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Helen
Mary Haigh, RJM
We could begin by trying to help you understand a little of why and how there are so many Churches in the Middle East; how is it that there are other Catholic Churches; where does our Western experience of Church fit in? Let me list for you the reality of the Church in Lebanon and in the Middle East in general; there are many Churches, among them: 7
Catholic Churches in Lebanon and the Middle East MARONITE Cardinal Mar Nasrallah Pierre SFEIR, Maronite Patriarch of Antioch and the Orient. * Bkerkke CREEK
CATHOLIC His Beatitude, Maximos V HAKIM, Greek Melkite Catholic
Patriarch of Antioch, the Orient, Alexandria and Jerusalem. SYRIAN CATHOLIC His Beatitude, Mar Ignace Antoine II HAYEK, Syrian Catholic Patriarch of Antioch. * Beirut ARMENIAN CATHOLIC His Beatitude Jean Pierre XVIII KASPARIAN, Armenian Catholic Patriarch. * Bzoumar (original destroyed in Armenia) CHALDEAN CATHOLIC His Beatitude, Mar Raphaël I BIDAWID, Patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldees. * Babdah (replacing Baghdad) COPT CATHOLIC His Beatitude, Stéphanos II GHATTAS, Copt Catholic Patriarch of Alexandria, Cairo. LATIN His Beatitude Michel SABBAH, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Jerusalem. All of these, except the Maronite and the Latin, have an Orthodox parallel Church; there are other Orthodox Churches also. Add to that a number of Protestant Churches belonging to the Reformed Tradition and you have quite a collection. How did we arrive at this? We need to return to the early centuries of Christianity to understand this plethora of Churches. A Patriarchate in the early centuries was a Church founded by or on an Apostle. There were originally five great Patriarchates, those of Jerusalem, Antioch, Rome, Alexandria and Constantinople. The first rested on the shoulders of the 12 Apostles; the next two, Antioch and Rome, on those of` Peter; Alexandria took its apostolic origin from St Mark the Evangelist and Constantinople from St Andrew the brother of Peter. All these centres, with the exception of Jerusalem, had large Christian communities. We might remember that Peter went to lead the Church in Antioch because there was there a strong community of believers. He later went to Rome because of its importance politically at the heart of the Empire and because of the presence there of a large number of Christians. He was, in fact Bishop of Antioch before he was Bishop of Rome! Later, other communities also became known as Patriarchal but more for the importance attached to their large number of Christians; for example the Armenian Church and the Orthodox Churches of Eastern Europe which have a Patriarch. All the Churches in Lebanon today (Orthodox and Catholic), with the exception of the Latin Church, are "Antiochene" by tradition. We should realise that in the early community at Antioch there existed both Hellenistic and Aramaic groups, with people from both these traditions living together, side by side, from the beginning. The Greek Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches are "Antiochene"; so are the Syrian Catholic and Orthodox Churches; as also the Maronite and the Chaldean Churches. The Armenian Church was "Antiochene" and this Church, founded in the fourth century, took its tradition with its Hellenistic/Aramaic roots and developed it to form its own proper tradition. As long as the Churches lived this plurality they were all right; when they did not live this plurality they splintered under the weight of outside influences. In the fourth century the Roman Empire was divided, for administrative purposes, into Eastern and Western Sectors and from that point onwards Constantinople became the "Second Rome". It was then too that the apostolic status of the community there was established and St Andrew's bones were translated to the city. Of course, the Roman administrators took little note of the repercussions of their administrative developments on those who lived within the confines of the Empire, but it just happened that four of the five Patriarchates fell within the boundaries of the Eastern part of the Empire and only one, Rome, was in the Western part. There were, however, many contacts between the two parts of the Empire, it was not a "Berlin Wall" type of arrangement. The seventh Century saw the advent of Islam and the subsequent and very rapid conquest of the Middle East and North Africa. The three great Christian centres of Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria, as well as almost all the other smaller communities of the region, fell to the power of Islam. We can cite the vibrant Christian communities in Carthage, Cyrenae, Damascus, Aleppo, all of which were engulfed by the spread of Islam. We can imagine what that meant when we recall the great source of spiritual richness which emanated from the Middle East in those early centuries. Let us remember the Fathers of the Church like Jerome, Origen, Augustine, Ephraem and the Cappadocean Fathers; the famous theological centres of Alexandria and Antioch; the evolution of monasticism via the genius of Antony of Egypt, Pachomius and Basil. Gradually, as Islam advanced, only Constantinople remained untouched. The communities under the domination of Islam became on the one hand smaller and impoverished, isolated from mainstream Christianity; yet on the other hand there is evidence of a strong Christian culture in Arabic which dates from that epoch, witness surely to the