Melkite
Super-Heroes: Patriarch Maximos IV &
Archbishop Joseph Tawil
By Fr James K. Graham
Good
morning! When I heard that the topic for
today was “Super-Heroes of the Faith, Past and Present,” two names almost
immediately came to mind as super-heroes of the Melkite Greek Catholic
Church. They belong neither to the
distant past nor to the immediate present, but to the 20th century,
a time of extraordinary change in the Catholic Church and in the whole
Christian world.
My
super-heroes, Patriarch Maximos IV Sayegh and Archbishop Joseph Tawil,
participated in the Second Vatican Council.
Patriarch Maximos IV represented all of Byzantine Christianity at the
Council, not just his own Church, not just Eastern Catholics. Greek Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras
of Constantinople told him, “You were our voice at the Council.” Archbishop Joseph shaped the Melkite Church
in the USA. He founded parishes,
diocesan structures, a seminary, a religious education program, and lay
people’s organizations. He pursued good
relations with the Orthodox Churches and with the vastly larger Roman Catholic
Church.
It
can be argued that Patriarch Maximos IV changed the Roman Catholic Church. Archbishop Joseph certainly changed the
Melkite Catholic Church in America.
What is the Melkite Greek Catholic
Church?
But
before I talk about them, I have to deal with the question that is probably in
most of your minds: what in the world is
the Melkite Greek Catholic Church?
Most
people think they know what the Catholic Church is. It’s the Church of Rome; its headquarters is
the Vatican; its head is the Pope.
And
when most people hear “Greek” and “Church” together, they also hear “Orthodox.”
Even when it’s not spoken.
And
the closest most people have come to hearing the word “Melkite” is the name of
a mineral: “malachite.”
So,
let us unpack the name of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church is not just the Roman Church, but
also many other ancient Catholic Churches:
Byzantine-rite Churches from the Middle East and Eastern Europe;
Syriac-rite Churches from Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and India; Armenian-rite
Churches from Armenia and Lebanon; Coptic-rite Churches from Egypt and
Ethiopia.
They
have their own liturgies, theological traditions, languages, and
hierarchies—united to Rome, in communion with Rome, but not Roman. They do not count many members, and many saw
their numbers diminished greatly by Islamic or Communist domination in their
native lands.
One
of these Eastern Churches is the Melkite Greek Catholic Church.
Greek was the language of the Roman
Empire in the East—Greece,
what is now Turkey, Syria, Mesopotamia, Palestine, and Northern Africa. The Melkite Greek Catholic Church originated
in Syria, in Antioch, where, the Acts of the Apostles tell us, the followers of
Christ were first called Christians. At
first, the Christians of Antioch were mostly Greek-speaking Gentile converts,
but some Aramaic-speakers also adopted the new faith. Christianity spread throughout the Roman
Empire, despite many persecutions and martyrdoms. Finally, early in the 4th Century,
Emperor Constantine made Christianity legal.
Soon after, it became the official religion of the Empire.
The name “Melkite” came to the Church
of Antioch in the
wake of the Fourth Ecumenical Council, held in Chalcedon in 451. The council affirmed the orthodox teaching that
Christ is one person—the second member of the Trinity—with two unconfused
natures, divine and human.
Those
who disagreed with the council’s decision—the so-called Jacobite Church of
Syria, the Coptic Church of Egypt, and the Armenian Church—derisively labeled
the adherents of the orthodox doctrine “Melkites,” or “followers of the
emperor,” from melko, the Syriac word
for “king,” because the emperor stood at the head of all the Christians who
accepted the council. Later, Melkite
Christians reinterpreted the name to indicate that they followed the King of
Creation. Thus, a term of insult became
a badge of honor.
The
history of the Melkite Church is one of domination, subjugation, and
struggle. By the middle of the 7th
Century, Islam had spread from Saudi Arabia through Palestine, Egypt, and Syria. The Western European Crusades to recapture
the Holy Land from Muslim rule devastated the Christians of the East. The Western Christians refused to acknowledge
and respect the liturgical, theological, and hierarchical ways of the
East. It’s no wonder that Eastern Christians
still have a hard time trusting the West.
The
Byzantine Empire re-conquered Antioch in 960 and lost it to the Crusaders in
1098. The patriarch had to seek refuge
in Constantinople and his successors resided there until the end of the 13th
century. Influenced by living in the
imperial capital, by that time the Melkites had adopted Byzantine liturgical
practice, although retaining some distinctive Antiochian features.
When
the West and the East—the Church of Rome and the Church of Constantinople—split
in the 11th century into the Catholic Church and the Orthodox
Church, the Melkite Church of Antioch, under the influence of Constantinople,
also became Orthodox, no longer in communion with Rome.
