A patriarchal visit to Lawrence
LAWRENCE -- It's a long way from Lawrence to Lebanon, from the cascading waters that powered the mill town's industry to the roiling ethnic and religious tides on which Islamic extremists from Hezbollah rode to attack Israeli soldiers this week, spurring the heaviest Israeli bombing of Lebanon in a generation.
Yet religion is not to blame for the bloodshed, Lebanon's leading Christian leader insists.
``It seems to me that the chief religions are not responsible for that, because the politicians are responsible," Patriarch Nasrallah Peter Cardinal Sfeir told reporters at St. Anthony Maronite Catholic Church. ``But we are condemning any attacks, from whatever side it comes from."
He called on the Lebanese people, ``especially those who are Arabs, to put aside their arms and work in favor of peace."
The Maronite Church is one of several Eastern Catholic churches based in Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia. They accept Roman Catholic doctrine and sacraments as well as papal authority. (As his title implies, Sfeir is a member of the College of Cardinals.) ``We are in complete harmony with Rome and the new pope," said George Kassas , a member of the parish council at St. Anthony.
But the eastern churches allow married men to be priests, and they worship with their own liturgies. The Maronites, who claim a majority of Christians in Lebanon, where Sfeir lives, have about 1.5 million members in the United States, with about 10 Maronite churches in Massachusetts, according to Kassas.
The visit this week of the octogenarian patriarch was part of a month long American tour commemorating the 40th anniversary of the appointment of the first US Maronite bishop.
Sfeir conducted his press conference Thursday in a room off the church sanctuary with relics testifying to both Catholicism and its Maronite version. Stained glass windows depicting John the Baptist and St. Jude shared wall space with one of Our Lady of Lebanon (Mary). In a corner behind Sfeir's shoulder stood a figurine of black-cassocked Charbel , a Lebanese saint.
Sfeir's news conference in Lawrence drew both American reporters and Lebanese television journalists, and Sfeir alternated using English and Arabic for his answers. He also shifted from political comments -- endorsing the two-state solution of a Palestinian nation living peacefully with Israel -- to religious observations.
Asked if Muslim leaders could do more to speak out against Islamic terrorism, he answered, ``We cannot generalize. There are some chief religious Muslims who are perhaps for the terrorists, but many others are not for that. And they are for peaceful solutions."
The unfathomable power of the news cycle arranged for the patriarch to visit not only in the midst of turmoil in his home country, but in the ongoing debate over gay rights in Massachusetts. Legislators on Wednesday put off a decision until Nov. 9 on whether to put a constitutional ban on gay marriage befo re voters.
With the Catholic Church prominently opposed to same-sex marriage, Sfeir did not dissent: ``We have to return back to the beginning of creation. God created man and woman, and this is making a family. Without that, there is no family. And [gay marriage] is against the nature of the human being."
Sfeir confidently predicted that the American wing of the church would not be weakened by assimilation. He noted that the Maronites now have two archbishops, in St. Louis and New York. ``It is proof that the Maronite Church will grow with time," he said.
With about 1,600 families, St. Anthony is the denomination's largest church east of St. Louis, Kassas said. But this was the patriarch's first visit to the church; logistics prevented him from stopping here when he previously toured America and Massachusetts. While in Lawrence, Sfeir celebrated several liturgies at the church.
The patriarchal visit ``is absolutely a great blessing for us and an incredible lifting of our spirit," Kassas said.
Despite his confidence that America's talent for blurring ethnic distinctions won't erase Maronite traditions, Sfeir seemed to have picked up an American politician's talent for sidestepping tricky questions. Threading the needle of Middle Eastern politics, he disapproved of Hezbollah's kidnapping of Israeli soldiers while noting the group's claim that it acted in retaliation for Israel's holding of Arab prisoners.
A Lebanese broadcaster asked him, ``If Hezbollah kidnaps Israeli soldiers to release Arab prisoners from Israel, should Lebanese kidnap Syrian solders to release Lebanese prisoners from Syria?"
Syria long kept troops in Lebanon and has been implicated in the 2005 assassination of its former prime minister, and the question drew applause from parishioners listening to the press conference.
Sfeir laughed and offered, ``It is another question."
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