Posted on 08/27/2002 7:30:54 PM PDT by kattracks
WASHINGTON, Aug 27, 2002 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- A nun belonging to Iraq's Christian minority that still speaks a dialect of Aramaic, the language of Jesus, was found beheaded in Baghdad, the U.S.-based Chaldean News Agency reported Tuesday.
CNA blamed "Muslim terrorists" for this murder of Sister Cecilia Hanna, 70. According to this wire service of Iraq's Christian exiles, she "was knifed down savagely and her head was severed from the rest of her body by a group of thugs while she was staying in the Chaldean monastery located in Palestine Street in Baghdad."
When asked about this report, a State Department spokeswoman told United Press International Tuesday, "We are not aware of this case."
Shortly after the start of the U.S. war on terrorism, Albert Yelda, a London-based Iraqi opposition leader, had warned that Iraq's ancient Christian community would be made a whipping boy for this conflict.
Yelda told UPI at the time that Iraq's Christians "no longer dare to wear their traditional crosses. They are being called crusaders. They do not receive food rations. They are being told, 'Ask the Americans to feed you. You have no business being here.'"
In an interview, Bishop Ibrahim N. Ibrahim of the Chaldean Church's Eastern diocese in the U.S. referred UPI to the CNA story Tuesday but denied that Christians in Iraq were being singled out for persecution.
However, CNA now ranks Sister Cecilia Hanna among the long line of martyrs in present-day Iraq, whose Christians are the descendants of one of the oldest known civilizations -- Mesopotamia. Collectively, these Christians are known of Assyrians.
Assyians say they were the first nation to adopt Christianity as state religion in 179 AD, more than 100 years before Armenia, which prides itself with being the first Christianized country. The Assyrians also claim were the ones to have built the first Christian churches and to have been the first to translate the New Testament from Greek into their vernacular, which still resembles the language of Christ.
The Chaldean Church, to which the murdered Sacred Heart of Jesus nun belonged, is in union with the Vatican and has approximately one million members, half of whom still live in Iraq, while the rest is spread around the world, Bishop Ibrahim said.
Another 300,000 to 500,000 Assyrian Christians belong to the venerable Church of the East. This denomination was once condemned as heretical because it followed the teachings of Nestorius, the 5th-century bishop of Constantinople, who taught that the Virgin Mary was not the "theodokos," or mother of God, but simply the mother of Jesus Christ.
Nestorian missionaries were the first the reach Mongolia, China and Japan in the 8th century. However, in the 16th century, a segment of the Nestorian Church recognized the Pope and united with Rome, which persecuted the remaining Nestorians for centuries, especially in India.
"Today, our two churches are very close," Bishop Ibrahim said. While not in full communion, they practice Eucharistic hospitality under certain circumstances. In other words, they commune each other's members if they have no church of their own denomination to go to.
"Our liturgies are very similar," Ibrahim explained. "Assyrian services consist of 99 percent liturgy with lots of incense," Yelda said. The difference is that while the Chaldeans allow icons in their churches, the Nestorian sanctuaries are as stark as synagogues. But for a simple cross above the altar, nothing adorns them.
There are other parallels between the Nestorians and the Jews as well. Nestorians call their priest "rabi" (teacher), and like orthodox Jews they eschew mixed marriages. "We want to preserve a Christian people in our country," Yelda explained.
While Bishop Ibrahim allowed that "Christians like all others suffer from the turmoil in Iraq, but are not targeted for persecution," the Chaldean News Service accused Saddam Hussein's government of appeasing "the rising tide of Muslim fanaticism."
This movement, it said, "has at its final goal not only the murder or the complete subjugation of non-Muslims but all those who do not measure up to its doctrine of terror and hatred."
According to Albert Yelda, Saddam Hussein, too, has set out to destroy the venerable Assyrian culture, "not out of any Muslim convictions but because, like every tyrant, he hates minorities."
Yelda described how Saddam had banned the Assyrians' cultural clubs, where their literary language was kept alive. "Saddam had hundreds of Assyrian villages razed, including recently a 2nd-century church."
Yelda also accused Saddam's son, Uday, of raping and killing an Assyrian woman and then making this act public knowledge.
As for the repression of Iraqi Christians in the name of Islam, Yelda said it ran counter the stated wish of the Prophet Mohammed, who was so impressed by the Assyrians' knowledge of medicine and sciences that he issued a Firman, or letter of protection, for them.
The Firman disappeared without trace over 150 years ago.
By UWE SIEMON-NETTO, UPI Religion Correspondent
Copyright 2002 by United Press International.
I'm sure she wouldn't have wanted that, it's what I want though.
Get this through your heads, the only way to deal with sworn mortal enemies mercilessly destroy them and everything they hold dear. Smash them until they beg you to stop, until they shun anyone amongst them who even thinks about killing an innocent person who's just trying to lead the life that God gave them.
That's not my opinion, that's undebatable scientific fact. We've forgotten this crucial lesson in our overprotected surburban fog. I can assure you that we will re-learn it. The easy way or the hard way.... sooner or later.
I believe them now when they say they want to kill us.
Mene Mene Tekel Uparsin
(measured - weighed - divided)
This is what happened to the Babylonian Empire. IOW, Attack Iraq, and divide it up between their neighbors. Saudia Arabia would get a piece; Iran would get a chunk; the Kurds would get another, etc. This could appease all the Arab countries while disposing of a potential enemy. Game, set, match.
Nothing to defend. She IS the Mother of God the Son, Jesus Christ.
Read about it in the works of the Ecumenical Patriarch, St. Photios the Great. The addition of filoque by Rome, was one of the causes of the Great Schism.
It still separates the Eastern Orthodox Christians from BOTH Rome and the Prostestants.
Nestorius was at one point a leading theologian in Constantinople, he was trained in Greek philosophy, and his heresy, like many others of the period, derived from attempts to apply these philosophical doctrines to the truths of the Bible. While Nestorianism and Arianism disappeared from within the Empire, the simpler concept that Christ was only a man was adopted by the German tribes, since Nestorius and Arius were energetic at sending missionaries to them.
As a result, when these German tribes conquered the Western Empire, their heretical views made it harder for them to join in fellowship with the Christians who accepted the Creed. This had a highly disruptive effect on later western history.
And you are free to believe sola sciptura, but that wasn't my origional question. It was "who is your authority for interpreting scripture?" And after that I asked how did you know if the right books were inspired since you reject the authority who put the scripture together.
Regards to you also.
This is certainly true of the filioque controversy, but since it has to do with whether the Third Person of the Trinity was sent by The First Person AND the Second Person, or WITH the Second Person, it has nothing whatsoever to do with Nestorianism or Arianism, which is rejected by Orthodox, Catholics, and nearly all Protestants. It is therefore off-topic for this thread, which touches on theology only in the relationship between Nestorian Christians and other Christians.
You're welcome, while there are many things which separate Western Christians, the matter of the nature of the Trinity, which is what separates us from the Nestorians, is not one of them.
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