fact that whatever else happened the Church as such did not fade out. The first Maronite Patriarch, St John Maron, was elected in 686, i.e. shortly after the birth of Islam. Christians found work in the courts of the Muslim Califs as scribes, accountants and trusted stewards. Despite periods of great difficulty Christianity remained in the Middle East, especially in the Palestine/Lebanon/Syria area and there are saints, Christian poets, and writers who lived under Muslim rule during those centuries of Islamic expansion and consolidation. The city of Aleppo in Syria, for example, had a Christian community from the first century and an uninterrupted line of Bishops from the third. Constantinople grew during these centuries to be THE centre of Christianity in the East and, renamed Byzantium, developed a flourishing Christian culture as well as trade relations with such distant peoples as the Finns and Letts via Russia in the North, and Britain and Ireland in the West around the tin which was traded in the Middle East for fabrics and dyes. Byzantine merchants, soldiers and missionaries explored Sudan to find access to Abyssinia by land as this was an important source for incense, myrrh and elephants. Trade with Arabia, both before and after the Muslim conquests, was part of a link with India. Byzantine merchants knew the silk roads and had dealings with Turkish merchants who lived in India and the Punjab. Via other Turkish intermediaries who served at the Courts of Chinese Emperors and then at the Byzantine court, came details of life in China, its power struggles as well as details of the everyday life of the ordinary people. The Byzantines had dealings with the four great Khans who ruled an empire which stretched from Persia to China. They penetrated deep into the Caucasian States both as traders and as missionaries. The "christianisation'' of the slavic peoples took place during these centuries. We are not dealing here with an insignificant Christian influence. Relations with the Church of the West with its centre in Rome were not always easy. After a series of minor separations beginning in the ninth century, the final rupture came in 1054 with the solemn excommunication of the Patriarch of Constantinople in a Bull delivered by an emissary of Pope Leo IX, and the reciprocal excommunication of the Pope's emissary by the Patriarch of Constantinople. Since that moment the two communities have been separated. The Crusades and the sacking of Constantinople by the armies of the Christian "West" did not help matters at all. However, both Rome and Constantinople would experience diminishment in the 16th century as in the West the Reformation crisis divided the Church from within and Constantinople finally fell to the Muslim Turks. As the Western Catholic Church recovered from its trauma it began to see the need to offer assistance to the Christian communities in the East and so missionaries were sent, Franciscans, Jesuits and others, to help strengthen Christianity in the Middle East. By the beginning of the 18th century some Orthodox Bishops were seeking once again communion with the Bishop of Rome, and in 1734 the first of them from the Greek Church brought some of his faithful with him into communion with the Church headed by the Roman Pontiff. So began the phenomenon of "Uniate" Churches or Eastern Rite Churches in communion with Rome. As the desire for full communion with the Bishop of Rome spread among the Orthodox communities in the Middle East so a variety of traditions and rites began to re-enter the Catholic Church. At the end of the Second Vatican Council in December 1965, Pope Paul VI met the Patriarch of Constantinople, Athangoras I. "The resulting change found its historical expression in the eccelsial act whereby 'there was removed from memory and from the midst of the church' the remembrance of the excommunications which nine hundred years before, in 1054, had become the symbol of the schism between Rome and Constantinople... The Council thus ended with a solemn act which was at once a healing of historical memories, a mutual forgiveness, and a firm commitment to strive for communion" (Ut unum sint, n. 52). Yet the Orthodox Churches in communion with Constantinople and the Catholic Churches are not united. Archbishop Philip Nabaa, the late Melkite Metroplitan of Beirut, made the following remark which I will use to sum up this section of the paper. He said,
"We must remember how close the East is to Western Christianity with which it lived for ten centuries in peace and charity in the one faith. If this deep unity was sometimes shattered, shaken or even broken, this was due to a failure to understand one another rather than to bad faith. It arose not so much from a denial of the faith as through sincere attachment to truly Christian traditions. The reasons were not so much the religious as the political and psychological factors that led to separate development in East and West. The first result was a division in charity followed by a division in faith, all of which led to a great rent in the Catholica.... It will not be sufficient to ask our Orthodox brethren to accept our faith and convince them of the truth of our beliefs. We must also meet them in great charity, showing that we respect their great Christian traditions in a catholic spirit. We must show them that Christ's Church is truly Catholic and open to East as well as West. Our actions must show that the catholicity of the Church enables it to include all human