Maronite Christian
A Christian
community of Arabs in Lebanon, in communion with the Pope. By emigration
they have spread to Cyprus, Palestine, Egypt, South America, and the
United States and now number about one million. Their liturgy [said mainly
in liturgical Syriac] is of the Antiochene type, with innovations taken
from the Latin rite. Their ecclesiastical head, under the pope, is called
patriarch of Antioch; he lives in Lebanon. As in other Eastern rites, the
parish priests are usually married. The Maronites have been a distinct
community since the 7th century, when they separated in the doctrinal
dispute over Monotheletism; they returned to communion with the pope in
the 12th century In the 19th century, massacres of Maronites by the Druze
brought French intervention; this gave France its modern hold in Lebanon
and Syria. Besides the Maronites there are two other groups in Syria in
communion with the Pope-the Melchites and the Syrian Catholics.
Where does Maronite originate from?
After the
Ascension of Christ, the disciples went, as commanded, all over the world,
teaching the Gospel, baptizing in the name of Trinity, and founding new
churches. One of those places was Antioch in Syria, where, as noted
in The Acts of the Apostles, the followers of Jesus were first called
Christians. These churches, founded locally, used the local
languages and, in addition to baptism, celebrated the Eucharist as Christ
has commanded.
These churches kept in contact with each other through
visits and correspondence, the most notable correspondent and visitor was
Apostle Paul. When St. Paul was returning to Jerusalem from his
third apostolic journey, he found a thriving Christian community at Tyre
in Lebanon and stayed there for a week. This shows how busy the
early Christians were in founding local churches. Some were under the
authority and direction of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, some under the
Patriarch of Antioch, and later, under the Patriarchs of Constantinople
and Rome. Just as the first Disciples acknowledged the primacy of
Peter, the Patriarchs generally acknowledged the primacy of his successor,
later known as the Pope. Today, our church looks to the Patriarch of
Antioch and all the East, who, in turn, is subservient to the Pope of
Rome. Our present patriarch, Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir, has been elevated to
the rank of Cardinal by Pope John Paul II.
A very saintly man named Maron decided to devote his
life to God in solitude of a mountain. This was some time prior to
the middle of the fifth century A.D. That much is known because his
biography was written in 440 A.D. His solitude did not last
long, for all kinds of people came to him to be cured, both physically and
spiritually. He re-dedicated a nearby pagan temple to God, and spent
much time preaching the gospel and converting pagans. On account of his
miracles and saintly life, he was canonized a saint. Because of the
intensity of his teaching and the example if his holy life, many converts
organized themselves into monasteries and called themselves
'Maronite" to show the ideal which they attempted to follow.
The earliest ones were trained and directed by St. Maron himself.
Among those he trained were St. Simon Stylites and St. Eusebius. His
influence spread over a large area of Asia Minor, including Lebanon and
Syria. It is no surprise that many Christians called themselves
"Maronites."
In the early days of the spread of Christianity,
theological questions were often fought over wither bitter intensity.
In the years preceding 451 A.D., many Christians pondered over the nature
of Christ. Was he God? Some Christians reasoned that the
divine nature of Christ was so powerful that it annihilated the
human. They were called the "Monophysites," meaning
"one nature". The Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon in
451 decreed that monophysitism was a heresy and that Christ was both fully
human and fully God. That is the doctrine of the Catholic Church to
this day. However, after the Council, some of the monophysites
attempted to coerce the others to believe in the single nature of Christ,
and to prove their point, they slew 350 Maronite monks and wounded an
equal number. Such is the stuff from which unyielding martyrs are
made, and Chalcedonianism and Maronitism became, and remain, synonymous.
The Superior of the Monastery of St. Maron addressed an appeal to Pope St.
Hormizdas, relating the event and asking him to rise up and defend them.
The letter is addressed to "Hormizdas, the Universal Patriarch, who
sits in the See of Peter, the Prince of the Apostles."
That was the first document showing the fact that the
Pope was acknowledged as the supreme pontiff. During later years,
there were occasional strains in the relationship between the Maronites
and the Roman pontiff. Some of them were caused by the language
barriers: neither side understood the other. Also in those
days, travel and correspondence were fraught with many dangers and delays.
In order to cultivate better correspondence between the Church of Rome and
the churches of the East, two successive popes, Paul III and Pius IV, to
found a Maronite College in Rome, where Maronite priests could study
Western languages and liturgy. Finally, on July 5, 1584, Pope
Gregory XIII, acting on further instance of Patriarch Sarkis, founded the
Maronite college of Rome, where Maronite priests could study.
