New Bishop Seeks Wider Awareness of Maronites and Mideast Roots

The challenge of educating American worshipers in a faith deeply rooted in its Middle Eastern origins is clear to the newest leader of America’s Maronite Catholics.

“If we stay closed within our own roots, we become like a street to a ghetto, living in a closed society,” Bishop Stephen Hector Doueihi said during a recent interview from his Brooklyn church, Our Lady of Lebanon.

“If we open too much and forget about our tradition, we are lost,” he said. “The challenge is to be open to the past and to be open to the future.”

Doueihi, 69, who was installed earlier this month as bishop of the Eparchy (or Diocese) of St. Maron of Brooklyn, is one of two Maronite Catholic bishops in the United States.

There are about 3 million Maronite Catholics worldwide, with about 250,000 living in the United States. Adherents are followers of St. Maron, an ascetic Syrian monk who lived at the end of the 4th century in the wilderness between Antioch and Cyrrhus in present-day Lebanon.

The spiritual head of the Maronite Church, Cardinal Nasrallah Butros Sfeir, is based in Lebanon, but the church is an Eastern rite branch of Catholicism that has had continuous relations with the Vatican since the early 15th century. Today’s Maronites consider Pope John Paul II the temporal head of their church.

“The Maronite church is Catholic, but we are a church of eastern traditions,” Doueihi said. “We are from the Middle East, Iraq, Turkey, the eastern part of the Roman Empire.”

Doueihi was born in Zgharta, Lebanon, and educated in Beirut and Rome. He was ordained in 1955 and has served Maronite congregations in Lebanon and Mexico as well as in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Washington and Texas.

In 1989, Doueihi was appointed rector of Our Lady of Lebanon in Brooklyn Heights, which has been the headquarters of New York’s Maronite Catholics for 50 years. Last November, Pope John Paul II nominated Doueihi as bishop of the Eparchy of St. Maron of Brooklyn. He was ordained as a bishop in January ceremonies in Lebanon and installed Feb. 5 in ceremonies at Our Lady of Lebanon in Brooklyn Heights.

The installation was attended by representatives of Maronite congregations from around the world, Lebanese diplomats and Roman Catholic Cardinal John O’Connor.

Doueihi succeeds Bishop Francis Zayek, who in 1971 founded the Eparchy of St. Maron as the Maronites’ first American diocese.

The emigration of Maronites from politically turbulent Lebanon over the last two centuries has made the Maronite church international, with congregations in such far-flung regions as the United States, Australia and Central and South America.

Nonetheless, the church’s ties to Lebanon remain strong.

O’Connor drew some of the most enthusiastic applause at Doueihi’s installation when he told the audience, “I speak predominantly as one who has left much of his heart in Lebanon. Because always, after I have visited Lebanon, I am straining to return to Lebanon.”

“In order to be totally a Maronite church in America or elsewhere, we have to be connected completely with Lebanon,” Doueihi said. “Then, otherwise, we will say we are in a diaspora.”

“I am born in Lebanon, I have been educated in Lebanon and Europe,” he said, “but at the same time I have been working here for 25 years. In a natural way, I am connected with both ancestries. It is extremely important to keep this link, not only from an emotional view, but from a legal and canonical view.”

Although the Maronites’ liturgy has been reformed in recent years, some sections of the Mass are still spoken in Syriac, an Aramaic dialect native to the region around Antioch.

Doueihi emphasized the importance of retaining a “Syriac vision of the world” in the church.

“It is based on symbolism,” he said. “The Syriac vision did not follow the Greek philosophical approach [to Catholicism] or the Roman legal approach.

“The heart and imagination play a big role,” Doueihi said. “There is a spiritual bond” that emphasizes man’s link to nature and to other human beings in daily life.

“The concept of God . . . is based on the mysteriousness of God,” he said. “We have a very powerful devotion to Mary as the mother of God.”