Why are you Catholic, then? If the unity is based on the Chair of Peter, and the unity is broken, will you follow Peter or not? That’s the question. Not whether you ‘feel’ more Eastern than Latin. Besides, you don’t become ‘Latin’. What makes someone ‘Latin’? We’re Catholic. That’s our designation. If you aren’t talking about eastern smells and bells, then what else makes you Catholic?
Unity is not something the Roman Pope possess like a piece of property. We are all participants in the Body of Christ. As already said, it is certainly the case that Rome has a unique role, but it is not the whole Christ. We are happy to be in communion with the Roman Catholic Church, and if communion were broken between Rome and the Melkites it would be a sad and painful day.
But what makes us Catholic is that we are a Universal, Apostolic Church in which Christ is present in the Eucharist. What makes us different from Latin Christianity is that we have a history of our own, with its own theological development that is separate from that of the Latins. There is overlap at times, of course, but this is not identity.
Marduk points out that nationalism is a heresy and this is quite right. The EP has been especially vigorous in his attacks on this heresy and we are all grateful to him for it. [btw, Marduk has the most thoughtful and articulate response on this thread, I thought. No matter how much I disagree with it, I respect it greatly.] The issue here is not one of ethnos, but of nthos. It is one’s history and practices that makes one who one is. The Roman nthos is foreign.
Continuing that thought, Liturgy is first theology. Different Liturgy represents different theological traditions. Again, this does not mean there cannot be communion between two different Churches with different liturgical practices, but that is a matter of being able to recognize oneself, to a degree, in translation so to speak. Rome recognizes in the Melkites an adequate translation of its theological concerns and we recognize in Rome an adequate translation of our own. It is, nonetheless another language. (There are persons who are, to continue the analogy, bilingual and are equally at home in either language, but I think those persons are exceptional. From my brief impressions, maybe Ghosty and Marduk are such persons).
BUT, if communion were for some reason broken between Rome and the Melkite Church (and I think this is much less hypothetical than others appear to…Churches drift in and out of communion with one another all the time), I, to repeat, find it hard to imagine that we are suddenly going to all pack up and become Latins. In fact, even though we are out of communion at the moment with them, there is a large group who also share our history and practices, who speak the same theological-language we do and with whom we in point of fact share much more in common theologically. To practice the same Liturgy is to share a common First Theology. Melkites share a nearly identical First Theology with the Antiochene Orthodox Church, and beyond that a common history of theological reflection.
Lastly, to address Ghosty’s statement that Eastern Catholics, even if communion were broken, ought to remain Eastern Catholics contra la’lettre, so to speak: This is, in my opinion, almost precisely the position we are already in. All that would change is our orientation, but not our real situation. We are now a Church that insists that we are Antiochene and Orthodox, even if our Church is in communion with the Church of Rome. If communion were somehow tragically lost with Rome and we were to return to communion with the rest of Antiochene Orthodox, we would be the group that would be insisting that we are Catholic.
This is the role we find ourselves playing, is it not. We in the Eastern Catholic Churches are continually a reminder that the Body of Christ is painfully and scandalously broken. We are a liminal Church.
salaam.
