Posted on 07/22/2005 6:58:08 PM PDT by jec1ny
The other reference is a well known fact that Maronites came into communion with Rome by the 12th century, but not all. Some either reverted or continued to follow the teachings of Macarius until after the Council of Florence (ended 1445). That Council's documents attest to that. The last remaining Cyprian Maronites accepted union with Rome in 1448. However, Pope Pius II's letter of 1451 suggests that even then there were some remnants who did not. Is that in dispute?
Now, raising objections as to whether a source is legitimate is valid and meaningful if the source is used to make claims that are either false, or outdated. Based on what I read up on the issue, the Catholic Encyclopedia did not say anything that is historically in dispute, as outlined above. If you have evidence to the contrary, please provide references.
Again, the issue was an often made claim that Maronite Christians were in an "unbroken" communion with Rome "from the beginning." This is the claim made by the Maronite Church. Most historians disagree. So does the Roman Catholic Church, based on its own documents.
The Fathers at Chalcedon must not have thought so, because they specifically reaffirmed the Creed without making reference to any Spirations by the Son on level of Divine Essence or else they would have included it.
The Fathers of Chalcedon did not discuss the real presence, prayers for the dead, the intercession of the Saints, and many other things we hold as truths. Apparently, by your standards, that means they didn't accept these things.
Perhaps then you think them Calvinists?
RE: The Maronites and the Antiochian tradition
The period after Chalcedon was a time of challenge and sadness for Antioch. In the West the Goths laid waste to Rome and Western lands. In the Middle East, the Patriarchs of Antioch embraced Monophysitism and were referred to as Jacobite. Antioch had formally rejected Chalcedon. A tiny Greek community remained. In time, those that accepted Chalcedon and their leaders were driven out of Syria and into the mountains of Lebanon. This community became known as the Maronite Church.
The Byzantine emperors made Rome a vassal, initiating the Byzantine Captivity of the Papacy. Political power was much more fragile in the Middle East, however. The Persians having driven a wedge between Constantinople and Jerusalem, finally overtook the entire Middle East in the early 6th century. Shortly thereafter, the Muslims conquered the entire region. The Muslim leaders successfully repressed any remaining Chalcedonian Christians, who at the time were seen as allies of Constantinople. The only Chalcedonians that remained of the Antiochian tradition were the Maronites, who lived in geographic isolation.
During the Roman reunion councils, East-Antiochian and West-Antiochian traditions affirmed Chalcedonian faith and Roman communion, among whom were the Maronites. Because the Maronites were under the Antiochian Jacobite and Nestorian (those of the East-Antiochian tradition) cloud, they were made to profess the Chalcedonian faith. There is no internal evidence that the Maronites had ever rejected Chalcedon or Roman communion during their centuries of Lebanese isolation prior to reunion. Rather, because they had descended from a tradition that became overwhelmingly non-Chalcedonian, to remove any doubt, they professed the faith of the Church.
Because they were not challenged by heresies, directly or indirectly, and/or because they are not the essence of the Faith -- whereas the Godhead is. The early Councils were held in response to specific issues of heresies.
Apparently, Pope Pius II was convinced that maronites were "heretics" in 1451.
Roman clergy arriving in Lebanon with the Crusaders burned Maronite books and reported to the Pope that they teach strange things.
You are telling me fairytales as far as I am concerned because there is no doucment, no independent verification of the claims, and historical evidence that does exist points to the contrary of what the Maronite Church claims.
So, if we don't have verifyable evidence we don't know. If we don't know we can't make a claim. So, the best you can say is that what happened before the 12th century is unknown, and that some maronite established or re-established communion with Rome by the 11th century, but not all. We can also say that until the Council of Trent, that is -- the 16th century, the Maronite Church was not considered fully a part of the Roman communion by the Roman Catholic Church. That much we know and can say for certain. Everything else is a fairtytale.
I asked you if specific historical facts were in dispute and to please provide references if there are any facts to the contrary, and you provide me with a narrative without a single date, without a single refrenced document. Is this how you establish facts? By narratives?
Because they were not challenged by heresies, directly or indirectly, and/or because they are not the essence of the Faith -- whereas the Godhead is. The early Councils were held in response to specific issues of heresies.
If the Fathers of Chalcedon had wanted to condemn Filioque I think that they were quite competent to say so bluntly. (These were men who debated the difference between homoousia and homoiousia.) The fact is that they DID NOT!
RE: Maronites union with Rome
You are quite right concerning my lack of citations.
The Maronites have been in union with the See of Rome since the time of St. Maron. There is unanimity on that fact as far as historians are concerned. Additionally, there is no evidence for any heterodoxy among the Maronites of Lebanon.
The Patriarch of the Maronites Jeremias II Al-Amshitti (and interestingly a legate of the Patriarch of Alexandria) were present and fully participated in the 4th Lateran Council in 1215 AD. No profession of union or faith was required by the Maronites. The Maronites worked closely with Rome in the administration of the Latin Principality of Antioch, established in the late 11th century and later destroyed by the Kurdish Saladin in an Islamic Jihad.
The Maronites of Lebanon continued to enjoy full and close union with Rome during this period.
During the Council of Florence, session 14, 7 August 1445, a single Maronite bishop (Elias) and a single Chaldean bishop (Timothy) on the Island of Cyprus were reunited with Rome, as they had become followers of Macarius and Nestorius. The union profession applied only to these 2 bishops, their clergy and faithful in Cyprus.
The Maronite community in Lebanon in the intervening years, grew and matured with its contact with the West.
After a massacre of Maronites in 1860, France intervened and was given protectorate powers over Catholic subjects of the Ottoman Empire. The Maronites, under French protection, were a singular thriving community during this period in the Middle East. France granted Lebanon full independence in 1944. The beginning of Islamic Jihad in 1975 brought war to Lebanon, which fell after the US fled, in 1981.
