Built on the Foundation of the Apostles and Now in Ruins

The Destruction of the Ancient

Church of Assyria in Mosul 

There are no Christians left in Mosul.  For the first time since the days of the Apostles, the city of Mosul in what is today Iraq is devoid of its ancient Christian population.  Built on the foundation laid by the preaching of the Apostles Thomas, (Jude) Thaddeus, and Bartholomew, and—by tradition—visited by the Apostle Simon Peter, it is one of the oldest continuous Christian communities in the world, a direct daughter of the original Church at Jerusalem and certainly as old as the Churches of Rome, Alexandria, Philippi, Corinth, India; centuries older than the Churches of England, Ireland, Germany, or Poland.  Mosul, by the way, contains the site of ancient Babylon (which is referred to in 1 Peter 5:13), though there are other interpretations of what the author of 1 Peter meant by “Babylon” which was also a primitive Christian code word for Rome. 

Ancient Mesopotamia was never part of the Roman Empire and by the fifth century political strife between Constantinople and the Sassanid Empire of Persia, led the Church in the Sassanid world to early establish its independence from any Romano/Byzantine authority.  The Churches had been in communion up until this point and thus the Church of the East had always accepted the Creed of the Council of Nicea which we Catholics (as well as Lutherans and Anglicans) use each Sunday and the Orthodox and Byzantine Rite Catholics use in every Divine Liturgy.  The bonds had been broken however by the time of the Council of Ephesus (431) and the Council of Chalcedon (451) and the Church of the East has never accepted the Caledonian formula that Jesus Christ is One Person with two Natures: a Human Nature likes ours in every respect and a Divine Nature which is in essence identical to the Divine Nature of the Father.  These two natures are inseparably united but not in any way mingled, each retaining the purity of its particular Nature intact.  The Chalcedonian Christians (Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, Anglicans) use the Title for the Virgin Mary of Θεοτόκος (Theotokos) loosely meaning “Mother of God” as the theological symbol of this doctrine in as that Mary carried in her womb and gave birth to One Person Who is both God and man. Mary is clearly the mother of the man, Jesus.  In Jesus his Divine Nature is inseparable, though totally distinguishable, from his Human Nature, thus permitting us to say that she who gave birth to the man Jesus also gave birth the Second Person of the Trinity for in him his humanity, while distinct from his Divine Nature, cannot be separated from his Divinity. For Catholics, this is the Gold Standard of Christian Orthodoxy.  For the Ancient Churches of the East there is a reluctance to accept this precise formula because they see in it that somehow the Human Nature is subordinated to the Divine Nature though Ephesus and Chalcedon went to great lengths to make sure that this idea that the one nature absorbs the other is not the case.  The Ecumenical dialogues over the years since Vatican II have helped each side better understand the position of the other and realize that the difference is one of emphasis (the West emphasizing the Divinity of Christ; the East giving more emphasis to his humanity) than of essential difference of faith. 

From Mosul, Baghdad, Tabriz, Maragheh, and other centers this “Assyrian Christianity” (also sometimes referred to as East Syrian Christianity) spread southwards into India and eastwards far into modern China.  This led to the ancient legends of Prester John (John the Priest) and the fabulous wealth of his mystical kingdom.   In the fourteenth century, however, Tamerlane’s Turko/Mongol armies however brutally destroyed the Christian communities of central Asia eventually reducing Assyrian Christianity to the Mesopotamian communities from which it had originally spread.  (The southern communities in India remained and still remain today.  We should take a look at them someday.)  The Patriarchate located itself at Alqosh near Mosul.  At the end of the fifteenth century Patriarch Shimun IV Basidi decreed henceforth Patriarchs must be chosen from his family and this led to a rebellion among many of the bishops.  In 1552 a group of bishops, dissatisfied with the hereditary patriarchate, elected a rival patriarch in Mar Yohannan Sulaqa.  The patriarch-designate needed to be consecrated bishop by a prelate of his own stature or higher and consequently journeyed to Rome where he reestablished communion between his faction of the Assyrian Church and the Catholic Church and was granted the title of “Patriarch of the Chaldeans” by Julius III.  The Church itself was called the Church of Athura and Mosul.  The communion between Rome and the Chaldeans collapsed in the early seventeenth century but was restored in 1672 by Mar Joseph I.  Meanwhile, various of the Alqosh Patriarchs made overtures about entering the Roman Communion, but other than some doctrinal concords, nothing came of it until 1804. The two patriarchal lines were merged by Pius VIII in 1830.  There is still, however, a patriarchal line not in communion with Rome and headed by Mar Dinkha IV who, because of the instability in Iraq, lives in exile in Chicago from where he administers the Church.  The Patriarchate in union with Rome under Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako is located currently in Baghdad.

