Br. Rich SFO:
There is a lot of confusion on this topic. Even official sources seem to differ on some points. The Maronite Church is from the Antiochian Tradition. The Maronite Rite is a unique liturgy used only in the Maronite Church. The Maronites never did split from the Bishop of Rome, but hid in the mountains for several hundred years. There is also one other Eastern Catholic Church that never split from the Bishop of Rome.
Hello brother Rich,
I should like to make two observations on these comments (not to be contentious).
The ‘other’ church you refer to is the Italo-Albanian church located only in Italy. But actually for most of that time it was not considered a separate church, but rather part of the Roman Catholic church. It never had anything like a choice to remain with Rome, it happens to be a remnant of earlier Byzantine Christians who existed under Roman Catholic bishops for many centuries. In fact the greater portion of the population of that group were actually Albanian Orthodox refugees who escaped from the Turks across the Adriatic at the time of the union of Florence, so for 500 years they were mostly Orthodox Christians in the Balkans.
The second point I would like to make is that the Maronites are something of a conundrum and most people prefer not to dig too deep here because the story is just too good the way we know it. Basically the Maronite church is cited by many authorities to have been heretical for centuries, starting in the mid first millenium. They definitely were not in communion with other local churches (Melkites) that
were in communion with Rome at the time.
New Advent has a good article on the subject.
*All competent authorities agree as to the history of the Maronites as far back as the sixteenth century, but beyond that period the unanimity ceases. They themselves assert at once the high antiquity and the perpetual orthodoxy of their nation; but both of these pretensions have constantly been denied by their Christian – even Catholic – rivals in Syria, the Melchites, whether Catholic or Orthodox, the Jacobite Syrians, and the Catholic Syrians.
*The difference seems to be that no formal documents of excommunication between Rome and the Maronites is extant, so they like to claim that they were always in communion.
So then: either the Maronites were heretics in communion with Rome, or the claim that they never broke with Rome is a popular unsubstantiated myth. Either answer is unsatisfactory, we would like to believe that they were never heretics and never broke with Rome, but I am convinced this claim is unsustainable.
+T+
Michael
