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Month: June 2010

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Memory eternal Metropolitan Schott

From the Pittsburgh Tribune: Byzantine archbishop preached unity

A Bishop who saw through divisions to underlying unity. Eternal rest grant unto him O Lord.

Many of the people who knew Metropolitan Basil Schott say the trappings that come with heading the Byzantine Catholic Archeparchy of Pittsburgh never diminished his desire to live the simple life of spirituality that drew him to ministry as a young man.

“He was a very humble, unpretentious man who overflowed with warmth and caring for people,” said the Rev. Donald Green, executive director of Christian Associates of Southwestern Pennsylvania. “Even when there were disagreements between us about how various churches viewed things, he always was quick to remind us that we are all brothers and sisters.”

Metropolitan Archbishop Basil Myron Schott died Thursday, June 10, 2010. He was 70. The archbishop was diagnosed with cancer last year, according to the Rev. Dennis Bogda, rector of the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Munhall.

The archeparchy, which is the eastern church’s equivalent of a Roman Catholic archdiocese, is made up of about 58,500 members in 79 parishes across Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Tennessee, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas.

…

Archbishop Schott was born in Freeland in Luzerne County, where he attended St. Mary Byzantine Catholic School. He graduated from St. Gabriel High School in Hazleton. He entered the Byzantine Franciscans Order in 1958 and made a profession of his religious vows a year later. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1965.

The archbishop earned bachelor’s degrees in philosophy and theology from Immaculate Conception College in Troy, N.Y., and master’s degrees in theology and pastoral counseling from St. Mary Seminary in Norwalk, Conn.

The Rev. Schott was ordained a bishop in July 1996 and appointed head of the Byzantine Catholic Eparchy of Parma (Ohio). In May 2002 he was appointed Metropolitan Archbishop of Pittsburgh by Pope John Paul II.

Pittsburgh Bishop David Zubik described the archbishop as a “great and well-loved leader and a good friend not only to me personally, but to the entire Catholic community.”

“All that have been blessed to know him recognized the deep compassion of a Christ-like leader,” Zubik said. “He was always there as a gentle, supportive voice to all that make up our beautiful mosaic of faith — Christian, Jewish and Muslim — and to all of Pittsburgh,” Zubik said.

Green said the archbishop had a unique ability to promote ecumenism.

“He came out of a tradition that lived through all sorts of conflicts in Europe, including persecution during the communist era,” said Green, who visited and prayed with the archbishop on Monday at UPMC Passavant in McCandless. “Because his Christian tradition bridged both east and west, he was especially sensitive to the call for unity…”

Christian Witness, Perspective, PNCC

A student discusses faith in college

From the GW Hatchet: Andrew Pazdon on Being Catholic in college

A former PNCC member talks about his experiences and his faith journey. I wish him well and support his effort at understanding his faith. Of course I do not appreciate his uninformed view of the Church in which he was raised. His limited comments on the PNCC seem to come out of an early 1900’s Roman Catholic diatribe against the PNCC – calling it a sect, and referring to its being a part of the Old Catholic Churches of Utrecht (no longer true since they long left Catholicism and we left them). Perhaps, as a student of international affairs, he should better understand the beliefs of others before labeling them.

As his journey continues, perhaps his views will be softened, and he will not disparage the faith in which he was raised, likely the faith of his parents and grandparents. He may also come to understand that the distinctiveness of the R.C. Church lies solely in claims which are disputed throughout the rest of Catholicism (Orthodoxy, Oriental, and PNCC). It has never been about the R.C. Church’s understanding of Catholicism, to which we all subscribe, but its troubling papal and doctrinal claims. The troubles the R.C. Church is having find their roots in those claims.

My faith has been tested, yet strengthened by my time on campus

Growing up in the woods of New Hampshire, the thought never crossed my adolescent mind that fasting, constructing advent wreathes from moss and pine trees in my backyard, spending hours in Church, and various other Catholic customs (with a hearty dose of Polish folk customs) were not normal.

That didn’t mean I didn’t dread sitting through Mass every week. But now that dread is gone and, in the midst of my 20-something partying years, it’s very likely you will find me every Sunday at the Cathedral of Saint Matthew the Apostle.

My faith and relationship with the Catholic Church have evolved, been tested and, in the end, been strengthened. Today, I am just as likely to tell people I am Catholic as I am a Polish-American from New Hampshire. I am proud of both my heritage and my faith.

I didn’t grow up in the Roman Catholic Church, but rather in a sect of the Old Catholic Church called the Polish National Catholic Church. Despite this, and now in a time during which Roman Catholic Church pews are being deserted, I have found a reawakening of my relationship with God.