These Christians have suffered terribly ever since the United States invaded Iraq in the Second Gulf War.  As evil as Sadaam Hussein was, he gave protection to religious minorities.  The failure to establish a stable government has increasingly left Christians, Jews, Mandaeans and other religious minorities at the mercy of Islamic extremists.  The internecine violence between the Shia majority and the Sunni minority has been as vicious as any persecution of non-Islamic sects. 

The creation of the Caliphate by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), also known as the Iraqi State of Iraq and the Levant, has raised the terror level for Christians to full alert.  Two weeks ago this self-proclaimed Caliphate ordered all Christians in Mosul to convert to Islam or be put to death.  There have been Christians in Mosul since the days of the Apostles!  Mosul has long been the center of Iraqi Christianity.  A decade ago there were 60,000 Christians in Mosul.  Today there are none!  Ancient Christian Churches have been turned into mosques or burned to ruins.  The fleeing Christian population has been assaulted, beaten, robbed of whatever valuable they were trying to bring out to safety with them.  

I remember having dinner with friends about two weeks before President Bush declared war on the Hussein regime in March 2003.  There were other guests including a couple who are Christian Arabs.  The husband is Egyptian; the wife Lebanese.  Both are Catholics.  Rabid Republicans in every other respect, they lambasted the upcoming war.  “It will destabilize the region.  The human suffering will be immense.  And no one will suffer more than the Christian population of the Mid-East.”  This was at a time when all we heard from the Bush Administration was how evil the Hussein regime was and how we were going to “liberate” the people of Iraq.  How tragically true my companions’ words have come to be.  Pope John Paul sent his emissary, Cardinal Pio Laghi, a personal friend of the Bush family, to beg the administration not to go to war.  He at least was admitted to the Oval Office.  The bishops of President Bush’s own Church, the United Methodist, were refused appointment.  So in the end Halliburton and Vice President Cheney made their money but at the cost of immense human suffering.  There are two Chaldean Catholic Dioceses in the United States—one located in Detroit, the other in San Diego.  Between them there are about 200,000 Catholics.  The Assyrian Church of the East, which is not in communion with the Pope, has three dioceses in the United States but notably fewer adherents.  It is common practice for Chaldean Catholics and Assyrian Christians to share the Eucharist.  The Liturgy of the Church also has an ancient Eucharistic Prayer—far older than the Roman Canon—which has the distinguishing factor of there being no “Words of Institution,” that is the repetition of Jesus’s words at the Last Supper.  We will have to do a posting on that sometime.  In the meantime pray for the Christians of Iraq.  

Christ The King

The Battle of the Vendée:

“Henri de La Rochejacquelein

at the Battle of Cholet in 1793”

