Chaldean Christians

Etymology

The terms Chaldean and Chaldo-Assyrian are terms used to describe the group of Assyrians who broke from the Assyrian Church of the East in what is known as the Schism of 1552 and entered into communion with the Roman Catholic Church, after at first failing to gain acceptance within the Syriac Orthodox Church. Rome initially named this new church structure The Church of Assyria and Mosul in 1553, and only some 128 years later, in 1681, was this changed to The Chaldean Catholic Church, despite none of its adherents (or neighbouring peoples) having hitherto used the name "Chaldean" to describe themselves or their church, or having originated in the region in the far south of Mesopotamia which had long ago once been Chaldea. Ironically, The Church of Athura and Mosul later returned to the doctrines of the Assyrian Church of the East and split away from the Catholic church, while still keeping its independence from the Nestorian Church structure based in Alqosh that they split from in 1552. However, The original line of the Assyrian Church they broke from joined the Chaldean Catholic Church in 1830, which therefore made the Church of Athura and Mosul the modern day Assyrian Church of the East.

The term Chaldean in reference to followers of the Chaldean Catholic Church is thus properly taken as only a denominational, doctrinal, theological and ecclesiastical term which only arose in the late 17th century AD and became fully established in the 19th century AD (in the same sense as Baptist, Mormon, Nestorian and Methodist) and not an ethnic one, and is a misnomer in relation to ancient Chaldea and its inhabitants, both of which only emerged during the 9th century BC after Chaldean tribes migrated to south east Mesopotamia from the Levant, and disappeared from history during the 6th century BC at the exact opposite end of Mesopotamia.

Raphael Bidawid, the then patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church commented on the Assyrian name dispute in 2003 and clearly differentiated between the name of a church and an ethnicity:

In an interview with the Assyrian Star in the September–October 1974 issue, he was quoted as saying:

History

The 1896 census of the Chaldean Catholics counted 233 parishes and 177 churches or chapels, mainly in northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey. The Chaldean Catholic clergy numbered 248 priests; they were assisted by the monks of the Congregation of St. Hormizd, who numbered about one hundred. There were about 52 Assyrian Chaldean schools (not counting those conducted by Latin nuns and missionaries). At Mosul there was a patriarchal seminary, distinct from the Chaldean seminary directed by the Dominicans. The total number of Assyrian Chaldean Christians as by 2010 was 490,371, 78,000 of whom are in the Diocese of Mosul.

The current patriarch considers Baghdad as the principal city of his see. His title of "Patriarch of Babylon" results from the identification of Baghdad with ancient Babylon (however Baghdad is 55 miles north of the ancient city of Babylon and corresponds to northern Babylonia). However, the Chaldean patriarch resides habitually at Mosul in the north, and reserves for himself the direct administration of this diocese and that of Baghdad.

There are five archbishops (resident respectively at Basra, Diyarbakır, Kirkuk, Salmas and Urmia) and seven bishops. Eight patriarchal vicars govern the small Assyrian Chaldean communities dispersed throughout Turkey and Iran. The Chaldean clergy, especially the monks of Rabban Hormizd Monastery, have established some missionary stations in the mountain districts dominated by The Assyrian Church of the East. Three dioceses are in Iran, the others in Turkey.

The liturgical language of the Chaldean Catholic Church is Syriac, a distinctly north Mesopotamian Neo-Aramaic dialect originating in 5th century BC Achaemenid Assyria (Athura) during the Achaemenid Empire. The liturgy of the Chaldean Church is written in the Syriac alphabet.

The literary revival in the early 20th century was mostly due to the Lazarist Pere Bedjan, an ethnic Assyrian Chaldean Catholic from north western Iran. He popularized the ancient chronicles, the lives of Assyrian saints and martyrs, and even works of the ancient Assyrian doctors among Assyrians of all denominations, including Chaldean Catholics, Syriac Orthodox, Assyrian Church of the East and Assyrian Protestants.

In March 2008, Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho of Mosul was kidnapped, and found dead two weeks later. Pope Benedict XVI condemned his death. Sunni and Shia leaders also expressed their condemnation.

Chaldean Catholics today number approximately 550,000 of Iraq's estimated 800,000-1,000,000 Assyrian Christians, with smaller numbers found among the Assyrian Christian communities of northeast Syria, southeast Turkey, northwest Iran, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Georgia and Armenia. Perhaps the best known Iraqi Chaldean Catholic is former Iraqi deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz (real name Michael Youhanna).

Hundreds of thousands of Assyrian Christians of all denominations have left Iraq since the ousting of Saddam Hussein in 2003. At least 20,000 of them have fled through Lebanon to seek resettlement in Europe and the US.

As political changes sweep through many Arab nations, the ethnic Assyrian minorities in northeast Syria, northwest Iran and southeast Turkey have also expressed concern.

Historic statistics of Chaldean Catholic Christians

Church censuses can be used to determine how many Chaldean Catholics there were.

Paulin Martin's statistical survey in 1867, after the creation of the dioceses of ʿAqra, Zakho, Basra and Sehna by Joseph Audo, recorded a total church membership of 70,268, more than three times higher than Badger's estimate. Most of the population figures in these statistics have been rounded up to the nearest thousand, and they may also have been exaggerated slightly, but the membership of the Chaldean church at this period was certainly closer to 70,000 than to Badger's 20,000.

