After Met Antony Bashir published a rather negative assessment of the Melkite Catholic Church in 1957, it is interesting to see that in 1963 the Word magazine, under his direction, published a lengthy essay about Eastern Catholic identity by the Melkite Catholic Patriarch Maximos IV Sayegh. There can be little doubt that this is a sign of the rapidly warming ecumenical relations during the Second Vatican Council, and much of what the patriarch says foreshadows the Balamand Document and Zoghb...