by Paul-Emile  Boutigny

During the French Revolution there was a reaction to the violence and the extremes of republicanism by royalists in the Vendée region of France where the people rallied to the defense of the Church.  Relative to the rest of France this area is still more strongly Catholic than the more secularized regions around the capital.  The Catholic Royalists bore a motto on their banners—Dieu Le Roi—God is the King. 
Also during the French Revolution the Carmelite nuns of Compiegne, ardent royalists as were most of the French Carmelites, offered themselves as Victims of the Divine Justice to end the Reign of Terror.  In fact, their martyrdom at Paris on July 17, 1794 came just ten days before the end of the ten month Terror and has been credited by Catholic sources as the reason for the end of this bloodiest period of the Revolution.  The nuns, as royalists, had been particularly devoted to the Infant King (Infant of Prague), a traditional Carmelite devotion.
The Catholic Church suffered terrible losses—of personnel, of property, and of power—not only in the Revolution but in the subsequent development of history.  The historic alliance of “Throne and Altar” which had prevailed since Constantine’s recognition of the Church in 312-313 was effectively broken by the secularization of the Revolution and has never been successfully restored.  For brief periods of time in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Catholicism has been established as the State religion or given Constitutional preference in various countries, but such privilege has not only not lasted but has led to reactions in which the Church has again suffered greatly.  Nevertheless, the image of “Christ the King” has remained a rallying point for those who wish to establish a Catholic dominance over civil culture. 
Among the occasions where “Christ the King” became the symbol of Catholic Restoration, a revolution broke out in Mexico in 1911 that had dire consequences for the Church.  The Catholic Church had over time acquired extensive land and wealth in Mexico and the clergy, either Spanish or from the upper classes of Mexican society, represented reactionary political and social views.  With the revolution Church lands were expropriated, foreign clergy expelled, and the Mexican clergy forbidden to wear religious garb in public, to vote, or to comment on political matters.  The situation only got worse over time.  In the 1920’s under President Plutarco Elias Calles, an avowed atheist, the anti-clericalism escalated into a persecution of the Church and triggered a rebellion known as the Cristero Rebellion.  The cry of the rebels was Viva Cristo Rey!—Long live Christ the King.  The Cristero Rebellion, as this was known, was the occasion of a great number of martyrs for the faith—especially to be noted Miguel Pro SJ, whose feast was celebrated yesterday. 
In support of the Mexican defenders of the Catholic Church, Pius XI brought the title “Christ the King” to a universal Catholic Consciousness when he instituted the liturgical feast of Christ the King in 1925.  At the time it was to be celebrated on the last Sunday of October.  The Pope had written on the subject that same year in his encyclical letter Quas Primas.  This was meant to be a support to the Catholics of Mexico during their time of persecution but also as a challenge to secularization wherever it might be taking place in the Catholic world.  The institution of the feast was the high water mark of Catholic resistance to the French Revolution and all that it stood for in its challenge to royalism and Catholicism. 
Americans, of course, never fully understood the political symbolism of the feast as American Catholics have always been rather naïve to the Church’s historical preference for monarchy.  Ever since the French Revolution the Catholic Church had seen republicanism as a threat to its theology of power which devolves not from the people but from God directly to the rulers.  In the years before Vatican II regimes such as Franco’s Spain which was in name a monarchy (with Franco functioning as regent for an as yet-to-be-named King) and where the Church enjoyed a political hegemony to the exclusion of other denominations and religions, were held to be the ideal.  It was only at Vatican II that the Church made peace with the idea of democratic government and in subsequent years it is proving to be an uneasy peace. 
Now all this is not to say that Christ is not King.  But what do we mean by King?  Demagogues such as Michael Vorris or Solange Hertz have advocated replacing the American Republic with Catholic Monarchy but such extremist views relegate them and their more faithful disciples to the realm of religious psychosis.   How then are we to understand Christ as King?
I noticed that in the revised Missal that was promulgated last year that the feast previously known as the Solemnity of Christ the King is now the Solemnity of Christ the King of the Universe.  This is a significant shift, but not a healthy one.  It moves the understanding of Christ’s Kingship from an authority over the hearts of believers to a claim of jurisdiction; that is from a claim of authority to a claim of power. 
The difference of power and authority is a significant difference.  Power is the ability to coerce obedience.  Those who exercise earthly power can force their subjects to conform to their will.  They can “make things happen.”  A general has power over his army.  A bishop (sadly) has power over his priests.  A dictator has power over his people.  Is this the type of Kingship that Christ models?
Authority, on the other hand, is the moral weight to inspire others to freely follow, to willingly subject their will to the will of the one who exercises authority. This is the sort of conversion of heart to which Christ calls those who hear his gospel.  Is Christ to be the Ruler-King or the Servant-King?
Once again we see the struggle today for the Church to emerge from its centuries of an addiction to power and become a Servant Church.  As I have pointed out before, Cardinal Avery Dulles says that this is the ecclesiological shift of our times—from the previous millennium of power to yield the future millennium of service (see entry for June 18, 2012).  But for those prelates who are crowding Gamarelli’s for their buckled shoes and silk capes and those priests who are given to pom-pommed hats and the Tridentine Mass this shift represents a threat and Christ the King of the Universe means a validation of institutional power.  For our part, let’s just remember that our King wears a crown of thorns and reigns from a Cross not a throne.