A statistical survey of the Chaldean church made in 1896 by J. B. Chabot included, for the first time, details of several patriarchal vicariates established in the second half of the 19th century for the small Chaldean communities in Adana, Aleppo, Beirut, Cairo, Damascus, Edessa, Kermanshah and Teheran; for the mission stations established in the 1890s in several towns and villages in the Qudshanis patriarchate; and for the newly created Chaldean diocese of Urmi. According to Chabot, there were mission stations in the town of Serai d’Mahmideh in Taimar and in the Hakkari villages of Mar Behıshoʿ, Sat, Zarne and 'Salamakka' (Ragula d'Salabakkan).

The last pre-war survey of the Chaldean church was made in 1913 by the Chaldean priest Joseph Tfinkdji, after a period of steady growth since 1896. The Chaldean church on the eve of the First World War consisted of the patriarchal archdiocese of Mosul and Baghdad, four other archdioceses (Amid, Kirkuk, Seert and Urmi), and eight dioceses (ʿAqra, ʿAmadiya, Gazarta, Mardin, Salmas, Sehna, Zakho and the newly created diocese of Van). Five more patriarchal vicariates had been established since 1896 (Ahwaz, Constantinople, Basra, Ashshar and Deir al-Zor), giving a total of twelve vicariates.

Tfinkdji's grand total of 101,610 Catholics in 199 villages is slightly exaggerated, as his figures included 2,310 nominal Catholics in twenty-one 'newly converted' or 'semi-Nestorian' villages in the dioceses of Amid, Seert and ʿAqra, but it is clear that the Chaldean church had grown significantly since 1896. With around 100,000 believers in 1913, the membership of the Chaldean church was only slightly smaller than that of the Qudshanis patriarchate (probably 120,000 East Syrians at most, including the population of the nominally Russian Orthodox villages in the Urmi district). Its congregations were concentrated in far fewer villages than those of the Qudshanis patriarchate, and with 296 priests, a ratio of roughly three priests for every thousand believers, it was rather more effectively served by its clergy. Only about a dozen Chaldean villages, mainly in the Seert and ʿAqra districts, did not have their own priests in 1913.

Tfinkdji's statistics also highlight the effect on the Chaldean church of the educational reforms of the patriarch Joseph VI Audo. The Chaldean church on the eve of the First World War was becoming less dependent on the monastery of Rabban Hormizd and the College of the Propaganda for the education of its bishops. Seventeen Chaldean bishops were consecrated between 1879 and 1913, of whom only one (Stephen Yohannan Qaynaya) was entirely educated in the monastery of Rabban Hormizd. Six bishops were educated at the College of the Propaganda (Joseph Gabriel Adamo, Thomas Audo, Jeremy Timothy Maqdasi, Isaac Khudabakhash, Theodore Msayeh and Peter ʿAziz), and the future patriarch Joseph Emmanuel Thomas was trained in the seminary of Ghazir near Beirut. Of the other nine bishops, two (Addaï Scher and Francis David) were trained in the Syro-Chaldean seminary in Mosul, and seven (Philip Yaʿqob Abraham, Yaʿqob Yohannan Sahhar, Eliya Joseph Khayyat, Shlemun Sabbagh, Yaʿqob Awgin Manna, Hormizd Stephen Jibri and Israel Audo) in the patriarchal seminary in Mosul.

Predominantly Chaldean Catholic towns in northern Iraq

Chaldean nationalism

Chaldean Catholics are regarded ethnically and historically as Assyrians, and as a part of the Assyrian continuity. The modern Chaldean Catholics are in fact Assyrians and originated from ancient Assyrian communities living in and indigenous to the north of Iraq/Mesopotamia which was known as Assyria from the 25th century BC until the 7th century AD. However, a minority of Chaldean Catholics (particularly in the United States) have in very recent times confused a purely religious term with an ethnic identity, and espoused a separate ethnic identity to their Assyrian brethren, claiming descent from the long extinct people of ancient Chaldeans/Chaldees, who resided in the far south east of Mesopotamia and disappeared from history circa 550 BC, despite there being no scientific evidence supporting such a link. Chaldean Catholics speak the same language, bear the same family and personal names, share the same genetic profile, hail from the same villages, towns and cities in northern Iraq, south east Turkey, north east Syria and north west Iran, and for most of their history were originally members of the same church as other Assyrians of the Assyrian Church of the East, Syriac Orthodox Church, Ancient Church of the East, Assyrian Pentecostal Church and Assyrian Evangelical Church. Nevertheless, a minority of Chaldean Catholics, most notably Bishop Addai Scher, have attempted to invent the concept of "Chaldeans" as a nation and nationalism built on it.

The first political movement of Chaldean Catholics was founded in 1972 in Iraq and named the Chaldean Patriot Movement, after Baathist regime in Iraq killed many Chaldean Catholics in the Soria village of in the Dohuk province, but then this movement resolved after the Baath regime chasing their members. Official statistics in Iraq referred to all Syriac Christians, including Chaldean Catholics, as Christian Arabs. In 1972, the cultural rights of Syriac speaking Christians in Iraq were recognised by the Iraqi government, but the Baathist regime refused to recognize Assyrians as an ethnic group .

After the fall of the Baath regime in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1991, some Chaldean Catholics began to establish "Chaldean nationalist" political parties around the Chaldean Catholic identity, in 1999 founded the Chaldean Democratic Party and in 2002 the Chaldean National Congress Party. Upon their demands, the Iraqi constitution of 2005 in Article 125 mentions "Chaldeans" as an allegedly distinct ethnic group. Several conferences on Chaldean nationalism were held, and a flag designed.