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Article Excerpt
The old man standing outside Brooklyn's Maronite cathedral after Sunday liturgy is just back from a visit to his native Lebanon. His face is grim, his tone close to desolate. "It's over for the Christians there," he says. "There is no future. The Syrians have almost destroyed it for us. You can't blame the Christians for wanting to leave."
Inside the church, worshipers have just completed the Sunday liturgy, and are filing into the back hall for a special dinner honoring Lebanon's national holiday. The congregation is composed of the descendants of Lebanese immigrants, and a healthy number of new arrivals from the old country -- whose presence is a sign of decline in the homeland of the Middle East's most vibrant Christian community.
"The Maronites want to get out of Lebanon," says Bernadette Karam. "A lot of people are waiting or hope, in any way, to leave the country. They're willing to buy visas, to do anything to escape."
"It's very dangerous there. Everybody is against us. We're scared. This is why we left," says Abdo Houayek, standing with his family. "I was born in 1960, but when I grew up in the 1970s, that's when the war started against the Christians. This is why we're scared. It's just best to take your kids and leave. If we have a democracy, we'll go back. But for now, it's too dangerous. This is not the first war against the Christians, or the last. . . . Those who can leave, are leaving."
There have been Maronites -- Catholics who adhere to one of the Catholic Church's Eastern rites -- in Lebanon for 1,700 years. Maronite Christianity arrived with a 4th-century monk named Maron, who -- along with his followers -- left the church in Antioch (in what is now Syria) after a theological dispute. Looking for a safe and defensible refuge, the...
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