THE
P RTAL
July 2017
Page 6
The Maronites
Fr Mark Woodruff continues his explanation of the
Churches in Communion with the See of Peter
T
he Maronites are renowned as the one Eastern Church that remained in
unbroken communion with Rome from the beginning. The reality is even more interesting. Nowadays
concentrated in Lebanon, their origins lie in a fourth-century renewal movement of lay groups, hermits and
monasteries among the Syriac-speaking Christians in the country region between the Greco-Roman cities of
Antioch (in modern Turkey) and Aleppo (in contemporary Syria) fifty-six miles to its east.
The followers of Maron (a friend of St John Chrysostom),
unlike other Syriac Christians, were vigorous supporters
of the Council of Chalcedon in 451, which agreed a
formula for the Greek and Latin Churches’ teaching
about Christ (one Person in two natures, true man
and true God, of one substance with the Father). But
Chalcedon alienated the Armenian, Coptic and Syriac
traditions. These concluded that it divided Christ into
two, so His humanity was overwhelmed by His divinity.
To them, one Christ has one nature, both fully human
and fully divine, neither mixed nor divided, no less one
with the Father. The same faith, but with another accent.
These differing accents separated Maronites from
their Syriac neighbours. In the seventh century, the
Greek Christian world in Syria was overrun, as Islam
and Arabic were imposed increasingly by the invaders.
Maron’s monastic centre was destroyed and, to preserve
their Christian identity and patrimony from Muslim
oppression, the monastic community and many lay
followers resettled 150 miles south, in relative security
in the mountains of Lebanon. They embraced Arabic,
pioneers among Levantine Christians in witness to
Christ through the classic language of Islam.
They elected a bishop as their leader and, out of what
we would now call an “ecclesial movement”, organised
the people’s parishes and other scattered followers into
dioceses. The head claimed the same apostolic pedigree
as other Christian leaders of the Roman province of
Syria: Patriarch of Antioch, successor of Peter in his
first episcopal see. Patriarch Bechara Boutros (Peter)
al-Rahi, also a Cardinal, is the 77th.
In their mountain obscurity, the Maronites kept
alive the memory of communion with the Greeks and
Latins. As we have seen, despite the schism between
Rome and Constantinople in 1054, other Eastern
Churches had a fluid pattern of communion with both
for centuries after, off and on. But when the Crusades
arrived and formed French-led Latin states, Maronites
felt that the old contacts had been resumed and as a
body confirmed their union with Catholic Rome in
1182. They emerged, and to this day provide a Church
structure for Syriac-Arab and Aramaean Christians in
Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Syria.
Their Eucharistic rite is the West Syriac liturgy
of St James, shared with the other Syriac-tradition
Churches, Catholic and Orthodox alike. Following
Vatican II, its pristine forms - without later borrowings
and truncations under influence from the West - have
been re-established: for example, the seven ancient
Eucharistic prayers; a re-expanded arrangement
of readings, drawing on their old lectionaries; the
venerable usage of acclamations in Greek or prayers
and chants in Syriac.
But hundreds of years of common life with the
Roman Catholic Church have left their mark too:
from rosaries to organs, from unleavened hosts to
westward-facing Eucharists. Maronites are accused
of being “too Latinised” (usually by Westerners
disappointed that Maronites are not exotically oriental
enough). But this misses the point that contact and
mutual exchange between East and West have been
internalised. The Maronite DNA is that of a spiritual
movement which evolved into a local Church for
dispossessed Christians, which then evolved into an
authentic Arabic-speaking manifestation of Catholic
faith in the midst of the Levantine Islamic world: a
Church for Arabs who need not succumb to Islam, a
Catholic Church in world-wide communion with the
Universal Church. It is all of a piece.
The parallels with challenges on identity in the
Ordinariates are striking. An Anglican manifestation
of Catholicism, but not quite fully Roman Catholic? A
Romanised version of Anglican formularies that are not
ultimately really Anglican? Or a body with deep roots
in the undivided Church, that underwent isolation
from the wider Catholic Church, that became a
liturgical, theological, pastoral and evangelistic renewal
movement, and that drew its experience and ritual
patrimony together to be fully expressive of Catholic
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