Stuff Melkites Like

Like “fundie” and “papist,” the label “Melkite” began as an insult. Deriving from the Arabic and Syriac words for “royal” or “imperial,” it was coined by Syriac and Armenian dissenters to poke fun at those Christians who accepted the dictates of the government-approved Council of Chalcedon. Its meaning boiled down to “those who kiss the keister of the State.”

History has a sense of humor. Melkite Greek Catholics, who have continued to follow many Orthodox customs even after returning to communion with Rome, are now very much on their own with regard to state power. Numbering roughly 1.5 million worldwide, they form small minorities in various Middle Eastern countries. In 2008, according to the Catholic Near Eastern Welfare Association, 200,000 Melkite communicants were living in Syria. How many remain, and what kinds of lives they lead, are subjects for grim speculation.

But the Jordanian Melkites are safe enough to host foreign bloggers. Last Saturday, we celebrated an Easter vigil Mass with the congregation of Ss. Peter and Paul, in fashionable West Amman. Today, we attended a wedding ceremony at St. George’s, in the struggling village of Ader, near Karak. For all the differences in the venues, I noted some common tonal trends and liturgical habits that would send many American Catholics to the hospital with severe chest pains:

Melkites bang on drums, fire off pistols, and ululate. Okay, to be fair, they only do this at weddings, and they confine it to the church courtyard. The pistolero, who assured us he was shooting blanks, did so far enough outside the flight paths of our bombers to preclude massive overreaction. Still, it’s hard to go from Cinco de Mayo to the Word of the Lord.

They applaud with abandon. Checking their guns and bongos at the church doors forces Melkites to find new outlets for their high spirits. At the wedding, they put their hands together for the happy couple, which makes a kind of sense. But at the Easter vigil Mass, they applauded us. If we hadn’t shown up, Father might have had to read off the soccer scores.

They recite the Our Father with their hands in the orans position. This, at least, counted as a blessing in disguise, as it tipped me off what prayer was being said. Otherwise, as far as my ears were concerned, the congregation might as well have been singing “On, Wisconsin.”

They march. I haven’t quite worked out the rules governing who gets to do this; apparently, they vary according to the occasion. At the wedding, it was only the bride and groom, followed by the priest and deacon, who took a brisk turn around the space between the front pews and the sanctuary. At a baptism by the Jordan, the entire party, including parents, godparents, and honored guests, did a lap around the baptismal font. In both cases, the priests held everyone to a slow and stately pace, but – maybe because it hadn’t been rehearsed in advance – the spectacle retained something of the bunny hop.

They employ altar girls. At the Easter Vigil Mass, Father had the help of four altar servers: two boys, and two girls. In their white robes and with their Mediterranean features, the girls looked like unsung victims of Diocletian. Chubby and cowlicked, the boys looked like the Campbell’s Kids. Though the girls seemed to be doing at least as good a job as the boys, it has to be said that the taller boy, roughly a head shorter than the shorter girl, made it through the Mass carrying a processional cross twice his size.

They love photographers. An old joke has it that every Marine Corps platoon goes into action closely followed by an equal number of cameramen. Melkites seem to follow the same order of battle. Both at the wedding and the vigil Mass, our shutterbugs enjoyed the run of the place. They took full advantage, shooting so many pictures at such a short distance from the action that I began to wonder whether they were going for up-vestment shots of Father.

But this camera-friendliness may reflect an eagerness on the part of Jordanian Melkites to remind the world that – like Horton’s Who – they are here. If numbers equal visibility, they’re wise to make the effort. With 400 families, Ss. Peter and Paul is the largest Melkite church in Amman. Many of its parishioners having emigrated to large cities in search of work, St. George’s full-time congregation has dipped to 50 families.

Behind St. George’s, constructed in 1932 from hand-carved stones transported from local quarries by donkey, stands an unfinished rectory. Beside it stretches a plot of empty ground covered by broken concrete. Plans exist to build a basketball or volleyball court for the parish children, but the funds necessary to realize those plans are lacking.

Given these handicaps, the Melkites’ success in staying on the radar is frankly impressive. The pastor of St. George’s informed us proudly that his parish had received Cardinal Dolan and Bishop Chapetto, of Brooklyn. Fr. Nabil Haddad of Ss. Peter and Paul founded the Jordanian Interfaith Coexistence Research Center, which enjoys the support of Queen Rania. On the wall of the church’s reception room, Fr. Nabil keeps a photograph of himself and the queen – a reminder to parishioners that they are, in fact, here, at least in the eyes of the royal family.

“We are the original Christians,” one St. George’s parishioner reminded us. He meant that Jordan’s Melkites are descended by blood from the members of the earliest Christian communities. Whether this claim would stand up to scrutiny I don’t know, but it stands to reason that people who see themselves as the heirs of so much history would take a tolerant view of merrymaking, even during the liturgy. They know in their bones that signs of joy are better – and perhaps harder to come by – than signs of sorrow.

Anyway, Melkites have their standards, too. At the Easter vigil Mass, one of the four choristers stationed at the front ordered me to remove my gum. I tried to explain that it was Nicorette, a medical necessity, but he looked serious, so I figured I’d better not argue with an original Christian.