Light In The East

Here, here, here and, within the Latin Church, here.

Nevertheless, there are certain pernicious tendencies within some Eastern Catholic Churches. There is the widespread excision of the filioque clause. There is a dangerous Christological imprecision in statements made jointly by Chaldean Catholics and by the Assyrian Church. There is the practice of "delatinisation': consider that Ukrainian Catholics must now have recourse to Lefebvrist bishops if they are to secure the ordination of priests prepared to continue Eucharistic Adoration, the Holy Rosary, and the Stations of the Cross.

And there is the increasing prevalence among the Melkites of the more-than-familiar concepts of a "bridge church" and of only the "Undivided Church" of the first millennium as normative and definitive. As orthodox Catholics have always reacted to those theories when professed by Anglo-Catholics, who do not necessarily seem to be recanting them by joining the Ordinariate, so orthodox Orthodox will react to them when professed by Melkites, who will negate their own position by caring as little as Anglo-Catholics have cared. But the Undivided Church still exists and has always existed, without interruption. The recognition of this fact was the basis of the Melkite, as of every other, unia. Is it the basis of the Ordinariate?

There is, however, nothing in the theory that the Maronites were once Monothelite. There are only two "arguments" ever advanced for it: that it was alleged by their bitterest opponents, and that the Maronites themselves believe that they have always held fast to Petrine Unity and to everything that it entails, as if their believing it about themselves meant that it must be false. In fact, Monothelitism is a recurring, baseless allegation against those who have been steadfast in Roman Orthodoxy, including the Holy See.