Religion: Of Antioch & All the East

Popes once grandly divided up the world, while abbots governed dukedoms the size of Rhode Island. Since then, temporal authority among religious leaders has mostly gone out of style. Last week a cleric who still has much civic influence arrived for a six-week visit in the U.S.: His Beatitude Paul Peter Meouchi, 68, Patriarch of Antioch and all the East.

Meouchi (pronounced May-oo-she) is spiritual leader of some 500,000 Lebanese Christians, plus more than 200,000 in the U.S. who observe the Maronite Rite of the Roman Catholic Church. But his importance goes well beyond the spiritual. President Kennedy, who is seldom seen publicly with U.S. Catholic bishops, will receive him at the White House. At home in Lebanon, Meouchi is frequently consulted by Lebanon’s Prime Minister Rashid Karame, a Moslem.* Both Lebanon’s Grand Mufti and Jordan’s King Hussein are good friends and correspondents of Meouchi’s, and Syria’s President Nazem El-Koudsi phones him often from Damascus. No Middle Eastern statesman of any faith would think of visiting Lebanon without stopping in at his yellow stone palace at Bkerki, near Beirut. “We are everybody’s father,” says the patriarch.

Ambitions & Tensions. The nature of his ecclesiastical position and the history of his tiny country (4,015 sq. mi., 1,600,000 pop.) necessarily make Patriarch Meouchi a political figure. A proud mountain people who preserved their Christian faith through centuries of Arab persecution, the Maronites regard the patriarchy as a symbol of their national ambitions.

The Maronites are one of 14 Eastern Christian churches that are in doctrinal union with Rome, although they have their own customs, liturgical languages and ritual practices. Maronites trace their origin back to the 5th century monks of Bait-Marun, who, from a fortress-monastery dedicated to St. Maron, upheld the faith against heretics. Although isolated from other Christian groups by Islam’s triumph in the East, the Maronites always maintained their loyalty to the Pope; when the knights of the First Crusade landed in the Middle East, Maronites were there to help them set up camp. After the Saracen reconquest, the Maronites fought to maintain their independence in fortresses in the Lebanon mountains, provided refuge for other Christians, and even dissident Moslem groups, who were persecuted by the Arabs and Turks.

The Maronites were never conquered by the Ottoman Empire, which granted them political autonomy in the late 19th century. The sect has expanded and prospered; Maronites now control many of the banks and newspapers in Lebanon. Under Meouchi, they have built many new churches and opened new seminaries, now have twelve bishops and 1,600 priests. Although the Maronites have adopted some Western Catholic religious customs, such as the rosary, they recite their liturgy in Syriac and Arabic; priests, but not bishops, are allowed to be married.

A Vote for F.D.R. The son of a mountain village shopkeeper, Patriarch Meouchi entered a seminary at the age of 15, earned doctorates in theology and philosophy from Catholic universities in Rome. He came to the U.S. in 1920 as secretary to a Maronite bishop on a pastoral visit, stayed to organize new churches in Mexico, take on parish duties in Indiana, Massachusetts and Los Angeles. He held U.S. citizenship, and remembers voting for Roosevelt in 1932, but returned to Lebanon as Bishop of Tyre two years later. Pope Pius XII named him patriarch in 1955.

Three years later, when President Camille Chamoun’s attempt to stay in office beyond his term led to Christian-Moslem street fighting that killed 1,200 (and ultimately brought on the peace-keeping invasion by U.S. Marines), Meouchi argued persuasively for peace. “We must live with our Moslem brothers,” he said, and civil war was averted.

Meouchi has worked to moderate Arab hatred of Israel, probably has closer ties with Islam than any other Christian leader in the world today. Recently, when a delegation of mullahs visited his palace, Meouchi blessed them as they recited their daily prayers to Mecca, under a portrait of Pope John XXIII. “The British have a well-known phrase, ‘In His Majesty’s service.’ Well, that’s my job,” says Meouchi, pointing skywards. “I am in His Majesty’s service.”

* By a gentleman’s agreement, Lebanon’s Prime Minister is always a Moslem and the President always a Christian—reflecting the fact that the population is half Moslem, half Maronites and other Christians.