Posted on 01/19/2015 6:21:53 PM PST by marshmallow
Calif. priests must return to Iraq.
The following comes from a Jan. 15 story in the Los Angeles Times.
Intervention by Pope Francis has apparently not solved the schism between a prominent Chaldean priest in eastern San Diego County and the head of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Iraq.
At issue is a demand by Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako that Father Noel Gorgis and several other Chaldean priests in the U.S. return to Iraq or face, in effect, excommunication.
In an interview with Aleteia, a Rome-based Catholic news agency, Sako said that the survival of the church was at stake during the onslaught by Islamic radicals.
“We have been there for 2,000 years,” he said. “We have a mission and a role, and if a future exists for the Chaldean Church, it is not in the diaspora but in Iraq. If all the families leave, and even the priests, the entire history and Chaldean Christian patrimony will vanish.”
Gorgis, 49, known as Father Noel, is pastor at St. Peter Chaldean Church in El Cajon. Along with the Detroit area, eastern San Diego County has been a major resettling spot for Iraqi immigrants.
Chaldean leaders insist that sending Gorgis and the others back to Iraq would mark them for death by the Islamic forces that have swept through much of Iraq, destroying churches, killing Christians and forcing many to flee.
(Excerpt) Read more at cal-catholic.com ...
Its like asking Jews to go to Nazi Germany.
God rewards obedience. Sometimes He rewards obedience with martyrdom. Tough choices.
Pretty good comparison.
I can see the Patriarch’s point. If they all flee, then the church in that country is going to wither and die. Yet, if they stay, they will be killed anyway.
I think, in that circumstance, if you don’t have any strength to defend yourselves, then your best option is to preserve the church in exile until it is safer to return.
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Agreed.
Chaldeans in this country are working on several generations themselves and most of them have no ties to the mideast. They started appearing in the Detroit area in the late 1800s and Iraq is a foreign country to many of them.
Jews didn’t willingly accept a vow of obedience. Nor did the Jews willingly accept responsibility for serving other Jews.
Instead, these men face an extremely difficult reality. To fully live their vows, they need to return. They need also to shepherd the flock.
It will likely require heroic virtue, which God will certainly provide.
Its easy to tell someone else to go die in a country they have no ties to.
I agree. We do that everyday with our soldiers, and they do so willingly.
Priests save souls, and live an incredibly difficult life, even in the best conditions.
However, people desperately need them. Somebody has to do it, as hard and as dangerous as it is. Just like firemen and policemen.
He must follow his heart in this—maybe when IS has flashed its pan and ends up in dustbin of history like the Mahdi in Sudan at the end of the 19th Century.
“Its easy to tell someone else to go die in a country they have no ties to.”
It is?
I don’t think it is at all. I don’t think the Patriarch would bother doing this unless he thought it was absolutely necessary.
Have these priests forgotten what the English Jesuits did? They obediently went to England (from safety in France) knowing they probably would be martyred. Their last Mass in free France was their funeral Mass - even though they were not yet dead.
I understand these men are afraid, but a crown awaits them if they are martyred. What do they really have to fear if they walk with Christ?
Wouldn’t the best option be to return and arm up?
“I think until American Catholics and Protestants have the balls to man up and go remove muslims from former Christian lands, they need to STFU about what the Chaldeans should do.”
So unless we declare war on all Muslims living in lands Christians lost to Muslims in the last 1400 years we aren’t allowed to talk about how our fellow Catholics should be obedient to their own bishops?
That. . . makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Why not reverse that? What if a Chaldean were to tell other Chaldean Catholics that they had no right to speak about what their fellow Catholics in America were doing or not doing in obedience to their bishops in America until those American Catholics got the “balls to man up and go remove” Protestants or convert them in the western Catholic world?
Yeah, that makes no sense either.
I’m guessing you bravely see a means of getting rid of people who think probably aren’t like you.
Typical bottom feeding.
“I’m guessing you bravely see a means of getting rid of people who think probably aren’t like you.”
I’m guessing that you’re making even less sense than you did one post ago.
“Typical bottom feeding.”
If “bottom feeding” isn’t working for you, then don’t do it.
Be Catholic or not. Make your choice. Make sense or not. Make your choice.
Ecc_7:17 Be not overly wicked, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time?
And sometimes stupid acts plays a part in our "choices".
We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ. 1 Corinthians 4:10
The Apostles went to lands where they KNEW they could be martyred - and 11 of them were. You’re calling them stupid?
It’s like the expectation that it is the captain who will be the last one, not the first one, to abandon the ship in an emergency. The Patriarch is asking for the same attitude of the Iraqi Chaldean Church leaders. In the strictest terms, harsh as it may be, he’s probably right. If we think in terms of the early Church, who would have accepted 1st that they might have to be martyrs, the leaders or the followers?
It is one thing to willingly go where one feels led. It is quite another thing to have someone tell you, YOU have to go.
One has to remember the 100 prophets of God that Obidiah hid from Jezabel (1 Kings 18). Would you call them cowards for not standing up the way Elijah did? In fact God tells Elijah in 1 Kings 19 that He actually had 7,000 hidden that had not bow the knee to Baal.
Sometimes the best offense is defense.
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