The Melkite Church: An Historical and Ecclesiological Approach

A survey of the development of the Melkite community united with Rome from it’s beginnings as a movement in the seventeenth century, characterized by a de facto communion with Rome, and it’s formal establishment as a distinct entity in the eighteenth century. Descy traces the subsequent shift from a communion of autonomous Churches to one of increasing legal and intellectual dependence on the Roman Church, followed by its recovery of a more authentically Eastern ecclesiology and practice in the twentieth century. Formerly a lecturer at the Institute Catholique des Hautes Etudes Commerciales in Brussels and associate professor at the Saint Paul Institute of Philosophy and Theology in Harissa, Lebanon Father Serge now lives as a hermit in Lebanon.

Translated from the French by Kenneth J. Mortimer; with a preface by Archbishop Joseph Tawil.