Washington D.C., Jun 16, 2017 / 03:12 am (CNA).- Ancient artifacts. Centuries-old legends. Prayers dating back to the time of Christ. An enemy seeking to destroy it all. And a team of dedicated scholars trying to save the memories before it’s too late.
It may sound like the start of the next Indiana Jones movie, but for the team behind the Christian Communities of the East Cultural Heritage Project, the reality of Christian communities disappearing from the Middle East is a pressing threat.
Faced with persecution at the hands of ISIS, more than a decade of war, and generations of economic struggle, these researchers are looking to record the memories and traditions of the Christian communities of Iraq before they are lost forever.
But instead of swinging through empty tombs or digging through rubble, these scholars are asking the community members themselves to engage in the rich Middle Eastern tradition of storytelling, sharing their memories and descriptions in their own native Arabic and Neo-Aramaic languages – some of them singing and speaking the same language Christ himself did.
Dr. Shawqi Talia, a lecturer on Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures at The Catholic University of America explained that his colleagues’ quest to preserve the history and culture of Iraqi Catholics is essential for passing on their meaning, not only to the next generation, but for the world.
Talia, himself an Iraqi Chaldean Catholic, told CNA that he wants young people “to know how life was and what life was all about for the Christians – not just up north but in Iraq as a whole – in the ’50s and the ’40s and the ’30s, and to know that our history goes back for 2,000 years.”
Yet as Christians from the Nineveh plain continue to leave their homeland due to threats of violence, Talia hopes Middle Eastern Christians in diaspora will see the stories, songs, histories and memories contained in the project not only as a record, but as a tool. He wants Middle Eastern youth to “work in order to keep this kind of heritage alive, not just for the Christians from that part of the world who are now living in diaspora, but because it’s the history of humanity – for all of us.”
This history is not just for the Christian communities of the Middle East, but for all Christians and the whole world to learn from and preserve – especially as the ancestral lands continue to be embroiled in conflict. “You can read something in a history text, but now you see it, and you hear it in person,” Talia said of the recorded interviews.
Preserving the past
The idea behind Christian Communities of the East Cultural Heritage Project – a joint partnership between the Institute of Christian Oriental Research and the School of Theology and Religious Studies at The Catholic University of America – was born over the course of years of conversations between Dr. Talia and Dr. Robin Darling Young, an associate professor of spirituality in the university.
“The reason that we started this project was that we wanted to put together materials that would make available to other people and to communities themselves records of various kinds of the life of Christian communities in the Middle East,” Darling Young told CNA.
Attacks by ISIS against Christian and other minority religious communities in northern Iraq heightened the sense of urgency in preserving this culture’s heritage and history.
Since 2003, violence in Iraq and Syria has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions more, including whole communities of Middle Eastern Christians. In the past 14 years, an estimated 1 million Christians have left their communities in Iraq, leaving less than 500,000 Christians in the lands inhabited by the faithful for 2,000 years.
To begin preserving their history before it completely vanishes, the group used Talia’s connections to the Chaldean Catholic community in the United States, particularly those in the Washington, D.C. area and in Southeast Michigan, where some 150,000 Chaldean Catholics have established new homes over the past century. Plans also exist to interview Iraqi Christian communities in Europe and elsewhere, as well as release a documentary funded by the Michigan Humanities Council.
After developing a detailed questionnaire, the team began to record interviews with members of the Chaldean communities in both English and Neo-Aramaic, a form of the language spoken by Christ. The researchers also collected photographs and documents to digitize and present online along with the recordings as part of a comprehensive online archive.
Ryann Craig, a doctoral student in the department of Semitics, explained that after consulting with oral history experts at the Library of Congress and elsewhere, the team sought to “draw out descriptions of communal life in their original languages” in the interview process.
“My challenge was to try to craft questions that would get people to answer in their native tongue.” One of the first questions, she said, was to ask community members to explain the meaning behind their family name and its importance in their home village. This same technique was also used in getting participants to sing special communal songs created for special occasions like marriages or births, as well as to describe childhood games, or record how family recipes were made and their importance.