In
the late 14th century, Damascus replaced Antioch as the seat of the Melkite
patriarchate.
Under
the Ottomans, the Middle East opened somewhat to trade with Europe, especially
Italy and France. Along with the
merchants came missionaries. They could
not proselytize the Muslim population, so they worked among the
Christians. And they were welcomed,
because they brought a level of education that had been unavailable for
centuries. Inevitably, they became
agents of what we would now call “cultural imperialism.” Along with scholarship in languages,
mathematics, and science, they brought studies in philosophy, theology,
scripture, and so on—all from their Western perspective. In this way, many Orthodox Christian
churchmen and lay people began to look favorably upon reunion with the Church
of Rome.
In
1724, Patriarch Athanasios III died. As
was the custom of the time, the clergy and people of Damascus elected Patriarch
Cyril VI, who favored reunion with Rome.
The Ecumenical Patriarch intervened and appointed the monk Sylvester as
Patriarch of Antioch. From that time,
the Melkite Church of Antioch has been split into Catholic and Orthodox
branches—the Melkite Greek Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church of
Antioch (which is called Antiochian Orthodox in the US).
Melkite
Patriarch Gregory II Youssef spoke strongly at the First Vatican Council
(1869-1871) in favor of better relations between the Catholic and Orthodox
Churches. He correctly argued that the
declaration of papal infallibility would deepen the divisions between Catholics
and Orthodox, and voted against it.
Later, under pressure, he signed the decree, with the provision that the
“rights and privileges of the Eastern patriarchs” be respected.
The
first Melkite immigrants arrived in the USA toward the end of the 19th
century. By 1900 at least two parishes
had been established, in Manhattan and in Lawrence, MA. When communities wanted to start a church,
they would write to a bishop in the Old Country to send them a priest. The USA had no Melkite bishop until 1966 and
about 15 Melkite parishes, mostly in the Northeast and the Midwest, with
isolated outposts such as Birmingham, AL, and Los Angeles.
In
1959, the Melkite Catholic Church had 30 bishops, all of them in the Middle
East except for one in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Although numerically small, the Melkite Church had people and parishes
around the world, in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Iraq, Egypt, Sudan,
Europe, North and South America, Australia, and New Zealand.
Patriarch Maximos IV Sayegh
If
Pope St John XXIII had not called the Second Vatican Council, I would not be
here today to talk about Patriarch Maximos IV as a super-hero of my faith. I would probably never have heard of him,
would not have joined the Melkite Church, and very likely would not be a
priest.
The
story of Maximos IV cannot be separated from the story of the Council.
Maximos
Sayegh was born on 10 April 1878 in Aleppo, Syria, and ordained priest
on 17 September 1905. In 1919 he was elected
Metropolitan Archbishop
of Tyre, Lebanon.
He visited the Melkite communities in the US in 1921 at the request of
the Melkite hierarchy and the Vatican.
During this trip he facilitated the formation of parishes in Detroit and
in Worcester, MA, and served liturgies in Minneapolis, Duluth, and other
“western” cities, raising awareness of conditions in the Middle East following
the end of the Ottoman Empire and World War I. In 1933 he was named Metropolitan
Archbishop of Beirut. When Patriarch Cyril IX died in 1947, the Synod
of Bishops of the Melkite Church elected Maximos Sayegh as Patriarch
of Antioch. Starting in 1948, Patriarch Maximos convened
annual synods of his bishops. He
returned to the USA in 1955, making the first visit to the New World by a
Melkite Patriarch. Maximos IV died in 1969
at the age of 89.
Maximos IV benefited from
the existence among his clergy in Egypt of what was called “the Cairo School,”
which studied and discussed the authentic traditions of the Church and sought
ways to restore them. Among the members
of the Cairo School were Archbishop Peter Medawar, Archbishop Elias Zoghby,
Archbishop George Hakim (later Patriarch Maximos V), Archbishop Joseph Tawil,
and Fr Orestes Kerame. Apparently, their
influence revolutionized the thinking of Patriarch Maximos IV and set him on
the course of advocating for the Eastern Churches at Vatican II.
The experience of being
Orthodox in communion with Rome, or Catholics of Orthodox tradition, gave the
Melkites a unique perspective on the Universal Church. They saw the damage that Latinization had
done to their Church and to national or regional or ethnic variations in the
Church through increased centralization, rigidity, and legalism. And they saw how the whole Church could
benefit from their experience and perspective.
So, when Pope John XXIII
announced the Council and asked the bishops of the world to submit ideas for
consideration, the Melkite bishops met in a special synod in August 1959 to
draft a document outlining their collective concerns and proposals for the Council.
