A must-read for your Friday would be Michele Nuzzo-Naglieri’s interview with Father Noel Gorgis, a Chaldean priest from Iraq who – a former soldier under Saddam Hussein’s regime – now leads a swelling parish of Iraqi Catholics in North Hollywood, California.
Conscription into Saddam’s army was mandatory when Father Gorgis finished seminary at the age of 22 – and there were no special privileges for a Catholic priest.
“Every day I kept fulfilling my duties and all that was expected of me but had difficulty accepting it,” he told Michele. “After the (Gulf War), I escaped the western desert and took refuge in a northern monastery. From there, I fled to Turkey because I felt strongly that fighting was not the answer.”
Read on for Father Gorgis’ take on growing up Christian in Iraq, preserving the ancient Chaldean traditions in America and the dangers of an early withdrawal of American forces from his home country.
In terms of Church events, the interview is timely – last week the violence-ravaged Archdiocese of Mosul finally received its new archbishop, nearly two years after Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho was kidnapped and killed outside his cathedral.
In his interview, Father Gorgis commented on the murder and the fear it sparked in the Christian community: “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?”
The newly installed archbishop, 42-year-old Amil Shamaaoun Nona, talked to Catholic News Agency about the situation.
“The only thing that the faithful are still adhering to is the Church,” he said. “For this reason, the Church, represented in the person of the bishop, has to care for its followers and help them feel secure through its presence in them and among them.”
Finally, what is it this week with high-profile complaints in the news?
Yesterday, David Naglieri highlighted the irony of pro-choice, abortion advocacy groups virulently lambasting a Super Bowl ad that praises a mother’s choice to carry her son – future quarterback star Tim Tebow – to term. 30-second commercials that celebrate family and the potential of life are to be deemed blatantly offensive and divisive to American society, it seems – a telling judgment that makes one ponder what do such groups consider praiseworthy.
Now we have the news that an atheist group, the Freedom from Religion Foundation, is lambasting the U.S. Postal Service for its release of a commemorative stamp of Mother Teresa – an act, the foundation says, that goes against Postal Service regulations against honoring “individuals whose principal achievements are associated with religious undertakings.”
“Mother Teresa is principally known as a religious figure who ran a religious institution. You can’t really separate her being a nun and being a Roman Catholic from everything she did,” said the atheist organization’s spokeswoman – a statement I find rather unintentionally humorous for its obviousness.
Can this group not conceive of one’s Nobel Prize-worthy undertakings being inseparable from one’s faith? In the dirtiest of slums, in a world ruled by a caste system, Mother Teresa saved countless lives, and the love and dignity with which she treated the poor and dying, regardless of religion, were immeasurable. Unless you’re Christopher Hitchens, it seems unbelievable to me that some would choose to overlook the objective facts of her life and instead criticize the faith that drove her to love the poor. (The Freedom from Religion Foundation, it seems, subscribes to the myth of a money-hungry, proselytizing nun on the streets – a description that couldn’t be any further from the truth, to anyone who’s studied Mother Teresa’s life.)
Fortunately, it seems the Postal Service is sticking its decision, saying that “Mother Teresa is not being honored because of her religion, she’s being honored for her work with the poor and her acts of humanitarian relief.”
“Her contribution to the world as a humanitarian speaks for itself and is unprecedented,” the USPS spokesman said.
Lessons learned from this week’s complaints in the news: A mother’s heroism for her child and a life of sacrifice for the poorest of the poor are not only scandalous to celebrate – they must be condemned. One wonders what uplifting stories next week will bring.
-- Elizabeth Hansen, Headline Bistro editor
Funny, I read those stories and came to just the opposite conclusion. I expect the media and the big advocacy groups to object to such ideas.
What surprises and impresses me is that the USPS is running the stamps anyway, and that CBS promises to air the ad after all. Good for them. Maybe there really is hope for change in our country after all.
Posted by: Claire | January 29, 2010 at 03:32 PM