Given the circumstances that have brought some Chaldean Christians to the United States, however, some interviews have captured a much different side of the Middle Eastern Christian experience: persecution and flight. Craig told CNA that some of the first interviews of the project were conducted with recent refugees, many of whom were still processing the traumatic circumstances leading up to their exodus.
“A lot of the questions we were asking just weren’t relevant for them,” she said of the questions about traditions and history on the group’s questionnaire. “At that point we just decided to let them tell whatever story they wanted to tell, and didn’t really prompt as much as we do with people who have been here for decades and feel more settled.”
In collecting both these stories as well as those from Chaldean Christians who moved to the United States decades ago for economic reasons, the group has been able to document a cross-section of Iraqi Christian life. Among those who came over in the 1950s-70s, the researchers have recorded histories by people from smaller Christian villages who spoke Neo-Aramaic and were very much connected to the Chaldean identity and more ancient traditions and ways of life.
Meanwhile, the majority of Chaldean refugees coming over to the United States as a result of violence and persecution are more likely to speak Arabic than Neo-Aramaic, and are also more likely to come from larger, more cosmopolitan cities. Still, among those persecuted, “there’s a profound sense of them being Christian, because they’re being persecuted for that reason.”
‘More than just memories’
Though Talia is not involved directly in the interview process, he stressed to CNA the importance of gathering oral histories due to their unique ability to capture the essence of what it’s like to be a Middle Eastern Christian.
Just as his mother painted the experience of growing up in her hometown for Talia and his siblings, so too do these oral histories transmit the feeling of being in the communities of northern Iraq. “When you see these memories put on audio or on video, you can feel as if you were, or are present.”
While Talia was raised in Baghdad, his mother came from a Christian village of around 5,000 people in the northern Nineveh plain, without electricity, but maintaining many ancient traditions in their daily lives, including use of the Neo-Aramaic language.
“It’s more than simply nostalgia,” he explained of the stories. “It’s more than just memories. It’s a way of life which has disappeared or is disappearing.”
For Talia, the importance oral history plays in Middle Eastern culture has all the more weight due to the uncertainty faced by many communities. Even those that have been freed from the hands of ISIS are often in ruins, and much of the Middle Eastern Christian community is now in diaspora. Talia wants to help ensure “that the community isn’t gone simply because it isn’t in the villages or the towns.”
The next generation
The preservation of their home cultures and traditions is also a major concern for young Middle Eastern Christians who want to know more about their roots.
Yousif Kalian is a second-generation Iraqi immigrant and a member of the Syriac Catholic Church. As an undergraduate student at The Catholic University of America, he was a young adult researcher on the Christian Communities of the East Cultural Heritage Project, and he has continued to work with the endeavor after graduation. He initially learned about the project while taking a class with Dr. Talia.
“I’ve always had an interest in the region from a professional point of view, on top of being Iraqi-American,” Kalian told CNA. He said that within both Catholic and secular culture in the United States, there is a lack of understanding about Middle Eastern Christians, as well as a culture gap between Middle Eastern parents or grandparents and their children or grandchildren. This, he said, has left a lot of questions about identity and culture among many of his Middle Eastern Christian peers.
Kalian sees this project’s blending of oral history and multimedia access as a way for young people to help change that knowledge gap.
“If you know anything about the Middle East, the oral tradition is the most prominent tradition there,” he said, pointing to the recitation traditions in Islam, Judaism and several Christian churches. Singing and storytelling are closely tied up with the identity of the people, he explained.
“I think not just preserving dates and numbers and facts, but really preserving the stories is the most important thing to preserve from Middle Eastern Christian culture,” Kalian stressed.
“We all grew up with stories. The monastery that my grandfather is named after was destroyed by ISIS in 2015,” he said. “And my grandfather’s name was Behnam.”
Saint Behnam and Saint Sara monastery was established in the 4th Century in the Nineveh plain, about 20 miles from the city of Mosul. In late 2014, ISIS fighters took control of the monastery, expelling the monks under threat of death. On March 19, 2015, the terrorist group released images of the destruction of the tomb of Saint Behnam and the surrounding buildings.