They saw their primary
mission as working for Christian unity, especially with the Orthodox
Churches. They advocated inviting the
Orthodox to the Council, direct dialog between the Churches, creation of a
commission for unity, and reforms to insure effective catholicity in the
Church.
They also recommended a
number of specific actions, including the following:
1. Finding a balance of power between
Pope and bishops;
2. Relaxing rules against communicatio in sacris (any form of
praying with Orthodox);
3. Revising seminary training to give
greater emphasis to the Fathers of the Church and contemporary philosophical
ideas;
4. Considering ordination of married men
as priests, according to Eastern tradition;
5. Adapting prayer and worship so that
all the people could understand and live them, while adhering to authentic
tradition;
6. De-emphasizing liturgical differences
from the Orthodox;
7. Agreeing on one universal date for
Pascha;
8. Revising the Code of Canon Law for the
Eastern Catholic Churches in an authentically Eastern way;
9. Entitling patriarchs to vote in papal
elections;
10. Reforming the Roman Curia in the
direction of decentralization, internationalization, and universality; and
11. Reaffirming the declarations of
earlier councils and popes protecting the rights and privileges of the
patriarchs and the Eastern Churches.
The first impact of the
Melkites hit even before the conciliar discussions began. At the opening of the Council in October
1962, Maximos was 84 years old. Keenly
aware of his position as successor to St Peter as Bishop of Antioch—a see older
than that of Rome—and determined to fight for the rights and privileges of all
the patriarchs and their non-Roman Churches, Patriarch Maximos objected to the
rules of precedence that set all the cardinals of the Roman Church ahead of the
patriarchs in rank.
Historically, as
established at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, the Church had five patriarchs,
the bishops of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, in
that order of honor. The cardinals were
a much later development, a kind of late medieval court around the Pope in Rome
that over the years grew in power and status, running the government of the
Roman Church and electing popes.
So Patriarch Maximos IV
refused to walk in the Council’s opening procession, to protest the improper
and demeaning order of precedence that essentially identified of the Church of
Rome as the Catholic Church.
In the second year of the
Council, the new Pope, Paul VI, addressed this problem by providing the
patriarchs with a special seating section, facing the cardinals across the
presider’s table at the front of St Peter’s Basilica.
The second impact of the
Melkites came during the debate on the Liturgy.
The whole Council was to be conducted in Latin, even though many bishops
could barely read and write Latin, much less speak it or understand it. Patriarch Maximos delivered his intervention
in French. This speech laid the
foundation for the changes that have made Catholic worship accessible and understandable
to millions of people around the world.
His Beatitude said, “Without
doubt Christ spoke to his contemporaries in their own language. He used a language which was understandable
to all his hearers, namely Aramaic, when He celebrated the first eucharistic
sacrifice. The apostles and disciples
acted likewise. It would never have
occurred to them that the celebrant in a Christian assembly should read the
passages of scripture, should sing the psalms, should preach or break the
bread, using a different language than that of the congregation.
“The Latin language is
dead, but the Church remains alive. So,
too, the language which mediates grace and the Holy Spirit must also be a
living language since it is intended for men and not for angels. No language can be untouchable.”
In virtually all of their
interventions, the Melkites pushed the Council Fathers to consider how their
words, actions, and decisions would appear to non-Catholics—the “separated
brethren.” Since the time of Vatican II,
Catholic and Orthodox theologians in the US and internationally have conducted
ongoing dialogues on issues of mutual interest.
The Melkites insisted on
the understanding that bishops do not have authority as delegates of the Pope,
but because of their ordination as successors to the Apostles, who were called
by Christ as a body with Peter as its head.
The Melkite bishops pushed for the establishment of national bishops’
conferences with decision-making power, like the bishops’ synods of the Eastern
Churches. The Melkites proposed a
universal College of Bishops to advise the Pope and run the Church. The Melkites wanted a complete reorganization
of the Curia, to make it less secretive, more responsive to the local churches,
and more international in membership.
Despite some changes, such as the establishment of national bishops’
conferences and the Synod of Bishops, too much power is still centralized in
Rome, far from direct knowledge and understanding of local issues.
Even before the Council,
Patriarch Maximos wrote many articles and made speeches at conferences,
enhancing the profile of his Church while promoting Christian unity, especially
between Catholics and Orthodox. During
the Council, the Melkite’s lodgings were a popular place for bishops and
reporters to meet and discuss issues.
Talking to journalists was a good way of making sure ideas and proposals
would get out into public consciousness.
Hosting dinners and receptions enabled bishops and their advisers to
consider ways to advance their view in the Council.
