Not inflammatory. Just insufficient to capture the complexity of organic growth. And maybe a little inflammatory - to the extent that it calls into question our entire history out of communion with the EO.
Again, though, if we take ECCs to be essentially “Orthodox in communion Rome”…that’s an “if”. If you don’t, that’s fine, I don’t begrudge you for it.I just wasn’t aware. And I hope you can recognize in a dispassionate fashion that with such a wide variety of opinions along the spectrum of ideologies found among Eastern and Oriental Catholics (in addition to the fact that this terminology does not make sense with regard to the Maronites, since they have no Orthodox counterpart), it is really, really hard to come up with some argument that will not offend anyone. The only thing that might be more difficult, of course…
Well, unless we take up the hard work of defining Latinization, then our comments about what to do about them are moot.
…is this right here.
And I disagree with you, anyhow. We don’t need to come up with some sort of definition for Latinization if the members of the church under consideration tell us that a given practice is a Latinization. And that is just what has happened in this thread on numerous occasions, which have been ignored or dismissed more or less out of hand. This is why I have formed the low opinion of the defenses of this monastery and its practices, and argued a bit more forcefully than may seem necessary in defense of an apparently unpopular position. So be it. The practices of this monastery as far as we can tell from the video are not in keeping with Maronite tradition, and no appeals to obedience to the bishop under which they operate will make them so.
I think I agree with this idea, and would go further: if we are missing things that are profitable unto salvation, let’s be in a hurry to get them back. But there is a very important matter of emphasis: the target must be to add what we are missing.
Okay.
If the target instead becomes eliminating things, then be prepared for contention. What are the the criteria - complete with definitions of key concepts?
Of course there will contention. Are you under the impression that any renewal or for that matter other large undertaking among any large group of people will
not breed contention?
After all, we are typically talking about a path that was conducive to the salvation of our ancestors - our own flesh and blood. You need a great reason to subtract - as it implies that something “wrong” with the practice, while addition is met with far less resistance. So the meme that will lead to progress, IMO, is: “restoration that treasures the riches of our patrimony”, rather than “de-latinization”.
I can’t speak for anyone here who might or might not operate under the same or a different motto. I can only guess that those things that inhibit the restoration are what need to be jettisoned, regardless of what you label them as.
I have nothing to offer specific to the Maronites. But I am not persuaded by arguments of “hard to believe”. Instead, I agree with your noting that we need to study roots and history.
It is because I have studied a bit of the Maronite history and roots that I am so difficult to convince. I don’t claim to be anything like an expert, but within the context of my studies of the cultural and linguistic roots of the Maronites as Syriac Christians and their church as a Syriac church, it was hard not to notice how the trajectory of Maronite history took a very definite turn away from the traditional as contact with Rome was re-established and, in later centuries, intensified. This is not an indictment of Rome as an entity or the communion, it is just a fact of history. That no doubt influenced my somewhat unfortunate choice of words in the earlier post, wherein I had the Maronites in mind when I wrote “pre-Roman contact”, even though I had moved away from discussing them specifically…
In fact I ask for this “heavy lifting” regularly, because it is typically missing form these discussions.
I invite you to read the relevant material from Georges Labaki’s “The Maronites in the United States” (Beirut: Louaize Press, 1993) for yourself, then. The nature of the research project I was working on at the time (on the intersection of language, religion and culture among the Syriac people) when I read this and other texts led me to discard the others in favor of this one for the simple fact that it was the only non-antagonistic text I could find, so unfortunately I do not have a big bibliography to share. I have definitely acquired more since that time (3 years ago), but it is all of a linguistic nature, so it probably wouldn’t help in this discussion. I am sure some of the committed Maronite members of this forum would be willing to offer their own recommendations which would be more on point, should you be interested in a little “heavy lifting” of your own.
) is that they refuse to see it as a Latinization. If that Latinization was emposed by the Latins or adopted voluntarily by the Maronites is neither here nor there…it is still a Latinization.