Yet, Kalian keeps the memory of the monastery with him, as a part of who he is. “The story goes that my great grandma couldn’t have a son,” he told CNA. “Kept having daughters, and in Middle Eastern culture having a son is a point of pride: he carries the name and the wealth and protection. So she went to St. Behnam monastery and was praying, ‘Please give me a boy, St. Behnam. I’ll name him after you if you give me a boy’.”
“Sure enough, she gave birth to a boy, and he survived,” Kalian said, “He survived, and she named him Behnam.”
“You can find a book on Christianity in Iraq, or you can find a book on this monastery. But stories like this: they’ll die with our parents or grandparents.”
“That’s why I think this project is so important: to get the recipes of the food that they cook and the history behind the food they cook, and the names of our parents and grandparents and where they come from, and these saints and stories and traditions…once we move here, to an extent it stays and is alive, but in another sense it gets lost,” he lamented. “That’s why I think that this project really is important.”
And he is not the only one who is excited about the chance to pass on these stories: his siblings and other friends from his Syriac Catholic community have been interested in having a template to interview their parents and grandparents, and a way to digitize their memories. Kalian himself hopes to interview his family members and priests to collect their oral histories.
“I think every young person, if offered the opportunity, would love to speak with their grandparents or parents, if you gave them a structure to find out more about their own history,” he said.
“If you make it an active thing to learn about your culture and not just have it be reading or watching documentaries. Being able to engage – having it be an active thing and have an active culture – will engage them more and therefore persevere our communities, our history, our culture and our language.”
Once completed, the Christian Communities of the East Cultural Heritage Project will be accessible at www.ccmideast.org and in the archives of the Institute of Christian Oriental Research at The Catholic University of America. Documentary video will also be distributed in Michigan at a later date.
Photos courtesy of The Catholic University of America.
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It would be wise for the Bishops to avoid endorsing politicians. Politicians lie. Neither party deserves an endorsement.
“Neither party offers a platform”. Sigh. Really? If the church bent over backwards any further to avoid being critical of leftist democrats it would split in half. The most clearly dangerous ideas attacking religion and freedom for individuals in general come from the left. One need only view the history of religious suppression in other nations as they followed the path to socialism and then communism. Its true that neither party is specifically Catholic as this is a secular society, not a religious one. Yet the very reason for this article is the recent loosening of laws saying churches had no right to speak out pro or con regarding politicians whose interests conflicted with any church. Lets notice that this loosening came during a republican administration. Its CERTAIN it would not have happened in a democrat one. Ditto the revised Roe v Wade decision.
Maybe it would be smart of the church higher ups to point out to their congregations which party is the more freedom and religion friendly. But then again so many church higher ups mistake socialism for Christianity. No matter. Some of us, at least, actually CAN see reality when it is right in front of us.
@LJ, great comments!
If facts mattered, there’d be no Democrats … And many fewer clergy.
My friend, don’t forget what the far right Nazis did to religion. Let not history repeat itself.
More NDS…Nazi Derangement Syndrome.
Br. Jaques, try harder.
An ignorant statement. The Nazis were socialists. Socialism is a left wing ideology, not a right wing ideology.
they were tyrants – like building all those concrete bunkers with slave labor
Didn’t we help some of them to S America?
It’s best to stick to principles that never change, rather than to politicians and parties that will betray your trust.
Dear, dear bishops at the USCCB: The People of God have superceded your failed leadership. They’ve taken matters of politics into their own hands. They hardly pay attention to you, if you haven’t noticed.
Vox Populi, Vox Dei, eh?
No, you surely don’t mean that, because — whatever your politics — your side does not always win, and you would not want to say that it was God’s will for your side to lose.
Maybe Vox DiogenesRedux, Vox Dei was what you had in mind?
No. Vox populi, vox Dei is not what DioRe wrote. Neither did DioRe purport, suggest, insinuate, or otherwise imply that he speaks for anyone other than himself.
The ‘People of God’ is ‘defined’ in Gaudium et Spes. Highly recommended reading.