The Catholic Church as we
know it today comes from Vatican II, where Patriarch Maximos IV and his Melkite
bishops constituted only about one percent of all the bishops, but had an
impact far beyond their numbers.
Archbishop
Joseph Tawil
If Patriarch Maximos IV
was a remote cause of my becoming a Melkite priest, Archbishop Joseph Tawil was
a much more immediate cause.
What attracted me to the
Melkite Church was the beautiful and accessible liturgy, the deep mystical
theology expressed largely in poetic language, and the welcoming hospitality of
the people. Much of the credit for making
the Melkite Church in the USA accessible and welcoming to non-Middle Easterners
such as myself goes to Archbishop Joseph.
Joseph Tawil was born in
Damascus, Syria, on 25 December 1913. He
was ordained priest in 1936, having studied at St Anne’s Seminary in
Jerusalem. For the next 23 years he
served in Cairo at the Patriarchal College.
In 1954, Maximos IV appointed him Patriarchal Vicar in Alexandria. Named Patriarchal Vicar in Damascus in 1960,
he was consecrated titular Archbishop of Myra in Lycia, the historical see of
St Nicholas the Wonderworker, just in time for the opening of the Second
Vatican Council, where he made several important interventions.
The first Melkite bishop
in the United States died suddenly in 1968.
In 1969 the Melkite Synod elected Archbishop Joseph as the next bishop. In 1976, the Melkite exarchate in the US (a
sort of pre-diocese) became a full-fledged eparchy or diocese, with Archbishop Joseph
as its head. He led the American Melkite
Church until his retirement in 1990, and died 17 February 1999.
Archbishop Joseph arrived
to find a Church of 23 parishes and about 23,000 registered members. Bishop Justin had not been able to accomplish
much in his short episcopacy, so the job of building a Local Church had to
begin essentially from scratch.
From the start, Archbishop
Joseph had a vision for his new American Melkite Church. He understood that a strictly ethnic Church
would neither serve its own people well nor contribute much to the larger
society. And he believed that the
Melkite Church must reclaim its authentic Byzantine Tradition and reject all
forms of Latinization. He said, “A
Latinized Eastern Church cannot bear anything but false witness.” In reclaiming its authentic tradition, the
Melkite Church would have to seek good relations with its sister Orthodox
Churches and participate in the work for Christian unity.
For Christmas in 1970
Archbishop Joseph wrote a pastoral letter entitled “The Courage to be
Ourselves.” It set forth his vision and
remains a foundational document for the American Melkite Church. In clear, emphatic, and understandable
language (a rare accomplishment for a bishop, some people might say!), he emphasizes
the importance of the Byzantine theological and liturgical and ecclesiastical
heritage, lays out the Melkites’ mission to Roman Catholics and to the
Orthodox, warns of the dangers of a “Ghetto Mentality” closed in on itself and
of assimilation that devalues our own identity, and outlines plans for the
future.
In fact, what did
Archbishop Joseph accomplish in 20 years as eparch? He oversaw the establishment of about 20
additional parishes and missions. He
established a seminary and approved an arrangement for our seminarians to study
at and receive their degrees from Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology,
an unprecedented ecumenical approach that benefited both Catholics and Orthodox
by breaking down preconceptions through mutual cooperation. He founded the first deacon-formation program
in the United States and began ordaining married men as deacons, giving new
life to an ancient ministry. He
instituted a Diocesan Pastoral Council and mandated pastoral councils in all
parishes. He created an office of
religious education and initiated cooperative religious education efforts among
the Eastern Catholic dioceses in the US.
He encouraged the formation of the National Association of Melkite Youth
for teens, the National Association Melkite Women with the specific mission of
supporting vocations to priesthood, and the Melkite Association of Young
Adults.
Archbishop Joseph criss-crossed
the country to visit parishes, give lectures, participate in meetings; though
he was a brilliant scholar, he was also an approachable pastor. He understood the value of publicity and
visibility. When he attended the
semi-annual meetings of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, he made a point
of wearing the distinctive dress of a Byzantine bishop and sitting in the front
row, so as to stand out among the hundreds of Roman bishops in their black
suits.
Perhaps most importantly
for me, Archbishop Joseph insisted that the Melkite Church in the US must be an
American church. He published
translations of all the services of the church into English with Byzantine
music in Western notation. He welcomed
both Middle Eastern and American men into the seminary, where he made a point
of coming to teach, to pray, and to give personal encouragement. His vision and his work made it possible for
me, and others like me, to see the Melkite Church as a church where you didn’t
have to be Middle Eastern or speak Arabic to participate fully in the Holy
Mysteries and contribute to the building up and sanctification of the People of
God.
