Druze saints (15 characters)

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Salibi

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Hello, how’d you all do? This is my first post on this forum, and if someone would please answer a question of mine?
I have a friend who was formerly a Druze but is now a Maronite Catholic. He still venerates several Druze saints in private. Is this practice licit?
The saints in question( I’ve done my research about them) are widely venerated within the Druze faith, and many miracles are supposedly attributed to them. From what Ive gleaned from reading and asking about them, they were pious, holy men who led anchoritic lives ( like our own beloved Saint Charbel). Moreover, a Druze priest (I dont know if this is the correct term since Druzes do not have actual clergy in the way that we do) has shown me several pages of their writings in which they praised Christ.
Nevertheless, these men were never baptized.
Is the practice of venerating them sinful?
P.S : If anyone is curious about Druzes feel free to ask. I live in a majority Druze town and while I cannot help you with their religion ( as even they barely know anything about it) I can answer questions about their culture, history, and maybe a thing or two that I did pick up about their faith.
Pax Christi.
 
Non-Christians (let alone non-Catholics) should not be venerated. We cannot say that their lives are worthy of imitation when they weren’t members of the visible Church, regardless of any good deeds they may have performed or what they said about Jesus.
 
I presume you’re in Israel. My suggestion would be to contact one of the priests at the St. James Vicariate. They are used to dealing with converts to the Catholic Church from both Judaism and Islam. Presumably they are no strangers to Druze converts either.

http://www.catholic.co.il/index.php?lang=en
 
If you are the referring to the Lebanese Civil War or the 1860 Druze -Maronite War then you surely know that both sides perpetrated and suffered massacres. It is pointless to paint Maronites as the victims when we also actively participated in the war ( in the case of the 1860 war, a war that we had an active part in starting). Also, I think you would be glad to know that Druzes and Maronites in Lebanon reconciled during the Mountain Reconciliation after the war. And I personally do not believe in labelling an entire group of people as enemies of the Catholic faith; enemies of Christ, for politically motivated events that happened in the past. God and his saints work among all people : Saint Charbel’s first miracle was with a Druze woman. And Christ did tell us to love our enemies.
Pax Christi
 
I see. While I totally agree with your last three paragraphs, I’m afraid your first one is a misrepresentation of history. According to the histories, the 1860 war, if that is what you are referring to, began when Maronite militiamen from Keserwan under the command of Tanios Shahine raided the mixed Druze -Maronite villages of Salima, Qarnayel, and Btekhnay and forcibly evicted the Druze residents while also burning their prayer houses and homes. These Druzes then called for the aid of their coreligionnists in the South, which led the Druzes in turn to expell the Maronites from their villages and close down our churches.Things were not helped by the Ottomans, who, as Muslims, viewed both the Catholic Maronites and the Druzes as heretics. In fact, if you are a student of Lebanese history, you will surely know that some suspect the Ottomans of working to worsen the situation in order to further solidify their control over Lebanon. (Ottoman policy has always involved pitting one group against the other in the areas they conquered in order to distract them from rebelling against the Sultan). You can check these facts in any history book or on Wikipedia. In all cases, it is incorrect to say that the Maronites were defending from Druze attack when a Maronite raid on the Druzes started the war. Also, the prelude that set the stage for the 1860 war was a Maronite peasant rebellion agaisnt Druze nobles.
And if you are referring to the Lebanese Civil War: This war was started by neither Maronites nor Druzes. It was caused by an escalating refugee crisis, pressure from the east and the south,and heightening racial and religious tensions between all factions of Lebanese society. In fact, some Maronites consider that we faced a bigger threat from other Maronites than from the Druzes themselves during that time (again, if you are a student of Lebanese history, then you surely know about the infamous incident during the civil war when Maronites were fighting an all out battle against other Maronites).
Also, saying that the Druzes came to take Maronite land is incorrect. Before the creation of the modern, Christian , state of Lebanon by the French, Lebanon was known as the Druze Emirate, ruled by a Druze prince and Druze aristocrats. This situation changed somewhat after the 1860 war when France intervened to protect Christians and the subsequent introduction of the Mutassarifiya system but in most areas stayed the same, with Druzes still constituting the majority in the southern and central regions where they were attacked.
 
(Continued)
That said, I totally agree with you that as practitioners of a non Catholic religion, Druzes as a group are enemies of Christ. But I think that you would be pleased to know that the Druzes I live amongst are more receptive to Catholic truth than other groups here, such as the Muslims. Two out of three Druzes here venerate Saint Charbel, and occasionally attend Catholic mass. The Church is flourishing among them, and many Druzes are converting to Catholicism. I have lived among these people for a large part of my adult life, and I have come to appreciate and respect them. I sincerely pray that God would take the final steps to Christianize these people. But antagonizing them, blaming them for a war we had a hand in starting, and refusing to acknowledge that we Maronites also perpetrated massacres against them, would not win us any converts. It was a war. Maronites killed Druzes, Druzes killed Maronites. But the Druzes did not kill the Maronites because we were Catholic. They killed us because we were the opposing faction in a conflict in which both sides were vying for ascendancy. It’s all political, not religious.
Pax Christi.