Your statement is parallel to the claim by the Beatles that they were “more popular than Jesus”. The claim was made before I was born, but I never much doubted it. So much the worse for popular opinion! Popular opinion 2000 years ago was, “Crucify Him!” It’s not much different today.
Disappointed by this, with hope that local bishops will see through the progressive perspective of the USCCB. Why wouldn’t we want priests citing defiance of Catholic social doctrine by calling out those candidates who promote abortion, euthanasia, homosexual relations and so on.
Stephen: Did Jesus, St. Peter (our first Pope) or St. Paul say one word against the evil Roman Empire that eventually brutally killed them?
“Church will not endorse candidates…”
Send that memo to Tobin and Cupich and McElroy and Stowe. I am sure that will be news for them
@jpfhayes, AMEN!
A memo to Burk and Strickland might also be in order. Just saying! 🤔
Dormez-vous, Frere Jaques?
Retired members of the hierarchy and those who hold no governing post in a US diocese are not considered active members of the USCCB. Cdl. Burke and Bp. Strickland need no memo. You, however, do.
Good one!
While the USCCB’s reaffirmation of its stance not to endorse political candidates is consistent with canon law and Church tradition, it highlights a deeper pastoral failure: the widespread malformation of Catholic consciences. Many Catholics, influenced by a narrow reading of pro-life teaching, are not truly pro-life in the holistic sense but merely pro-birth or anti-abortion. This reductionist view neglects the Church’s full vision of a consistent ethic of life—from conception to natural death—that includes care for the poor, the marginalized, migrants, the elderly, the environment, and all victims of injustice. In failing to seriously teach and apply Catholic Social Teaching, especially in election seasons, the USCCB has left voters unequipped to exercise informed prudential judgment—the moral reasoning that weighs not only a candidate’s position on abortion, but the full range of life issues. True conscience formation demands helping Catholics discern which candidate or party best reflects the widest range of life-affirming principles, not just anti-abortion rhetoric. Without this, many Catholics vote based on a single issue, often ignoring policies that harm life after birth. If the Church refuses to endorse, it must all the more boldly educate and form—lest Catholics vote in ways that contradict the Gospel’s call to protect all human life and dignity.
Right, Deacon Dom. The Democrats’ murdering of more than a million children a year for the past fifty-two years is offset by the Republicans’ canceling of the school lunch program.
I got it.
So the experiment is complete. It’s undeniably true, there is no issue so evil or insane that it will convince Catholics not to vote for Democrats.
Murdering babies, allowing terrorists to enter across our open borders, legalizing drugs, sexualizing children, promoting sodomy, denying the existence of women — nothing on this list has impacted Catholics’ insistence on voting for Democrats.
You’re known as ‘Deacon Dom’ hereabouts. But, I have to say, you sound more like a bishop.
And — trust me — that’s not a compliment.
brineyman, well said. My guess he’s bucking for a promotion in the ranks. Who knows, maybe even Pope Francis II.
No one is really expecting the Catholic Church to endorse one political candidate or another. Why, the Church hierarchy has a difficult enough time speaking in one voice about Church Teaching let alone weighing in on the merits of political points of view.
I think the IRS ruling simply was addressing something about allowing political candidates EAQUAL ACCESS to Church membership on Church property to propose their ideas. This is something the protestant churches have been doing for a hundred years but the Catholic Church unwilling so as not to jeopardize their sacrosanct tax-exempt status. Once again, the USCCB seems quite adept at obfuscation.
An most unexpected exhibition of wisdom.
Perhaps more of a rice bowl issue that funds initiatives dear to their progressive hearts. The traditional Church enjoy few if any similar revenue streams. One would think that the Church should have a funding stream, strictly charitable donations from within the Church and reject all federal and state revenue with their terms and conditions which is politics at the grass root level.
To understand the USCCB politics, follow the money.
AFCz: You speak more common sense than most of us are acquainted with these days. Thanks.
