"We the Catholics..."

Another fascinating proclamation of faith that starts with: "We the Catholics...", written by an Greek Antiochian born BEFORE the Melkite union of 1724.

I wish I could tell you more about each of these documents, their full names, content, authors. Since many of them are included in either my thesis or future articles, it would give away my work to other researchers. Unfortunately, you will have to wait for this material to be published or otherwise deemed "not-publishing-material" and thus shareable.

However, here is the point of the post:

I am currently reading whatever literature is out there on the Melkite union. I notice two things, as a very junior and cautious researcher.

1) It is dominated in the Anglophone world by the Orthodox narrative. There is almost no trace of the Melkite one. I think this is because there are far more Byzantine Orthodox than Catholics, and they have far more institutions and researchers.

2) Note that I say "Orthodox narrative" and not "scholars of the Orthodox faith". I do not care what someone's faith is in academia, as long as their work is nuanced. However, much of the work produced, from an academic point of view, raises major questions in my mind about gaps, bias, and missing context or information that not only nuances but contradicts many of the claims. (And this is being addressed in my own thesis, by providing arguments from other scholars to undermine the validity of those claims). My concern is the work seems blatantly biased to me, rather than a failure to achieve a required nuance. I am genuinely surprised that many of these books or articles are even published!

Conclusion: We need a boost in academic interest in the Melkite Greek Catholic Church. We need to neither "reinvent" nor "fight" for our identity, but to simply study it. The two points I mentioned above have resulted in a shocking undermining of our communal pride. We have been made to feel (by others or by circumstances) like the unwanted child of some sort of sinful union, and that we constantly need an Orthodox stamp of approval on our identity, liturgical practices, and theological formulations for them to be correct and faithful to Tradition. Instead, we should come to the full awareness of the beautiful gift we are to the Universal Church. The ignorance of Melkite Catholics (and subsequently all Catholics who otherwise would know very little of us), added to the dominating Orthodox narrative, has made it such that not much good was taught both to and of us. If we don't know who we are, where we come from, and why we took that journey, we will accept any claim made about us, no matter how inaccurately negative and demeaning.

Reading the Antiochian Orthodox Patriarch's speech was such an awakening to me personally, because I realised that:

1) As a researcher (I won't dare call myself a scholar till I publish my thesis), there wasn't even ONE paragraph in that speech that I personally respect, both historically and factually speaking.

2) Melkite Catholic Bishop Haddad was absolutely right: "We need to realise that we are not the same as the Orthodox. We, unlike them, have the added experience of 300 years of union with the Catholic Church, which they lack."

That is not our shame. That is our pride. It is time we take control of our own story.

(Picture Credit: Hill Museum Archives)