institutions, civilisations and national cultures, all Christian traditions and liturgies, without special privileges for any country, church, rite or person. There can be first class or second class citizens in Christ's Church, for all are one in Christ". And now to Lebanon. This tiny land and its people have enjoyed an illustrious past. Descendants of the famous Phoenicians of old, fearless and adventurous sea-farers who set up commercial city-states along the Mediterranean coast from Greece to N. Africa, these tenacious people have struggled long and hard to maintain their particular outlook on life and contribution to it. Modern Lebanon is a recent creation, gaining sovereign status only in 1943 after years as a Mandate Territory under the French, and earlier, as part of the Ottoman Empire. Yet the area around Mount Lebanon, had enjoyed, even under the Ottomans, a certain autonomy, and here lived together a mixed community of Maronites and Druzes (an off-shoot of Shi'a Islam which mainstream Muslims hold as heretical) for several centuries alongside their Muslim neighbours. Yet whether it be in this century or earlier, that piece of land has always been a centre of welcome and refuge for people in distress or fleeing from persecution. Refugees from the massacres in Armenia went there during the First World War; Kurds and Palestinians have followed suit, and there were others before them too. I imagine that it was almost taken for granted that this land was like that, ready always to offer safety and shelter, tolerance and securety to those in need. In 1992, during his inaugural address to the meeting of A.P.E.C.L., (L'Assemblée des Patriarches et Evéques Catholique au Liban), the Maronite Patriarch said this, "No one can deny that there are in the world many countries where people of different religions and confessions, especially those of Christianity and Islam, live together. However, what makes for the originality of Lebanon is that the followers of those two religions enjoy the same rights and carry the same responsibilities, without distinction under the law. This is a situation that we do not find anywhere else where the majority impose themselves on the non-recognised minority to the detriment of their equality. We know that religious freedom is respected in Lebanon The followers of each of the 17 communities here worship God according to their conscience; one prays in the church, another in the mosque, a third in his holy place, and now recently once again, some pray in their synagogue. Others again may choose not to pray at all because all that is a matter of personal conscience and religion may hardly impose itself by force when all judgement belongs to God alone who waits for everyone at the end of their journey". When the Lebanese Constitution was drawn up there was this understanding written down. In Article 9 it says, "Freedom of belief is absolute. The State respects all religions and all confessions, and guarantees freedom of worship, which freedom it undertakes to protect, on condition that this does not disturb public order. It assures to all believers, whatever their confession, the respect of their civil status and their religious interests". The revised Constitution of September 1990 declares, "Lebanon is a democratic, parliamentary Republic, founded on the respect for public liberty, and in first place on freedom of opinion and of belief". This large and open vision of itself as a nation and people is founded on an unwritten "Pacte National" of 1943, agreed to by both communities, Muslim and Christian, which in fact is founded on a double "NO" - NO to the EAST and NO to the WEST; a renouncing of the idea by the Muslims of Lebanon to seek the protection of the Islamic world around them and a renunciation on the part of the Christian Lebanese to seek the protection of the Western powers which, especially France, have supported them.This renunciation is made in view of working together to realise another, richer reality, that of conviviality, living together, sharing an identity which is peculiarly Lebanese. However, if we return to the Patriarch's inaugural discourse we can see that things were not always so rosy. He says, with great simplicity and honesty, "...Christians and Muslims have been in Lebanon since the beginning of both religions. Between the two of them there have been conflicts and wars. Each of these religions has nourished ambitions which have not always been inspired by a religious or supernatural spirit. These confrontations (between Christians and Muslims) did not limit themselves to the East; they have spilled over also into the West to the extent that in order to designate themselves there has been recourse to two symbolic expressions which identify one or other of the religions. We say in Arabic, The Dome and the Cross; in French, The Banner and the Cross (I can add that in English we say. The Crescent and the Cross). Thanks be to God we have turned that page definitively, once and for all". When Pope John Paul II called for a Synod for Lebanon he did so in June 1991 BEFORE the war had ended, and he gave as the theme of the Synod, "Christ is our hope. Renewed by his Spirit, together, we witness to his love". In order to reach ALL the Lebanese he sent his Message to the people by television and it was broadcast on 11th July of the same year. We can note that during his pontificate the Holy Father has spoken 220 times directly to or for Lebanon. We can understand therefore why the Maronite