The USCCB may have made its best decision ever. Otherwise, the divisions among them will dethrone what little credibility and authority they still retain. I’m praying for a saint to emerge from among them……waiting…waiting…waiting…
meiron: A saint among them will appear only when they show a willingness to die for the Faith. When was the last American bishop martyred?
Deacon,
I didn’t know of any off the top, so I asked AI. It replied with Oscar Romero. Discounting that as a technical error, I kept reading, and discovered this fellow named Francis Xavier Ford.
He was a Maryknoll missionary, a bishop, imprisoned and martyred in China in 1952.
meiron, yes, he was American but martyred by the ChiComs. That said, in 250 years we’ve never had an American bishop martyred in America. We did have a Bishop from NY who was imprisoned for his ProLife activities. I guess they didn’t think to kill him in prison.
This is welcome news!
(“Church will not endorse political candidates despite IRS shift.”)
Thank you bishops!
May St. Thomas More intercede for the Catholic Church – political candidates and non-candidates – Catholics one and all.
I am saddened and ashamed to read some of the ultra-snarky, uncharitable and judgmental comments from some of my fellow Catholics who apparently think their “version” of Catholicism is the one and only true version of the faith. Those who take offense at the statement, “Today in the United States, neither political party offers a platform that would serve as a foundation for a true home for faithful Catholics,” show their reluctance to discern the truth about current USA politics. Certainly there were and are Democratic policies that bear much criticism, but to deny that the current MAGA administration is undertaking a variety of cruel and unjust programs that cause much pain and suffering is to look away from the truth. As I see it, the collective wisdom of our US Bishops far supersedes the holier-than-thou musings of some of those snarky commentators on this site.
per Catholic.org: (this priest spoke against tyrants) …….Parishioners offered to escort Father Jerzy by car back to Warsaw, but he was used to being followed and it was late. He and his bodyguard would go alone. The secret police overtook them on a deserted road about a half hour from the town. They held the bodyguard at gunpoint. The captain dragged Father by the cassock to the Fiat. “What are you doing, Gentleman? How can you treat someone like this?”
In a cold fury, the kidnappers beat him with fists and clubs, smashing his skull and face. Unconscious, he was bound, gagged and thrown into the trunk. As they headed for a lonely stretch of woods, the bodyguard hurled himself from the Fiat in a desperate attempt to escape. He made it to a nearby workers hostel and quickly raised the alarm. When they reached the hospital emergency ward, another squad of secret police and a state prosecutor were waiting to take him away. But for the authorities it was too late. The bodyguard had already alerted the Church.
The secret police Fiat sped on with Father Jerzy in the trunk The captain’s men were arguing now, and downing quick shots of vodka. The kidnappers were so terrified that they would be identified that they wanted to leave the priest in the woods. “No,” said another angrily, “the priest must die.”
With the bodyguard’s escape, news of the abduction had swept across Poland. Shock and outrage were nationwide. The parish church overflowed with thousands of people. Every night, larger crowds came to the Masses, praying for Father’s deliverance. Massive security forces surrounded the Warsaw steelworks, where the men were praying at work. Throughout Poland, there were mass meetings in factories and spontaneous prayers in schools. The national crisis mounted. Other churchmen denounced the kidnapping, but Cardinal Glemp refused to comment. The Holy Father declared himself “deeply shaken,” condemning the shameful act and demanding Father Jerzy’s immediate release.
After ten days of waiting, the nation’s patience ran raw. Authorities dispatched large security forces and imposed emergency measures in cities and towns. The last Sunday of October, a record 50,000 people engulfed the parish church at a cold, outdoor Mass for the Homeland. They listened to a tape of Father Jerzy’s last sermon. They hoped and prayed to see him again.
When smiling security officers pulled the battered corpse of Father Jerzy from a reservoir on the river Vistula, about eighty miles from Warsaw, it was tortured beyond recognition. A sack of rocks hung from his legs. His body had been trussed from neck to feet with a nylon rope so that if he resisted he would strangle himself. Several gags had worked free and lay across his clerical collar and cassock, soaked with the priest’s vomit and blood.
