Like leaven in the dough…

The vocation of the Church, of every Church and of all Churches, is charted by Christ. This vocation is both to be universal and inclusive with the aim of banishing all discrimination. It is to be the leaven in the dough and/or the salt without which all food loses its flavor and becomes inedible. In other words, as salt is made for food, we are not made for ourselves, we are 'beings for others.' This vocation is also to proclaim, through our words and our actions, the 'good news' of Christ.

'The foundational base of a minimal national history' and the beginning of the crystallization of a national identity, observed by historian Candice Raymond, is what we have most precious to offer our compatriots – and we must speak of it indistinctly as Maronites and as Lebanese. This foundation is our pride: it is the beginning of a stable and defined identity that we must protect from anything that could disfigure it.

This is particularly what we can offer most precious to a community alienated from this Lebanon by a 'millenarian' political-religious utopia, in the sense that it must be fulfilled within History, and in this specific case, conclude History. The Church has been through this. It condemned Christian 'millenarianism,' and we know all too well, and from experience, how much any utopia engenders terror. But it is better, instead of this demonstration which could be prolonged, to speak of what the Maronites of Lebanon can offer most worthy to their compatriots: altruism.

Here's how: No apologetic text says it better than the Letter to Diognetus, a manuscript from apostolic times discovered in Constantinople around 1436, in a fish shop where it served as wrapping paper: 'For Christians are not distinguished from other men by country, nor by language, nor by clothing. They do not inhabit cities of their own, they do not use any extraordinary dialect, their way of life has nothing singular. (...) They reside each in their own homeland, but as resident aliens. They fulfill all their duties as citizens, and bear all burdens as strangers. (...) They marry like everyone else, they have children, but they do not abandon their newborns. (...) They are in the flesh, but do not live according to the flesh. They pass their lives on earth, but are citizens of heaven. They obey the established laws and their manner of life surpasses the laws in perfection. (...) In a word, what the soul is in the body, Christians are in the world. The soul is spread throughout all the members of the body as Christians are in the cities of the world.'

The Letter to Diognetus is an excellent illustration of what citizenship should be; most of its criteria can be adopted by any man, any woman. The same applies to many other doctrinal texts that the Church makes available to us, including the Social Doctrine of the Church. For this doctrine, the notions of the dignity of the human person, the common good, the universal destination of goods, subsidiarity in decision-making, and solidarity are essential articulations of social relations, the place par excellence where piety and fidelity to God are played out.

At the limit, these are even non-religious texts, in the sense that there is no need to be Christian to draw from them; it's a buffet open to the whole world.

Pope Francis' social encyclical Fratelli Tutti is one of these texts accessible to all, without distinction of religious affiliation. This text is a development of the Abu Dhabi Declaration on Human Fraternity co-signed by Francis and the Grand Imam of al-Azhar, Ahmad el-Tayyeb (2019). By the Pope's own admission, this declaration was born in its broad outlines around a meal to which he had informally invited the Sunni dignitary, after a working meeting at the Vatican library. Pope Francis highlights the concept of social friendship, which is in fact the necessary complement to the concept of citizenship.

These elements of Christian doctrine are underpinned by universal values and principles that transcend cultures and eras. When John Paul II said of Lebanon that it 'is much more than a country: it is a message of freedom and an example of pluralism for the East and the West,' this is what he meant: the values embodied and embraced by Lebanon of which we speak, and inscribed in our Constitution, are valid for all, including the Western world, part of which is on the slippery slope of self-referential, atheistic humanism. John Paul II's words emphasize, once and for all, the particular, profound, irreplaceable mission of the land of the cedar: that of being a model of conviviality between the different religious communities that compose it, particularly between Christianity and Islam.

However, as John Paul II also affirms, 'man is not the truth, he is in search of the truth.' This is the unshakable philosophical postulate on which Lebanon rests. It is the very foundation of this pluralism that makes it rich, and which is in fact the vocation of any democratic society. It is also the 'missing link' whose existence would allow the principle of secularism in France, which is so close to us culturally and politically, to avoid intolerance, to remain measured.

Not that the Church is not the mystical body of Him who said 'I am the Truth,' as every Catholic believes. But the Church also knows, particularly since Vatican II, that 'the Spirit of truth,' God Himself, also acts 'outside the visible boundaries of the Church,' and that He leads to salvation those who, 'through no fault of their own,' and for various reasons, have not known Christ as Christians know Him.