Patriarch can say of Pope John Paul that his concern for Lebanon comes from a heart "...where Lebanon holds a place equal to that held by his own country of Poland ..." (Inaugural Discourse -A.P.E.C.L. 1992). The fourth and final part of the LINEAMENTA Document for the Synod is entitled "The Historical Vocation of Lebanon" and here we find the core of the "genius" or "particularity" of this land and its people. Drawing on several sources emanating from Pope John Paul II in regard to Lebanon the Document says, " 'The historical vocation of Lebanon'! This expression ... signifies that ... Lebanon is 'a message of freedom, of democracy, a land of dialogue and of conviviality between different religions and cultures'". This is what justifies his (i.e. the Pope's) declaration that "'Lebanon is more than a country: it is a message and a model, for the East as well as for the West'" (Synod for Lebanon Lineamenta, n. 75). During the Synod one of the Muslim "guests" who had been invited and who offered his intervention during the "Listening Sessions" at the operating of the work, said that there are Muslims in the world and there are Christians, but there cannot exist a Lebanese Muslim unless he has a Christian brother, and there cannot exist a Lebanese Christian without a Muslim brother. That is to say that without a Christian the Lebanese Muslim does not exist; without a Muslim the Lebanese Christian does not exist. Both can be Christian or Muslim but not Lebanese. It has long been realised in the Middle East that the presence of the Christians in Lebanon has an importance which far exceeds its own particular reality. The survival of Christians in other parts of the region depends to a large extent on the secure and stable presence of Christians in Lebanon. This point has been clearly recognised and expressed in the documentation of the A.P.E.C.L. meetings for at least the last 20 years and the continuing emigration of Christians from Lebanon is a continuing source of anxiety for the Churches there. I think that from all that we can perceive of the self-understanding of the Churches in Lebanon we can find three important aspects to their mission: 1.
BEING CHURCH:
2. ISLAMO-CHRISTIAN DIALOGE: * A dynamic partner in the Middle East and in the world at large. 3. SOCIO - CULICRAL:
1. BEING CHURCH A debt of gratitude to the Oriental Churches for their contribution to the heritage shared in the Universal Church was loudly expressed in the Documents of the Second Vatican Council. Yet we, in the Western Churches do not really realise that what we call the "Catholic" Church is a collection of Churches in Communion with one another and united under the person of the Bishop of Rome. We are not used to the idea that there are a variety of Churches with different traditions and spiritualities and there are a variety of ways of being "Catholic". The richness of the Eastern Churches is an immense field of study and I cannot do justice to it. At the risk of minimising its richness I will point to some areas where we, in the Western Churches may gain insight and depth. (a) The importance of the Liturgy. We cannot see the Eastern Churches from the outside. We must penetrate their world from the inside, via their liturgies. Perhaps, since the reform of our Liturgy after the Council, we have lost something of the sense of the Holy. Our Liturgy seems less solemn that it once was. We have opted for an expression which offers to everyone more access. We have put our liturgy into the vernacular, turned our altars around, built circular churches, all for the very valid and worthy reason of helping the faithful enter more easily and fully into it. Yet the Eastern Churches, some of which like the Maronites have recently renewed their liturgy, have opted to retain the symbols and aids to conserve the sense of awe and mystery. The very set-up of the Byzantine churches with their iconostasis, the use of incense and the practice of processions is another example. Gradually these ways of expressing the mysterious are returning to our Church as we realise the need we have to express the "otherness" of the encounter with God which we experience through the liturgy. (b) The importance of the Trinity and the role of the Holy Spirit. The two hands of the Father are the Son and the Holy Spirit; with them he has formed the universe. The Father has divided the history of mankind into three stages. (1) Creation to Incarnation which belongs properly to the Father and which we witness in the marvellous works of Creation and Providence. (2) Incarnation to Ascension which belongs properly to the Son and which we witness in his marvellous work of Redemption. (3) Pentecost to Parousia which belongs properly to the Holy Spirit. We live in this stage, the stage of the Holy Spirit. In the Western Church we place much emphasis now on the Incarnation and the humanity of Jesus Christ. The Eastern Churches emphasise the divinity of Christ. Neither one nor the other diminishes the truth. It is more a question of keeping the balance. (c) The place of Mary. The central Marian doctrine is expressed in the word THEOTÓKOS, first introduced at the Council of Ephesus in 431. She is "The Mother of God", and this is a Christological point being made. It is inconceivable for an Oriental Christian to understated Mary without Jesus Christ. You will never find an image of her without Jesus Christ. All that richness is true of any of the Oriental Churches in their contribution to the Universal Church. The Churches