The emblematic case is probably Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where six different Christian denominations jealousy protect their historical rights. Those intra-Catholic fault lines are compounded by tensions between Catholics and other denominations, such as the Greek Orthodox church. Observers of the Christian scene in the Middle East say the challenge of division occurs on at least three levels.įirst, there are traditional confessional rivalries among the various Eastern churches in communion with Rome, such as the Maronites, Greek Melkites, Armenian Catholics, Syriac Catholics, Chaldean Catholics, and so on, as well as the Latin rite church.

There was little such rhetoric from Benedict this time around. He asked them to reject a “confessional mentality,” in which their first loyalty is to their own rite or faction, in favor of an “authentic sense of the church.” He pointedly insisted that “power struggles” among Catholic subgroups must end, describing them as an untoward expression of “egoism.” When John Paul II travelled to Lebanon in 1997, he issued a direct call to Catholics to put those divisions aside.

In that arena, especially arresting was the lack of any direct reference to the chronic challenge of internal Catholic division, which parallels the overall Christian situation here, and which many observers describe in terms of persistent tribal rivalries.Īs a blog entry published recently by the Canadian “Salt and Light” network put it, the stereotype of Christianity in the region is that it is “intractably, scandalously divided.” Given the regional situation, that emphasis was understandable, but in some ways it came at the price of addressing issues directly pertinent to local Catholic life. In Lebanon, both the pope and his hosts understandably wanted to broadcast images of harmony to the wider world, as a counter-narrative to the dominant Middle Eastern storyline of the day – a wave of anti-American and anti-American violence which, at last count, has engulfed at least 20 nations in the region and beyond.Īs a result, the top note throughout the trip was Benedict as a “messenger of peace,” and Lebanon as “a “model to the inhabitants of the whole region and the entire world.” The ubiquitous presence of Muslim clerics and ordinary believers alike at virtually all the papal events was heralded as a remarkable “symbol of tolerance” (the front-page headline in Lebanon’s Daily Star.) TAlthough popes always say the primary purpose of their travel is to “confirm the brothers and sisters in the faith,” when a particular journey is fraught with social and political drama, sometimes the issues facing the local Catholic community end up yielding pride of place.

Unity catholic