Spirituality & Religious StudiesThe Maronites
The Maronites are a Syriac Christian ethno-religious group native to the Eastern Mediterranean & the Levant (particularly Lebanon) whose members belong to the Maronite Church. The Maronite Church is an Eastern Catholic sui iuris particular church in full communion with the Pope & the rest of the Catholic Church.
Sui iuris (or sui juris) is legal self-rule. It is used in the Catholic Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches (CCEO) to denote the autonomous churches in Catholic communion.
The Maronites get their name from St. Maron (350-410 AD). The spread of Christianity was extremely slow in the Lebanese region. In the 5th century in the highlands, they were still “pagan.” St. Maron sent the apostle Abraham of Cyrrhus (known as the “Apostle of Lebanon”) with a mandate to convert the “pagan” residents of the region, renaming the Adonis River to the Abrahamic River in honor of the saint who preached there.
The Maronite Church, under the patriarch of Antioch, has branches in nearly all countries where Maronite Christian communities live, in both the Levant & the Lebanese diaspora.
The Maronites & the Druze founded modern Lebanon in Ottoman Lebanon in the early 18th century, through the ruling & social system known as the “Maronite-Druze dualism” in the Ottoman Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate. The Mount Lebanon Mustasarrifate was 1 of the Ottoman Empire’s subdivisions following the 19th century Tanzimat reform.
All Lebanese presidents, except for Charles Debbas & Petro Trad, have been Maronites as part of a continued tradition of the National Pact (an unwritten agreement that laid the foundation of Lebanon as a multiconfessional state following negotiations between the Shia, Sunni, Maronite, & Druze leaderships), by which the prime minister has historically been a Sunni Muslim & the speaker of the Natinal Assembly has historically been a Shi’ite.
The Maronites belong to the Maronite Syriac Church of Antioch, an Eastern Catholic Syriac church using the Antiochian Rite, which traces its foundation to Maron, an early 4th century Syriac monk venerated as a saint. The Maronite Patriarch is traditionally seated in Bkerke, north of Beirut.
The Maronite Church belongs to the Syriac Christian tradition & to the West Syriac Rite. (Also known as the Syro-Antiochian Rite or the West Syrian Rite. This is an Eastern Christian liturgical rite that uses the Divine Liturgy of St. James.) Classical Syriac remains the liturgical language of the Maronite Church, alongside Arabic.
In Israel, some members of the local Maronite community have adopted an Aramean identity & organized linguistic revitalization programs. The Aramean identity was officially recognized by the Israeli Minister of the Interior in 2014, allowing certain Christian families to register their ethnicity as “Aramean” rather than “Arab” or “Unclassified.”
A slight majority of the Maronites in Israel identify themselves as Arabs. The Arab identity is prevalent, especially among the young & among women.
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