in Lebanon, with great humility, recognised that they themselves had lacked this vision of belonging to the Universal Church, that they needed somehow to rekindle the sense of being Church, to "desegregate" their ecclesial communities, as the Synod Message put it, in order to move away from the inward looking pre-occupation with themselves and live the wider reality of Church; they needed to be freed, or free themselves, from the narrowness of what sometimes bordered on being a ghetto mentality. There was a need to work hard at working together as ecclesial communities. There is much to do inside the country and there is much to do outside also. Therefore the structures of A.P.E.C.L. were strengthened to enable a stronger, more united Catholic community to function as Church, instead of having its energies sapped by lack of unity. Participation from the women religious and the laity is now normal. While there are several religious congregations of men and women of Middle Eastern origin which have undertaken missions "Ad Gentes", there is only one which has gone to communities other than those of their own diaspora. Yet two lines of consciousness have developed during the past few years. One is the realisation that Lebanon is better off than the countries around it as far as the position of the Church is concerned. This has led to a taking of responsibility for other Christians in the region. As the preparation for the Synod got under way there were numerous Congresses in Lebanon to study different aspects of life in the Church. Gradually some were organised to involve the Church in the wider region of the Middle East. The initiative was taken by the women religious who organised a Congress to discuss "Religious Life for Women in the Middle East: Identity and Mission". There were 750 participants from 40 Congregations who came from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, the Holy Land, Iraq and Lebanon itself. A rather charismatic Jesuit who came to address the congress from Egypt, looked at the women gathered in front of him and told us that half of us was enough; the rest should be out and about elsewhere in the region helping the churches there. And so came about the realisation that Lebanon should do something to form, prepare, train missionaries to go to the poorer Churches in the region: and as well, extend once again its characteristic hospitality and welcome into Lebanon members of the Churches in the region to benefit from the freedom and security which the Church enjoys in Lebanon. Another spin-off from this realisation has been in the area of catechetics. Following a Congress for Catechetics in the Middle East, held in the summer of 1995, there came into being the Catholic Council for Catechetics in the Middle East. The President has just been appointed an "expert" for the Middle East in the Church's official organisation for catechetics so that the specific contribution of the Oriental Churches may be received here too. A specific ecumenical role especially with regard to the Orthodox Churches and an example of a way forward to fuller communion between all the Churches. In the Document Ut unum sint it states that, "The division among Christians is a serious reality which impedes the very work of Christ" (n. 98, quoting Evangelii Nuntiandi). There have been gigantic steps taken by the Catholic Church in general with regard to reconciliation with the Orthodox Churches, and those which were formally referred to as "our separated brethren" now are called "our Sister Churches". The Ancient Eastern Churches were considered to be not only schismatic, but also heretical because of the rejection by them of the dogmatic formulations of the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon. The openness of Pope Paul VI which has been continued in the Catholic Church since his time has made it possible for us to declare a common faith in Jesus Christ truly God and truly man even with the Churches which had previously expressed their faith in a way which we considered to be inadequate. Among the Churches in the Middle East there is a real consciousness of the responsibility which they have to continue to foster this ecumenical dialogue, and especially among the "Uniate" Churches (those which have a parallel Orthodox Church) to act as "Bridges", to enable the steps which are necessary for full communion with the Catholic Church to be taken while at the same time preserving the special heritage of those "Sister" Churches. In 1990 the Catholic Churches of the Middle East joined the Middle East Council of Churches, a sister organisation of the World Council of Churches, and their representative has worked hard and long to bring the "Catholic" contribution to that organisation. There are numerous models for describing the complex reality which is the Church, but one of the most recent ones is that of "Mystery of Communion". This way of understanding the reality of the Church is a very helpful one at the present time when the attraction towards ever closer unity seems to be being felt throughout the Christian community. The Church in Lebanon is an expression of the fact that the diversity within the Church in general, far from being a source of conflict and suspicion, is a source of great riches and value. At a time when ecumenical dialogue is very intense, and when all sides desire a unity of Christians which does not negate the riches of any tradition, it is opportune that the sense of Church as "The Mystery of Communion" should be being ex-perienced and experimented somewhere. As young Churches struggle to find a true identity and be, for example, the Church in Africa, or in Latin America, and we all struggle with inculturation, the sense that diversity is good and of the very nature of the Church is a precious insight. How much less wary we might be if, as members of the Reformed tradition of Chris-tianity, we could see that the way into the mystery of the Universal Church was through communion with a diversity of Churches and not a question of converting, or going over into one Church. 