Sunni Muslim
The largest
division of Islam. Sunni Islam is the heir to the early central Islamic
state, in its acknowledgement of the legitimacy of the order of succession
of the first four caliphs, in contrast to the Shi'a rejection of the first
three as usurpers. It can also be seen as the aggregate of the adherents
to the four extant schools of religious law [fiqh], the Hanafi,
Maliki, Shafii, and Hanbali schools. With no centralized clerical
institution, Sunni Islam should be understood as an umbrella identity,
grouping close to 90% of the approximately one billion Muslims, stretching
geographically from the Indonesian islands to the African steppes, through
the Indian subcontinent, central Asia, and the Arab world, and
ideologically from ecstatic Sufism to the puritanic literalism of the
Wahhabis and Salafias, through scholasticism and secularism. The
scholastic formulation, the most constant expression of Sunni Islam
throughout its history and geographic span, proposes the relation of the
human being with the Divine as essentially individual, with no
intermediaries. In actual practice, however, religious scholars [ulama],
together with mystic shaykhs, pious persons, and popular saints [awliya],
are often recognized as enjoying a religious authority of varying degrees.
The Sunni theoretical characterization of the Prophet Muhammad as a mere
executor of Divine will has not precluded the intensive devotional rituals
directed to his person that flourish in a diversity of forms across the
Sunni world. The prime center of scholastic learning in Sunni Islam is the
mosque-university of al-Azhar in Cairo.
Shi'a Muslim
The second largest branch of
Islam, Shiites currently account for 10-15% of all Muslims. Shi'a Islam
originated as a political movement supporting Ali [cousin and son-in-law
of Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam] as the rightful leader of the Islamic
state. The legitimacy of this claim, as initially envisioned by Ali's
supporters, was based on Muhammad's alleged designation of Ali as his
successor, Ali's righteousness, and tribal customs, given his close
relation to the Prophet. Ali's right passed with his death in 661 to his
son Hasan, who chose not to claim it, and after Hasan's death, to Husayn,
Ali's younger son. The evolution into a religious formulation is believed
to have been initiated with the martyrdom of Husayn in 680 at Karbala [today in
Iraq], a traumatic event still observed with fervor in today's
Shi'a world on the 10th of the month of Muharram of the Muslim lunar year.
The Shi'a focus on the person of the Imam made the
community susceptible to division on the issue of succession. The early
Shiites, a recognized, if often persecuted, opposition to the central
government, soon divided into several factions. The majority of the
Shiites today are Twelve-Imam Shiites [notably in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon,
Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, India, and Pakistan]. Others are Zaydis [in
Yemen], and the Ismailis [in India, Pakistan, Syria, and Yemen]. The
central belief of Twelve-Imam Shiites is the occultation [or disappearance
from view] of the 12th Imam. The 12th Imam is considered to be the only
legitimate and just ruler, and therefore no political action taken in his
absence can be fruitful. While this position has provided Shiite clerics
with the means to survive an often hostile environment, the need for an
alternative formulation capable of framing political militancy has
fostered activist movements within the Shiite tradition, occasionally
leading to dissidence: see Babism.
The religious authority of the Shi'a clerics is derived
from their role as deputies of the absent 12th Imam; they are as such the
recipients of the khums religious tax, a source of substantial
economic autonomy. Shiite clerics are often refered to as mullahs
and mujtahids. The most prominent clerical position is that of marja
al-taqlid. The Shiite clergy does not, however, have a formal
hierarchy. The honorific ayat Allah or ayatollah
[sign of God] is a modern title that does not correspond to any
established religious function.
In Iran, the Safavid adoption of a Shiite state
religion led to the expansion of clerical involvement in public life,
under the tutelage of the political elite. The threat of European
colonialism in the 19th century presented the opportunity for Shiite
activist thought to gain impetus. The attempt of the Pahlevi monarchy in
the 20th century to curtail the influence of the clerics further
strengthened clerical political militancy. Benefitting from a ubiquitous
clerical network, and enjoying a credibility unblemished by the corruption
within the autocratic regime, Ruhollah Khomeini served as the culmination
of the reintegration of activism into the Shiite mainstream. With the
Iranian revolution in 1979, the Shiite activist formulation progressed
toward stressing the nonsectarian pan-Islamic character of its ideology.
Islam, it suggests, should be lived as a tool for the empowerment of the
oppressed, not merely as a set of devotional practices; hence the Iranian
support for the Palestinian, Afghan, and Lebanese causes.