Officially, Father spent less than two hours with his kidnappers, but his torture was much too extensive and systematic to have in inflicted in that brief time. Family members present at the autopsy described a body covered head to foot with deep, bloody wounds and marks of torture. His face was deformed. His eyes and forehead had been beated until black. His jaws, nose, mouth were smashed. His face was deformed, and both hands were broken and cut, as if the priest had been shielding it from blows. His fingers and toes dark red and brown from the repeated clubbing. Part of his scalp and large strips of skin on his legs had been torn off.
The autopsy showed a brain concussion and damaged spinal cord. His muscles had been pounded again and again until limp. Internal injuries from the beatings had left blood in his lungs. One of the doctors that performed the post-mortem reported that in all his medical practice he had never seen anyone mutilated internally. The kidneys and intestines were reduced to pulp, as in others cases of prolonged police torture in Poland. When his mouth was opened, the teeth were found completely smashed. In place of his tongue, there was only mush.
A group of priests tried to identify the body, but could not recognize their friend. Identification was finally made by Father’s brother from a birthmark on the side of his chest. Making the full autopsy report public was deemed too explosive by regime and Church officials, who continue to suppress it. Church and independent sources familiar with the report have said it details an even more horrifying picture suffered by the defenseless priest.
“The worst has happened,” declared Lech Walesa, Solidarity’s leader. In Rome, the Holy Father reacted with shock, following the news late into the night. At the parish church in Warsaw, a priest made several attempts to get the mourning population to say the Our Father. When he reached “Forgive us as we forgive those who trespass against us” the congregation refused to pray with him. It took several more attempts before the people would utter that line, and when they did, they prayed it with great force.
Just as was feared, when the state trial was held for the perpetrators, only the mid-level criminals were sentenced. Those who masterminded the plot got off scott-free. Because they were afraid that Father Jerzey’s final resting place would become a shrine, the state officials pressured his parents to bury him in their distant village. The faithful demanded a huge funeral and that he be buried in the parish cemetery. It was the pleading of Father’s mother that he be buried at the parish church in Warsaw.
Father’s mother had continued to wear a red shawl as long as she believed her son was alive. Now, for the funeral, she wore her black shawl. On the day of the funeral ten thousand steelworkers in hard hats marched past secret police headquarters, chanting “We forgive,” “Greetings from the underground,” and “No freedom without Solidarity.” Half a million people filled the streets leading up to the parish church. Scattered throughout were the forbidden Solidarity banners of factories, schools and offices from every corner of Poland. One read “A strike at the heart of the nation,” another proclaimed, “But they can’t kill the soul.”
Father Jerzy knew that his death would have immense power. “Living I could not achieve it,” he once said when the danger rose. The parish church, Saint Stanislaw’s has become a national shrine. As of the writing of this piece by James Fox in 1985, and unending river of pilgrims flow past Father’s grave. Great mounds of flowers are put there. Even communists visited the grave. A thousand-man volunteer force guards the church yard in teams around the clock.
The murder of the holy, defenseless priest emboldened the populace and encourage many conversions and vocations. All the while the regime continued to defame the priest.
Today, Poland, as the rest of the former Iron Curtain countries of Europe, is a free country and a proud ally of our own country. The enemies of Christ rule Europe no more.
***Author’s note: It was by chance that I was looking for reading material when I happened upon this Reader’s Digest of May, 1985. I could not sleep thinking that Father Jerzy’s story must be made widely known. The title of the original article was “Do you hear the Bells, Father Jerzy?” The author of the piece is John Fox.
Father Jerzy, may you rest in peace.
More nonsense from our spineless American bishops. OF COURSE they will continue to endorse political candidates, in the same manner as they have been doing for the past 50 years at least. They will continue to glad-hand, chuckle, laugh, and pose for photographs with every scandalous “catholic” politician on the left. They will continue to excuse every pro-death, anti-family and anti-religious vote and policy of the “catholic” Democrats. They will continue to scold every Catholic Republican politician for imaginary offenses against Catholic teaching. The political positions of the Catholic bishops of America will continue to be crystal clear and unmistakable. They will ALWAYS have the backs of their Democrat Party financiers.