2. ISLAMO - CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE. Earlier I mentioned the intervention of one of the Muslim "guests" at the Synod for Lebanon and said that the particular "genius" of Lebanon was its conscious realisation of its identity as a nation composed of a whole mosaic of different religious families stemming from Islamic or Christian roots. It is true that 17 different religious families are recognised, protected and represented before the Laws and Constitution of the country. This is unique in the world. Everywhere else in the region of the Middle East the Christians are such a tiny minority as to be in some places almost lost and in many, insignificant. Yet the mosaic which is Lebanon is such that this balance of population has to be protected. Recently there was distress both among the Palestinians and among some Lebanese because the Lebanese Government did not want to offer Nationality status to thousands of refugees. At one level this was perhaps seen as sheer selfishness, on the other, we must remember that the majority of the neighbours of Lebanon, with the exception of the Israelis, are Muslim. To increase further the Muslim population at the expense of the Christian would be to dislocate the fine balance of religious communities. Throughout the 16 years of war, which was seen by some as a religious war between Christians and Muslims, there were meetings held between scholars of both faiths to continue the dialogue which even the splintering of the people into religious militias could not silence. There are numerous examples of what the Documents of the Church call "the dialogue of life" which were common before the war, continued during it and happen today. I personally know of a group of lay people who sold their jewellery one Christmas at the height of the war and divided the money into three portions. They then crossed the dividing lines in and around Beirut to offer one portion to a Christian orphanage so that the children there could have something for Christmas. They did the same with a Druze orphanage and the same with a Muslim one. The Muslim director of his orphanage told the group that in Islam it is written that when someone does you good you should try to offer him a similar good. He then went to his safe and took out the same amount of money he had received for his orphanage and gave it to the visitors to spend on the Christian children. A friend of our community has a Shi'a Muslim business partner. He is also a close family friend; they named each other's sons. When the war set in and the city of Beirut was divided so that passing from one side to the other became too dangerous, the Shi'a business partner said that they should try to continue as before. He would work with the contracts they had in West Beirut and would divide the money between them; his partner, the Christian, should do the same in East Beirut, also dividing the money between them. When there was peace they would settle the things and continue as before. That was what happened. When we read now the documentation which came from A.P.E.C.L., especially from those meetings which took place during the war, it is clear that the vision of this mission as partners in a very special Islamo-Christian dialogue is sound. Often the statements were somehow lost, shadowed by the noise of cannons and obscured by the confusion of fear, but they stand as a witness that the commitment to this dialogue never faltered. One of the most striking examples of this was when the grand Mufti of Lebanon was assassinated. His residence was in West Beirut and that was cut-off from the Christian sector of the city in East Beirut. Middle Eastern custom decrees that people should go and pay their condolences to the bereaved party, and if the person who has died is of importance politically or religiously there are official visits. If we had not been at war, and the Mufti had simply died, then certainly the dignitaries from the Christian community would have gone to his residence to pay their respects. It was impossible for anyone to go from our side to theirs so the Maronite Patriarch opened his Patriarchate in Bkerke to receive condolences for his brother the Grand Mufti. There is one other aspect of this dialogue that has been evident rather discreetly for several years now. It did not come out in the Synod, and does not receive anything like the attention that the Islamo-Christian dialogue does. I will express it by posing a question. What if it is not just political expediency that the Jewish people are back in the region? What if, like he did in the days of Cyrus of Persia, God is writing straight with our crooked lines? The question of the formation of the State of Israel is one of the most painful in our world and it has been since 1948. There is no denying that a just and honest peace must be found to this or there will be no peace worth the name. Yet it is also true that