Taken from: Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, VI, N. Tanner; The Eastern Christian Churches, R. Roberson; The Middle East, B. Lewis.
The Fathers did not include the Filioque because it was not an issue for which the Council was called. That does not mean that one can just add it.
Speculations as to the nature of Divinity have always been part of the Church, but it is one thing to speculate and another to claim that it is what the Church officially holds to be dogma.
The problem with the Filioque did not usrface until it became the dogma of the Franks, who wanted to impose it on everyone, and even called the Greeks heretics for having "omitted" Filioque from the Creed.
The Filioque was treated more-or-less the way one treats Limbo or the way the RCC treated the Immaculate Conception until the 19th century -- some believed it and some didn't, and no one was penalized for not believing it until it became dogma. Last time I checked, Chalcedonian Creed is dogma. Just as you can't add something to the dogmas of Immaculate Conception, by the same token you can't add Filioque to the Creed simply because you believe it.
The Popes up to the 11th century understood that and, even if they personally agreed with the theology of Filioque, refused to add it to the Creed for the same very reason.
The Maronites were never heterodox?
A summary of the Council of Florence, and its extension, specifies:
"Finally the council was transferred to Rome on 24 February 1443. There other decrees of union with the Bosnians, the Syrians and finally with the Chaldeans and Maronites of Cyprus, were approved. The last session of the council was held on 7 August 1445."
The Maronites did not have to make a profession of faith?
How about an actual trascript of conversion of some of the Maronites? The Bull of Union, Session 14—7 August 1445:
"After that, the Chaldeans sent to us the aforesaid metropolitan Timothy, and Bishop Elias of the Maronites sent an envoy, to make to us a solemn profession of the faith of the Roman church."
The Maronites were not Nestorian?
"...and Elias, bishop of the Maronites, who with his nation in the same realm was infected with the teachings of Macarius, together with a whole multitude of peoples and clerics subject to him in the island of Cyprus."
This is from the Council of Florence, the official documentation of the Roman Catholic Church. This is historically accurate and factually verifiable.
Your quotes are someone's narrative, telling a fairytale that is as misleading as much as it is void of fact.
The fact is that the West does not need the approval of an Ecumenical Council to compose prayers for its liturgy.
The Fathers did not include the Filioque because it was not an issue for which the Council was called.
Exactly! Thus it is imposible to say that it is contrary to the faith of Nicea or ever condemned by any Church council.
The Filioque was treated more-or-less the way one treats Limbo or the way the RCC treated the Immaculate Conception until the 19th century -- some believed it and some didn't, and no one was penalized for not believing it until it became dogma.
Thus to profess it (as did St. John Chrysostom who presided over Ephesus) cannot be heresy!
Last time I checked, Chalcedonian Creed is dogma.
The last time I checked the Catholic Church has never denied the teaching of Chalcedon.
RE: Maronites of Cyprus
Cyprus was ruled by Western powers beginning with Richard I Lionheart in 1191.
254 years after Richard I, on 7 August 1445, one Maronite bishop (who was not a Metropolitan) in Cyprus (not the entire Maronite Church or even all the Maronites of Cyprus), through his legate Isaac made a solemn profession rejecting the Monothelite (not Nestorian) heresy of Macarius. Without reading the session in context, it might be easy to confuse the matter.
The fact that Maronite clergy had full participated in Great Roman councils for more than 200 years prior to this event without needing to profess their faith is quite telling.
This singular profession by 1 Maronite bishop on an island in the Mediterrenean rejecting his Monotheletism (the idea that the person of Jesus had only 1 will and principle of action) is quite different from the much wider implication that has been suggested. I would enjoy reading a primary or secondary historical reference that demonstrates any wider heterodoxy on the part of the larger Maronite community of the Middle Ages.
But a Church which supposedly holds Ecumenical Council decision to be infallible and binding to the "t" is expected to keep the Creed as it was finalized by those Councils.
Exactly! Thus it is imposible to say that it is contrary to the faith of Nicea or ever condemned by any Church council
You are obfuscating the issue in a Jesuit manner. Speculation is one thing, altering the Creed is another. The Church condemns the addition to the Creed of the words "and from the Son."
Thus to profess it (as did St. John Chrysostom who presided over Ephesus) cannot be heresy!
But did St. John Crysostomos add it to his Divine Litrugy? Speculatuion is one thing; altering dogma and a Creed finalized by the Church is heresy.
"A man that is an heretick after the first and second admonition reject." (Titus 3:10)
The fact that there were Maronites in the 15th century who professed other than what Rome professed means that there were heterodox among them, contrary to your sweeping generalization hat there were no heterodox among Maronites.
The fact that some of their bishops, or even one bishop, had to profess the faith professed by Rome is contrary to your sweeping generalization that Maronites did not have to profess the faith of Rome in order to be in communion with Rome.
The fact that there are no documents showing the Maronites were in communion with Rome before the 12th century means that we don't know and the fact that the Roman clergy burned Maronite books because they found Maronites to be "teaching errors" puts a serious doubt that what they professed at that time was what Rome professed.
The fact that Pope Pius II calls Maronites "heretics" in a letter as late as 1451 makes one wonder if there were more heterodox Maronite communities even after Maronites of Cyprus converted to Roman faith. Or maybe you are saying that the Pope is not telling the truth?
Nestorian and Monothelite heresies are distinct but very similar, and one is an offshoot of the other. The fact that some Maronites asked for union with a Nestorian bishop at one time really makes your academic argument distinguishing the two heresies a pedantic exercise in futility.
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