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Greek Orthodox
A community of Christian churches whose chief strength is in the Middle East
and E Europe. Their members number over 250 million worldwide. The
Orthodox agree doctrinally in accepting as ecumenical the first seven
councils and in rejecting the jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome [the pope]. This repudiation of the papal claims is the principal point
dividing the Orthodox from Roman Catholics. Eastern Christians who have
returned to communion with the pope are called Eastern Catholics, or
Uniates; in every respect apart from this obedience to Rome, they resemble
their Orthodox counterparts. This use of the terms Catholic
[obeying the pope] and Orthodox [belonging to one of the Orthodox
churches] is not technical, for both groups call themselves both Catholic
and Orthodox. The word Orthodox became current at the time of the
defeat [753] of iconoclasm in Constantinople. Orthodox acceptance of the
seven councils resulted in the exclusion from their communion, on grounds
of heresy, of the Nestorian, Jacobite, Coptic, and Armenian churches; it
also involves holding a sacramental doctrine of grace ex opere operato
and of veneration of the Virgin Mary, two points differentiating the
Orthodox from Protestants.
Druze
A religious
community of Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan, with important overseas
branches in the Americas and Australia. The religious leadership prefers
the name Muwahhidun [Unitarians]. Their religion started in the
9th Century CE as a break-away group from Islam. Darazi [a preacher] and
Hamza ibn Ali ibn Ahmad [a Persian mystic] were instrumental in
popularizing the religion. Darazi announced that God had manifested
himself in human form as al-Hakim Bi-amr Allah, [985 or 996-1021 CE], a
Muslim caliph from Cairo Egypt. The Druze now believe that Darazi
distorted the message; he was, in essence, excommunicated and later
executed.
The concealment of the substance of the faith is a
religious obligation, marriages outside the faith are forbidden, and
initiation from lay status [jahil, ignorant] to clerical [aqil,
knower] is restricted. The Druze formed principalities that fought the
Crusaders and secured considerable independence under nominal Mamluk and
Ottoman rule. They currently total about 200 to 300 thousand members.
Armenian Catholic
An autonomous Christian church, sometimes also called the Gregorian Church.
Its head, a primate of honor only, is the catholicos of Yejmiadzin,
Armenia; Karekin II became catholics in 1999. His rule is shared by the
patriarchs of Jerusalem and Constantinople and by the catholicos of Sis [Cilicia].
In general, Armenian practices resemble those of other Eastern churches;
the priests may marry and communion is distributed in both bread and wine,
although the use of unleavened bread is a Western practice. The liturgical
language is classical Armenian. Armenia became Christian at the end of the
3d century through the missionary work of St. Gregory the Illuminator. In
the next century the young church made itself autonomous, apparently
because of the efforts of the metropolitan bishop of Caesarea, St. Basil
the Great, to impose certain reforms. After the Council of Chalcedon the
Armenians rejected the orthodox position; this adoption, at least tacit,
of Monophysitism completed the isolation of the Armenian Church from the
rest of Christendom. Part of the Armenian Church reunited with Rome
temporarily in the 13th and 14th century, and missionary work by the Roman
Church in the 14th century resulted in many converts. In 1740 the Catholic
Armenian rite was officially organized, in communion with the pope but
under its own patriarch. Today there are Armenian churches in every
continent.
Alawites
Islamic sect,
stemming from the Twelve Shiites. They live in Syria, mainly in the
mountains near the city of Latakia, but many also live in the cities of
Hama and Homs, and in recent decades there has been a migration to
Damascus.
Their
exact number is not known, but estimated to be between 1,5 and 1,8
million. Most of them live from agriculture, but the Alawites are also
central in the leadership of Syria, as the president Bashar al-Assad is an
Alawite [similar to his late father, Hafez].
Their
name is a recent one — earlier they were known as Nusairis, Namiriya or
Ansariyya. The names 'Nusairi' and 'Namiriya' came from their first
theologian, Muhammadu bni Nusairi n-Namiri. The name 'Ansariyya' came from
the mountain region in Syria where this sect lived.
Protestant
A form of Christian faith and practice that originated
with the principles of the Reformation. The term is derived from the Protestatio
delivered by a minority of delegates against the [1529] Diet of Speyer,
which passed legislation against the Lutherans. Since that time the term
has been used in many different senses, but not as the official title of
any church until it was assumed [1783] by the Protestant Episcopal Church [since 1967 simply the Episcopal
Church] in the United States, the
American branch of the Anglican Communion. Protestantism as a general term
is now used in contradistinction to the other major Christian faiths,
Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.
Roman Catholic
Christian church headed by the Pope, the bishop of
Rome. Its commonest title in official use is Holy Catholic and Apostolic
Church. "Roman Catholic" is a 19th-century British coinage and
merely serves to distinguish that church from other churches that are
"Catholic." The term "Roman Church," when used
officially, means only the archdiocese of Rome. Roman Catholics may be
simply defined as Christians in communion with the Pope.
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