The purpose of a fact-finding mission is to uncover certain facts to enable members of the investigating team to form a personal view of what is wrong; in this case, of what is not working in Lebanon today. As they collect data, they can read between the lines and go beyond the surface of things. At the end, they can come up with an analysis of the facts rather than a unilateral statement.

What are the difficulties Christian communities face in Lebanon? Some have been repeated so often that they have become clichés, like war, armed Palestinians, Hizbollah's weaponry, Christian divisions, economic crisis, unemployment and underemployment, the rise of Islam within the bureaucracy and the army, housing shortages, emigration, low birth-rate, etc.

On 7 January, the apostolic nuncio was present at the meeting between the US delegation and the Synod of Maronite Bishops. He said he was struck by the figures about the decline of Christian communities put together by the Maronite Foundation in the World, and published a day earlier in L’Orient-Le Jour, a French-language Lebanese newspaper. A summary given to the US delegation showed that the proportion of Christians in the Lebanese population dropped from 52 per cent to 35 per cent with many working abroad. The Christian birth rate was around 1.8 per cent.

Given these facts and figures will only external factors for Christians' loss of influence be taken into account? There is a real danger that this could happen. It is not that the data are false, but that they reflect only part of the truth; that they sweep under the carpet the responsibility Christians themselves have to bear for what is happening to them, which is to say that Christians' behaviour is often an offence to the Evangelical message, and so in some cases they get the cold shoulder treatment.

In the report given to Mgr Kicanas, Maronite bishops do address some of the internal causes for the crisis but only superficially. They speak of a "morally weakened society", of "internal divisions and disputes" that continue "despite all the best efforts at reconciliation", but fail to identify causes.

This year, the message for Lent will put the spotlight on the moral decline of Christian communities, the report said. The General Assembly of Catholic Patriarchs and Bishops of Lebanon held on 9-14 December last year focused on the same topic.

However, the bishops failed to explain clearly how Christians are responsible for their own "moral decline". Obviously, war played a role, but in some instances, "peace" has had as destructive an effect as war itself; just turn on the television to see a society united by glamour, hedonism and mercantilism, trampling its own treasures, seeking the advice of fortune-tellers to know its future.

The bishops did not hesitate to point the finger at the West as an external cause for what is happening to Christians in the Arab world. They noted that the West is more concerned about the security of Israel and oil reserves than of the welfare of Arab Christians.

They announced that the Maronite Center for Documentation and Research would hold a seminar on 22 January to examine ways to help impoverished Christians to sell their property, if they have to, within the community rather than to non-Christians.

"Some bishops speak with vehemence," Mgr Kicanas said at the meeting. Instead, he suggested that Lebanese politics is a subtle game of influence that touches every institution and lobby. For this reason, the Lebanese, especially Christians, must adapt if they want to exert influence on the United States, a country that is very important for their future.