the Jewish people, with the Christians and Muslims, make up the Posterity of Abraham and there is some real connection between them, a kinship in religion and faith which we cannot deny. In Lebanon there are no examples of mixed villages without Christians; the other religious communities do not seem able to live together without the leaven of Christianity. Can this willingness to accept and welcome the other as is the case with the Islamo-Christian conviviality, be extended to the brother who is a Jew? In the present political climate it is very difficult for many people even to think of this let alone act on it, but the "Lebanese Laboratory" and especially the Church ingredient, is beginning to realise a possible role in extending the gift she has for promoting dialogue. When we look at what has happened in the former Yugoslavia, where Catholics, Orthodox and Muslims have behaved in such a way towards each other that we now have a new term in use in our modern armoury of expressions, ethnic cleansing, we might ask ourselves how can all that be brought to reconciliation and a just peace? It was very significant that it was a Catholic, the Pope, who went as a pilgrim of reconciliation to Sarejevo (12-13 April) and was welcomed by the Muslim leaders and people as well as by the Catholics. Who should be a force for reconciliation if not the Catholics? Who else has the vision and the will to be that force, not just in Bosnia but in other parts of the world too. At present the Western world is afraid of Islam. The conquest of Western Europe which the Battle of Lepanto halted in 1571, over 400 years ago is, for some, in full swing again now. Are we going to set up ghettos to seal ourselves off from contact? Or even perhaps take up arms to protect ourselves? Or are we rather going to opt for conviviality? I do not say that only Lebanon can offer us a model. We can also look at India as another nation which can be seen as having a special vocation for conviviality. But Lebanon has the advantage that the picture is simpler though more concentrated; it involves, on the ground, two religions and their adherents are more or less equal in strength. 3. SOCIO - CULTURAL Earlier I spoke of the Christian culture in Arabic which dates from the Islamic era in Lebanon. Lebanon has always had a strong cultural expression, be it in the arts, music, and literature, or straightforward education. The natural openness of the Lebanese to others, to the culture of other peoples, challenged and encouraged them to develop and appreciate the cultural heritage which is theirs and to share it with others. The Christians have been a leading partner in all this. The first printing press in the Middle East came to Lebanon in the 17th century with Christian missionaries; the reputation of the universities in Beirut were and are second to none in the region and in the world. The Catholic education system is much older than the State itself and deeply appreciated by Muslim and Christian alike. Ninety per cent of the students in the Catholic schools in the South of Lebanon are Muslims; in other parts of the country where the population still live in mixed villages the schools reflect that religious mix. In recent discussions with the Ministry of Education concerning the post-war economic fate of the private schools it was not only the Catholic schools which took a stand, they invited the Muslim directors of schools and the Protestants to join them in the dialogue with the Minister. A teacher of Arabic in our own school in Beirut is now giving classes in pedagogy to Muslim teachers in Tripoli during the Summer holidays, and at their invitation. These are only some examples of a continuing commitment to the cultural development of the country which the Churches are consciously engaged in. There are some very harrowing statistics to share with you about the social reality of Lebanon now that the war is over. Six per cent of the population (and it was never a large population at the best of times) have been killed. I actually do not know the much higher figure of those who have been crippled and maimed, 35 per cent of the people left Lebanon and over 50 per cent of these were Christians. Thirty per cent have been displaced within Lebanon and 2/3 of these are Christians. Being displaced means losing your home, your land, your possessions. We should remember that people in the villages of the Middle East do not keep their wealth in bank accounts but in their land. This is part of the tragedy of Palestine also. You cannot just replace land which has been in someone's family for generations, even with financial compensation. It is a wholly other way of dealing with heritage. Today 1/3 of the Lebanese live below the poverty line. The Middle Class has practically disappeared. There are the very, very rich and the poor, some of whom are now very poor. Two aspects of this poverty are a lack of housing, because over 150,000 homes were badly damaged or destroyed during the war, and the cost of medical care. The speed with which the Government can deal with these problems is totally inadequate to alleviate the suffering of the people. In many areas where the land is owned by the churches (we call this land a waqf) there are projects in hand using it to help housing projects with co-operatives or other means of payment so that families can afford to house or re-house themselves with dignity. In the area of health as is the case with education, the traditional role of the Churches and