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A Balance of Cultures

You’ve now been a pastor in North Hollywood for several years, in charge of a large Chaldean community. How was it for you (and the people of your community) adapting to life in the U.S.?

As a refugee in the U.S., the challenge is finding the proper balance between maintaining our cultural and faith traditions while adapting to life in North America. It’s a big struggle for the people in my community. Some wish to segregate themselves completely and recreate a life for themselves as though they were back home. However, the newer generations do not accept that and so we are caught in a great divide. As a pastor, I’m constantly trying to help the people in my parish community find the right balance. America has embraced us, and I feel strongly that we too must embrace her. 

At the same time, the older generations are right to fight to preserve our culture, our language especially. As a community, we speak Aramaic. But the newer generations, born here in the U.S., understand very little of it, so we’ve had to adapt and learn to use English in our Masses. That caused divisions with those who preferred to keep the entire liturgy in Aramaic. Personally, I believe that it’s very important for the newer generations to not only learn about but adopt this beautiful part of our culture. In my community, we’ve found a way to celebrate the liturgy in both languages. This method has been very successful both in ensuring that we do not alienate the new generations and in handing on to them the richness of our heritage.

You see, Chaldean Christians are the Christians from the very first century, descendants of the apostle St. Thomas. We are Catholic and share the same doctrines as the Roman Catholic Church and all Eastern Catholic Churches. The only difference is that we’ve maintained the traditions of our ancestors from the first century. For example, we’ve maintained the Divine Liturgy, one of the oldest and most beautiful liturgies.  And, as I mentioned before, we’ve preserved the Aramaic language, the language of Jesus. It’s beautiful that there exist so many Catholic traditions that highlight the richness and diversity of our one faith.  It’s important that the younger generations recognize the richness of diversity and work hard to preserve it for future generations.

How has the escalation of Christian persecutions in Iraq affected the Chaldean communities in the U.S.? And specifically, what did it mean for you when Archbishop Paulus Faraj Rahho of Mosul was kidnapped and killed in October of 2008?

The recent bloodshed in Iraq has deeply affected our community here in the U.S. for many reasons, primarily because many of us still have relatives and close family in Iraq. Iraq today is in peril. Every day they are killing more and more Christians and bombing our churches. Our friends and relatives are also fleeing to other countries and many of them are looking to join us here in the United States.

When it reached the point where they killed the archbishop, we knew our country was in a dire situation. They reached the high figure of the Chaldean Church. What else remains for them to take from us? After his death, hundreds of families fled immediately because they knew they were no longer safe. No one remained to guarantee their safety.

Many of these families remain in limbo, waiting on their refugee status. Already a large number of them have come to the U.S., and our diocese has accepted many of them. They arrive with nothing, and we do our best to help everybody, but the need is great. We have to go beyond ensuring that they have a roof over their heads and food on the table. We have to teach them how to adapt to new life in this great country, to accept it and to learn to be good citizens.

... The problem with our parish communities here in Southern California is that we don’t have enough room to accommodate all the parishioners that come for Mass. We celebrate six masses every weekend, and still there is no room for everyone. Communities are struggling to build more Chaldean churches; some are a mere 10 to 15 miles apart from each other.

In your experience, has the faith of Chaldean Catholics in the U.S. been strengthened by their struggles or are you finding the opposite to be true?

In my experience, for the most part, the faith of our people has been strengthened despite the many struggles and the fear of what is happening back home. My own brother is a good example of this. When he was in Baghdad, he was not going to church. He took his faith for granted.  Now that he’s in Chicago, he goes every Sunday and brings his whole family.

I’ve also noticed an increase in vocations in my diocese of St. Peter’s in San Diego. What is amazing is that all the current seminarians were either born in the U.S. or grew up here.

Iraq is our homeland, our Church is there, our patriarch is there, everything is there, and the Chaldean community here in the U.S. is deeply concerned about the situation back home and is working very hard every day to urge the American government to help all the Christians of Iraq. Our main concern is the safety of our brothers and sisters in the faith who remain in danger. We struggle to let them know that they are not alone, that we think about them constantly, pray for them constantly and do whatever is in our power to help them in any way that we can.

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