The Church in the Middle East

I recently attended a conference in Chicago with about 70 other Catholic priests from all over the United States. During our lunch break, I met a priest who is a Chaldean Catholic priest. A chald…what? You actually say it “cal-dee-n.” Chaldean Catholic. Did you know there are 24 different rites of the Catholic Church in union with the Church in Rome? The Latin or Roman rite is what most people think of in the United States and Western Europe when they think of or belong to the Catholic Church, but there are actually 24 other rites still in communion with Rome. A few of those rites include the Byzantine rite, Maronite rite, or the Chaldean rite. These rites formed when the Apostles and early disciples began to spread the Church to the known world. When the apostle Thomas brought the Catholic faith to India, it mixed with the culture in a particular way and it formed the Syro-Malabar rite. The sacraments and the priesthood are all valid, but the customs and liturgy/Mass look a little different. In the United States we actually have small pockets of these 24 rites all over, mostly in big cities, from when people from various parts of the world immigrated to the US and brought the rites with them. Why the Sunday school lesson you may ask? This background is important for the rest of the story.

The Chaldean priest I sat with at lunch that day in Chicago is named Father Perrin. He was born in and lives outside of Detroit, Michigan. Father Perrin told me that he was ordained a priest in 2019 and during his seminary studies he had to learn Aramaic, because the Chaldean rite Mass is celebrated in that language. The awesome thing is that Aramaic is one of the languages Jesus spoke and probably the language He used at the Last Supper, as well as His final words on the cross. I continued to talk to Father Perrin about the Chaldean rite and he said that it finds its roots from two of the disciples of the apostle Thomas. When Thomas was journeying to India after the resurrection of Jesus, two disciples of the group decided to bring the Gospel to modernday Iraq. Thus the Chaldean Catholic rite was born. In fact, the liturgy/Mass of the present day finds its roots all the way back to the 4th century. Father Perrin told me that there used to be 1 million Chaldean Catholics in Iraq, but because of the ISIS terrorist group, there are only about 100,000 Chaldeans remaining in Iraq today. In fact, the largest population of Chaldeans in the world now reside in Michigan. Father Perrin told me that when he was in his seminary formation and studying to become a priest, he went to Iraq for a period of time in order to see the roots of his people and understand more of their history. Father Perrin said while he was there, it was strange to see many of the homes in the villages with the Aramaic “N” written near the front door. This “N” was placed there by the ISIS terrorist group and stood for “Nazorean” in Aramaic. This labeling of homes was done by ISIS so that they could easily tell which of the people in the village were Chaldean Catholics, and could either force them to convert to Islam or pay a tax for being Christian per sharia law, sometimes at the cost of their life. Father Perrin said that this time in Iraq changed his life forever, because he saw the persecuted Church in a way he had never seen before, and also feared for his own life while visiting his native roots. This experience strengthened Father Perrin’s faith and made him choose his faith even to the point of fearing for his life. At the end of the conversation with Father Perrin, my heart was burning within me. I could tell that the Holy Spirit had stirred powerfully in his life. Through Fr. Perrin’s life, I was also able to see even more clearly the beauty of the faith that was brought to the ends of the earth. It truly is the pearl of great price! I don’t know about you, but sometimes these stories can help me pop my ‘American bubble’ and open my eyes even more to the greater reality of the church around the world. “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”