especially through the contribution being made by religious, especially the women, is enormous. There are over 400 religious women nursing and running hospitals in that tiny country. Sensitive to the suffering which is due to a lack of a State Social Security Scheme the sisters themselves set up a "Mutuelle" Medical Insurance with the explicit aim of being of service to the poorest. Their hospitals went into the system and the religious communities also, paying the highest tarrif so that families can benefit from a lower one. The Churches insistently, and unitedly call to the consciences of those in the medical sector to heed the needs of the poor and those in the Government to honour their responsibilities. Almost everything which has been mentioned as part of the mission of the Churches in Lebanon could in fact be true of the mission of the Churches anywhere in the world. Yet we cannot expect of the Church where she is a struggling minority with little or no voice, as is the case in Pakistan for example, to assume this mission, especially that of conviviality between two equal partners. Neither can we expect this of the Church where she is driven underground by persecution from totalitarian regimes. What the Churches in Lebanon have to offer is their long tradition of and practice at the art of conviviality; their centuries' long work of constructing a mosaic of religious traditions and making from that mosaic an environment which is good for people to live in. It is true that the vision of this conviviality has often been clouded, if not almost totally obscured, and the last round of war in Lebanon was in some way about doing just that. Yet the Church in Lebanon has remained faithful to that vision, even if we, who lived in Lebanon during those years did not hear the message or see that the vision was being preserved. It would be less than honest to leave the impression that all was well or indeed is well with the mosaic. It is not easy to accept this way of living. The Church, whatever else is true of it as the Body of Christ, is also The Pilgrim People of God and like the prototype in the Old Testament, there are always problems to be faced as we march towards the Promised Land. We spoke earlier of a plethora of Churches and, especially in Lebanon where the Christian population is proportionally more numerous than elsewhere in the region, the difficulty of territorial rights is a particularly tender spot. Rivalry is not unknown between the members of the hierarchy and sometimes there has been what one can only interpret as lack of charity. The Synod was not insisted upon by the Pope in order to congratulate the Churches in Lebanon; one of the primary reasons was to "begin a period of deep reflection in order to promote spiritual renewal'' (Synod for Lebanon "Instrumentum laboris'', n. 1). The aim was to undertake a journey of prayer, penance and conversion which would allow the Catholic Churches to examine themselves before God concerning their fidelity to the Gospel Message and their effective commitment to his service. Cardinal Schotte, who is the Secretary General for the various Synods, mentioned one day during a session that the response of the people of Lebanon to the Lineamenta was greater proportionally than the response of any group for any Synod. From where I stood during that period of preparation I can say that we did take it very seriously and worked very hard to respond to the call for this examination of conscience and consciousness of who we were as Church in Lebanon. At all levels, from Patriarchal Assemblies, to parishes, to Bishops' Conferences, to schools and colleges, there was an eagerness to be involved. (We can remember that at this time too the religious communities were also preparing for the Synod on the Consecrated Life. We had so many meetings it was impressive). At the end of the Synod the "Message" expressed the "Faith" and the "Hope", of the Churches. It is also the fruit of a humbling experience of reality. "To hope means to commit ourselves: therefore let us be converted and live the unity of the Church; let us tear down the walls of our communities and strengthen the unity of our people. In solidarity let us place ourselves at the service of our brothers" (Synod for Lebanon "Message", n. 3). To end this reflection without referring to one of the many places in the Scriptures where Lebanon is mentioned would be unforgivable. So I turn to the Pophet Ezekiel and find this: "The Lord Yahweh says this: 'From the top of the cedar, from the highest branch, I will take a shoot and plant it myself on a very high mountain .... It will sprout branches and bear fruit, and become a noble cedar. Every kind of bird will live beneath it, every winged creature live in the shade of its branches, and every tree of the field will learn that I, Yahweh, am the one who stunts tall trees and makes low ones grow, who withers green trees and makes the withered green. I, Yahweh have spoken and I will do it'" (Ez 17:22-24). Whatever else we may say about the mission of the Churches in Lebanon, we can only be grateful for the example of honesty and humility in their willingness to undertake their rather painful self-evaluation, their rather necessary examination of conscience and their fidelity to their vocation to live as part of a mosaic of peoples, faiths and cultures so that the rest of us may have hope and confidence that this is really the way forward for humanity.
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