The Melkites have been in the forefront of Catholic efforts to achieve unity with the Orthodox, even if at times they have placed themselves further out than Rome is willing to go.

Melkite Patriarch Gregory II Youssef Sayour attended the first Vatican Council (1869–70), where he opposed the definition of papal infallibility and left the council without signing the decree.

When forced to sign later on, he insisted on adding a provision drawn from the Council of Florence, the 15th-century effort at Catholic-Orthodox unity. That provision called for the preservation of the rights and privileges of the Eastern patriarchs. It's worth keeping in mind here that the Orthodox do not deny the Pope a primacy of honor but do deny his universal jurisdiction over the Church.

But what the Melkites are best known for nowadays it what is often referred to as the “Zoghby initiative.”

Archbishop Elias Zoghby, born in Cairo in 1912, proposed in 1975 a “Project of Double Communion” in which the Melkite Eastern Catholics of the Patriarchate of Antioch would rejoin the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch while at the same time staying in communion with Rome.

Archbishop Zoghby was motivated in part by the thought that overall unity between the Catholics and Orthodox would take too long to achieve without such a bold move. He wrote that “millions of faithful are born and die in a fragmented and divided Church, in a state of separation and dissidence. Meanwhile, the ecclesiastical bureaucracy spins its wheels in discussing doctrinal issues in their congregations and subcom-missions. God only knows where this will end.”

Rome reacted negatively to Archbishop Zoghby's proposal, saying that unity could not be achieved on a local level but had to be accomplished globally. But the archbishop pressed on, writing what he described in 1981 as a “shock book,” Tous schismatiques? (“Are we all schismatics?”), which presented his ideas.

In 1995 Zoghby presented the following statement to the Melkite synod of bishops as a possible statement on unity:

“Profession of Faith

I. I believe everything Eastern Orthodoxy teaches.

II. I am in communion with the Bishop of Rome as the first among the bishops, according to the limits recognized by the Holy Fathers of the East during the first millennium before the separation.”

The profession of faith was signed by 24 of the 26 bishops and presented to the Melkite patriarch (then Maximos V) and the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Antioch, Ignatius IV.

The following year the Melkite synod prepared a proposal for unifying the Catholic and Orthodox patriarchates of Antioch. It said the reunification “does not mean a victory of one church over the other, one church going back to the other or the melting of one church into the other. Rather, it means putting an end to the separation between the brothers that took place in 1724 and led to the existence of two separate independent patriarchates and returning together to the unity that prevailed in the one Antiochian Patriarchate before the separation.”

Concerning the position of the Pope, the Melkite leaders noted it remained to be discussed by the Joint International Commission between the Catholic and Orthodox churches. Quoting from the Second Vatican Council and from Pope John Paul II's encyclical Ut Unum Sint (That All May Be One), the Melkite fathers said the relations between East and West in the first millennium should be the inspiration for those discussions.

In its response to Archbishop Zoghby's initiative, the Roman Curia repeated the earlier objections. Curial officials also said that the Church's doctrine on papal primacy had undergone development since the time of the first millennium and that the doctrine had to be held in its entirety. They cited Vatican I and Vatican II in this regard. Rome said that while the exercise of primacy is a legitimate subject for discussion, it could not be resolved in isolation from the rest of the Church.

The Orthodox have also given a cool response to Archbishop Zoghby's initiative, saying that unity of faith must precede intercommunion.

The current Melkite patriarch, Gregory III, has pressed on. In 2001, in the presence of the Pope during his visit to Syria, Patriarch Gregory declared his wish to celebrate Easter according to the Julian (“old”) calendar so that Catholics and Orthodox could celebrate together. The patriarch said the proposal caused a “tremendous ovation” from the crowd but clerical opposition caused it to fail.

He vowed to continue pressing the case for a common Easter celebration.

— Wesley Young