane request.
If the church would do that, it would be charged to be contradictory in its decrees and also the "after-40-days prayer" is canceled from the church. The only thing left is the mentioning of the dead in a liturgy on the fortieth day after his death.
Q: There are those who demand from you forgiveness and pardon, and they referred to what the Lord Jesus said "If anyone of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." [John 8: 7]
This means that the world does not condemn anyone. Then this phrase was said by Lord Jesus about the woman caught sinning in that act and the Jews brought her to Jesus demanding him to implement the Jewish law which says, ’she should be stoned.’ There was a mistake in the implementation of the law because the woman caught in the act was with a man also caught with her and they left the man and caught the woman. This is in one perspective. Also these Jewish leaders were sinners against sins Jesus had declared to them. He said to them: "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." But this does not mean that he allowed sinners to play on earth without punishment. This reminds me of a verse in a poem in which the poet talked about a sinful woman: "You are called seller of sin of desire. They are liars, the guilty one is the buyer."
Q: What is he position of the church concerning those who prayed over the body of Ibrahim Abd al-Sayed?
First those who prayed will be investigated, then punished.
Q: What is the number of opponents in the church like Ibrahim Abd al-Sayed?
They can be counted on the fingers of their hands...except that the press has given them room. If it had not been for that, no body would have known them. If you read their names in the newspapers, you will find that they are a few and are mostly repeated names.
Q: There is some one who said man’s conscience makes that no one can judge him except for God.
That is true. But if what is in the conscience has come out in the form of articles or books, the judgment will then be on these books, but not on the conscience. The issue has become public, not hidden. No doubt that, these articles mislead people’s thoughts and lead those who do not know the truth to the writer’s way and the sin at this becomes general, not individual. It includes all those affected by the idea of the one who wrote it and adopted it.
Q: That is to say, what Ibrahim Abd al-Sayed did, has consequences for the followers of the mistake.
Of course, that was what the writer meant, if not that, he would not have written them.