Saint Charbel, Perfume of Lebanon, Patron Saint of Lebanese people, pray that the atrocities and massacres commited during the war are never again repeated in your native land, and pray also for the conversion of the world. Amen
 
You are quite right. And yes, the history of Lebanon is a lot more complex than what I have posted. And the politics as well. And I’m afraid that it all cannot be concisely summarized in a simple post.
Yes, you’re right in saying that our stong resistance to Muslim attempts to exterminate us has ensured the preservation of our holy Church in Lebanon. Even today, Muslims unceasingly try to transform Lebanon into an Islamic state like the rest of the Arab nations. If you are Lebanese, then you are surely familiar with the constant Muslim attempts to impose alcohol bans among other laws grounded in Islamic sharia on the nation. As you may know, Muslims have already succeeded in imposing their deplorable Arabic language on us , replacing holy Syriac as the language of Lebanon centuries ago. ( even though the Lebanese dialect is firmly grounded in Syriac and has a wide Syriac vocabulary). Arabization and Islamization have always come hand in hand, and some Lebanese Christians are fiercely opposed to anything Arab, especially the designation of Lebanon as an Arab state, because of this. I, for instance, consider myself not Arab but rather Lebanese.
Pax Christi.
 
I’m part Lebanese I’m a Melkite Greek Catholic, I’m quite familiar on what Muslims have tried to do to us. While I’m not Maronite I’m also opposed to being called an Arab in a literal sense since we’re Arabized, but it’s not like I’m completely opposed to anything Arab like some Maronites. I was formerly a Sunni Muslim and I have a Druze friend, personally I find the Druze faith to be ridiculous. The Druze themselves don’t even know what they believe in. The Christian standpoint on their faith is the same as the standpoint in Islam, they are technically in heresy and must repent to be Christ to be saved. It’s not good deeds that make a Saint, Charbel is a Saint because of his faith in Christ not just his good deeds. Although the Druze might have had good people in their faith they were still in heresy and outside the true faith so we shouldn’t pray to them, but for them that God may forgive them.
 
Hello, I knew immediately that you were from an Arabic speaking nation from your name. Masihi means Christian in Arabic.
Yes, some Maronites do take their opposition to Arabs to extreme levels. We have historically supported becoming a part of France and have close ties to French language and culture. There is a national joke in Lebanon about how people forget they are in Lebanon when in Maronite districts due to the fact that they communicate exclusively in French .😂
 
We Melkites aren’t as opposed to Arabism as Maronites, I myself acknowledge my Syriac identity, yet it was we Syriac Christians who actually developed Arabic as a language and made it beautiful. Yeah I’ve visited Matn a few times, most of the people talk French there. My grandmother who is Muslim knows French and was French educated. We’re not as Westernized as Maronites are.
 
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Yes, Melkites and Lebanese Greek Orthodox have been more open to accepting an Arab identity than us Maronites. But I was not aware you Melkites espoused a Syriac identity. I learned in school that Melkites were an ethnically Arab community that accepted the Greek Orthodox faith then returned to communion with Rome and became Greek Catholic.
 
That depends, we have some Arabs among us in our Church from among the ethnic Bedouins of Jordan who originally came from Hejaz in Saudi as descendents of the Christian Ghassanid tribe. But the Lebanese and Syrian Melkites are descendants of the Syriac community that accepted the council of Chalcedon, while the majority of the Syriacs rejected the council of Chalcedon and became the Syriac Orthodox Church or Jacobite Church, because of our support of Chalcedon our fellow Syriacs who rejected Chalcedon called as Melkites or Malkoyo in Syriac which means supporters of the emperor which we continued to call ourselves right down to this day in Arabic as ملكيين.
 
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Are these saints that both the Druze and Maronites have historically venerated?
 
Of course not. Maronites are Catholics. We have only ever venerated Catholic saints. But Druzes do venerate Christian saints like Saint Charbel and the Blessed Virgin alongside saints of their own tradition. Former Druze converts to Catholicism , it would seem, should discontinue veneration of Druze saints. Although the friend in question has just told me that it says in the catechism that the Church allows us to venerate anyone in private. Can someone please tell me if such a thing does exist in the catechism, and if he understood it correctly?
Pax Christi.
 
Excuse me, the reason I asked is because I know some Shi’a Muslims that actually venerate Old Testament sites. You do realise that the Church considers Moses a Saint, right? I don’t mind discussing this with you, but I also don’t like being denigrated. I know what Maronites are, I’ve been to a Maronite church.
 
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