A Flip Flopping Patriarch?

Patriarch Sfeir can’t continue being whatever you want him to be.

There is a fine line between centrism and confusing indecision. Patriarch Sfeir, a venerable figure, is starting to appear more like the latter.

Mr. Sfeir is doubtlessly well intentioned, but he’s confusing the hell out of your average Lebanese Johnny. He is sounding more like a confrontation-weary politician who gives everybody a bit of what they want to hear, to the extent that both opposition and government have something to prove that the Patriarch is on their side.

The Clergy are supposed to live in shadeless worlds of black and white, right and wrong, but Mr. Sfeir is an exception: He’s keeping the same distance from everyone, he told us in last Sunday’s sermon. As a visibly confused writer puts it in the LF’s website: “How can you keep the same distance from right and wrong?”

Today was a classic example of Bkirki indecision. The Patriarch told Annahar that the by-elections are the government’s “duty”, but he stops short of condemning the President’s plans to prevent them from happening.

If the Patriarch can’t bring moral clarity to politics, then why involve him in the first place?