LET US SAY NO! (By Dewele)

በስመ አብ ወወልድ ወመንፈስ ቅዱስ አሐዱ አምላክ አሜን።

LET US SAY NO!

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church is renowned for its rigid adherence of strict traditions of the fathers and upholding the faith that was once delivered unto the saints. She relentlessly fought wave after wave of heretical attacks that sought to undermine its orthodox foundations and introduce foreign doctrinal elements. The church fathers were cognizant of the threat posed by certain harmless and subtle looking alterations in the traditions of the church and they were quick to condemn and upon demand to give up their lives in defense of purity of the faith. Such zeal to go to great lengths to keep church customs and traditions unadulterated from ‘modern’ tampering might be seen as an unworthy endeavor by liberals and consequently be ridiculed. But it does not take deep insight to understand that if one doesn’t confront the enemy at the frontiers the core itself would soon crumble and degenerate into becoming a frontier itself.

What brings us to be reminded of the ordeals the fathers went through to maintain the orthodox tradition is the reluctance and clumsy compulsion being displayed by those concerned regarding the acceptable mode of artistic expression… specifically the recent debacle concerning sculptures of saints.

Recently, Bole Medhanealem Church is planning on building a fountain depicting sculptures of Christ. Apparently some of our brothers and regrettably the fathers too have thought it a crowning achievement in honor of Christ to build a fountain worth millions of Birr while several of our churches in rural areas with leaking roofs are struggling to maintain liturgical services for lack of incense and other basic stuff. Yet this is no longer a shocking phenomenon as we are now accustomed to extravagant adventures that often compromise the traditions. Our ears are too used to such heart breaking news coming from the way of the church for similar occurrences to incite any meaningful indignation and protest. We are often inclined to move to the next issue in conversations by shrugging our shoulders or at best managing some lip service. And this is testament that our tragic state of affairs is bound to continue and it doesn’t take a prophet to predict that only more bad news is going to come.

Are we paranoid? Look where tolerance and indifference gets you. It begun with the construction of Holy Trinity Cathedral which is infested with sculptures of several angels and saints – a totally unheard of matter in orthodox tradition. This was not surprising considering the fact that the cathedral was in the past shared between Roman Catholics and our church. Now several churches of Addis including St. Mary’s Church (5 kilo) and St. Stephan Church (Meskal Sq.) have incorporated sculptures into their ‘new look’. Where does it end? In fact this is just one example of a far larger process where orthodox values and canonical principles are slowing being usurped and undermined in favor of a more ‘glamorous’ looking alien western traditions.

Only decades ago the holy fathers showed great determination to keep the portrait of Abuna Petros – a well known patriot and source of inspiration for both church and country – from being built within the confines of the church – all for the sake of sticking to traditions. Nowadays the synod is even struggling to enforce its decision to remove the sculpture of the late patriarch Abuna Paulos. Quite a leap few decades has shown us… from erroneous paintings to sculptures of Saints and now to self celebrating popes not hesitating to erect portraits for their achievements during their own lifetime.

 Human fascination with images and often vainglorious attempts to glamorize the church through erection of magnificent buildings have often distracted the faithful and derailed their spirituality into unacceptable modes of worship. The Israelites were often seen to fall easily into this form of temptation – not heeding to the warnings of the prophets they frequently envied the hyped up rituals and ceremonies of the Babylonians which focused on portraits of idols.

The fathers were wary of the disastrous consequences of such flirting with pagan and idolatrous form of worship and sought to prevent the flock from falling prey to it. This controversy over the use of sculptures as acceptable mode of representation and worship raged over several centuries at times involving persecutions. The critical point and resolution is evident in the seventh ecumenical council of the Greek Orthodox Church (a council which our church sympathizes with although strictly not subservient to it). One author sums up the radical differences regarding the veneration of sculptors between the western (Catholic) and Eastern (orthodox) churches:-

Other novelties introduced at Rome include the use of statues instead of icons. The Evangelist Luke initiated the painting of icons. He painted the Theotokos [Holy Mother of God] in her lifetime and received her blessing to continue in that sacred art. The Orthodox Church neither venerates nor manufactures statues. … The images may be inscribed upon sacred utensils, divine Gospels, precious Crosses, robes, sheets, cloths, walls, boards and houses. To this class, also, is assigned images cast in wax, which St. John Chrysostom himself loved. No word is ever mentioned about the making of statues, sculptured figures or plaster of paris replicas. Many assert that the reason why the Church rejected the veneration of statues, apart from the legal observation and custom noted hereinabove, was in order to avoid entirely any likeness to pagan idols which were statutes of massive sculpture. A statue is too life-like, human a representation, confusable with the prototype, whereas it is obvious with a 2-dimensional representation that the icon is only a representation of another person to whom the actual reverence is felt and shown via the icon.

The veneration of icons, as opposed to statues, was once part of the tradition of Rome when it was Orthodox. All the ancient churches found in Rome and the rest of Italy have icons, frescoes, mosaics, and iconostases, which are lacking in later structures –the ancient churches themselves thereby testifying to the West that statues are a later papal innovation. Indeed, the Orthodox, pre-schism Popes stood forth as the chief defenders of icon-veneration when their Eastern Orthodox fellow Christians were suffering under the Iconoclast persecutions which lasted (off and on) for almost a hundred years (c. 754 –842 A.D.).

(Brief Orthodox Replies to the Innovations of the Papacy, True Orthodox Christianity Website)

In the good old days sharp condemnations and refutations were quickly heard when alien values start to creep into our traditions as is exhibited in our history. Forget giant errors like sculptures, even slight misplacement of artistic interpretations were bound to get the eyebrows of the fathers raised:

In the next reign [after Zar’a Yakob] came another [foreigner], a Venetian painter named Nicholas Brancaleone. His skill was greatly appreciated and he was commissioned by the king to decorate the walls of many churches with his paintings. One of his pictures, a Virgin and Child, caused a great commotion. According to Western convention he painted the infant Christ on the Virgin's left arm. Now the left arm is in the Near East considered less honorable than the right and the clergy raised a great outcry, declaring that Our Lord was dishonored and demanding that the picture be destroyed.

             (A History of Abyssinia, Jones & Monroe, 1935)

Where has our unwavering stance – a quality we have long been recognized for – melted to? What kind of hypnotic dizziness have we as a nation sank into? How long are we going to remain pathetically indifferent while we are being robbed in broad daylight of the very treasures our fathers fought blood and bones to deliver to us? The depressing situation we find ourselves in brings forth a rather grim/tragic comparison to the Amharic story of the clumsy guy who whisperingly said to his companion ‘keep quiet! The hyena is eating me’ 

SO WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR? LET US STAND TOGETHER AND SAY NO!!!

ወስብሐት ለእግዚአብሔር።