Through much of high school I was, religiously, a lamb that had wandered astray from the herd. I challenged my childhood religion. I considered my options, including agnosticism, Islam and other Christian denominations. But I knew something was ultimately missing from my religious and spiritual life. It wasn’t until I actually left home and came to D.C. that my faith really felt reaffirmed.

I didn’t think my faith would be strengthened in college. When I thought of college, I thought Sunday morning was for nursing headaches, not for Mass. I do not know for certain what changed inside of me. But perhaps it was the everyday freedom that allows for sleeping in and drinking that allowed me to feel on my own, in a no-pressure venue, the comfort of faith. Yeah, I’d like to sleep in sometimes, but I feel better when I act on my faith instead.

I’ve even found I’m not the only GW student who gets up early on the weekend to spend some time with Jesus Christ. There are a number of fellow Catholics I have come across who are also deeply religious, yet manage to lead normal college lives filled with partying, college hook-ups and hours spent Facebook-stalking instead of deep in prayer.

I found that faith of any kind does not have to be forsaken in college, even in a bastion of liberalism and free thinking that is GW. If anything, being at GW and college in general has taught me that my faith doesn’t have to be all or nothing. I can be a Democrat and a Catholic. And I can party as hearty as anyone else and still be Catholic. I can lead a normal life, enjoying the pleasures the world has to offer, while simultaneously fulfilling a spiritual and religious yearning.

It’s not an easy time to be a Catholic. The strength of the church has been tested at the same time the strength of my faith has. Back home, the clergy abuse scandal is local and hard-hitting. Many of the early allegations, settlements and incarcerations happened in New England towns not far or different from mine. These unimaginably horrible actions caused many of my hometown friends and their families to vacate the church. I certainly don’t blame them. But as an original outsider who came back into the flock, I have looked past these heinous acts and missteps by the church to find comfort and joy.

This disease of abuse by clergy and the subsequent cover-ups has now spread to infect the church’s communicants all over the world. But this situation does not spell out the fall of the church. Rather, the church is now forced to seriously, unequivocally and firmly address structural problems. The current tenuous situation can become an opportunity for the church and its leaders to refocus on tending to the herd, so that everyone who wants to can find same comfort that I have found.

Life is full of ups and downs, but that is an integral part of the journey. My questioning of my own faith before and during college has helped to cement my commitment to it. I have faith too that my church will heal and many will once again heed the trumpet call.

Christian Witness, PNCC

Former PNCC member with a balanced view

From Abel Pharmboy: Congratulations to Chris Mooney on his Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowship in Science & Religion

I’ve highlighted this writer’s work in at least one prior blog post. To me, the views he expresses represent a very balanced view of Christianity. I appreciate that he takes the time to express this view, which as he notes, is not popular in academia or the scientific community. This type of reasoning, in fact common sense, is something I’ve commonly encountered among current and former PNCC folk. Further, his views are what we as Christians encounter among those who either do not know the Church or have left. They are not against us, but may not fully understand some aspects, and may not know what to do with some of the hypocrisy and failings common among the people of the Church (we are after-all sinful). In terms of his understanding of PNCC views, he is off on the issue of abortion, and some of the other nuances of what makes the Church Catholic, but otherwise not bad.

By-the-way, I would happily encourage him and his family to attend next year’s YMSofR bowling tournament. We could use his talents.

Great news came across my RSS reader the other day that author and journalist, Chris Mooney, was among twelve journalists selected by the John Templeton Foundation for an intensive two-month fellowship on the relationship between science and religion. The Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowships in Science & Religion provide financial support for scholars to study at their home institution and engage with US and European scholars at the University of Cambridge UK to “promote a deeper understanding and more informed public discussion of this complex and rapidly evolving area of inquiry.”

As one might suspect, the vast majority of the 239 comments at Chris’s blog post contain vitriol and bile that Chris would take such tainted money as that from the Templeton Foundation because the organization is partisan and this will forever constitute a conflict of interest, that Chris has formally left science, how dare he still call himself a journalist…blah-dee-blah.

As my colleague PhysioProf is wont to say: Bring out the fainting couch and some vapors.

I think all of us in the biomedical sciences know investigators who have taken funding from the tobacco industry before it was fashionable not to and very few of them have tied down friends and neighbors and forced them to smoke cigarettes.

And wait. How is it that 2% of the US population and 0.25% of the world population is Jewish yet 27% and 28% of Nobel laureates in Physiology/Medicine or Chemistry, respectively, are Jewish? Seems more consistent, although not causal, that a little religion helps your science.

I applaud Chris for devoting time to exploring science and religion with leading experts in the field. A journalist with another 40 or 50 years of writing ahead of him is wise to avail himself to all opportunities for inquiry and learning, especially on such a topic that is ubercontroversial to some and of obvious resonance to others.

My family and I don’t belong to any organized religion but I was raised in a Protestant-like offshoot of the Roman Catholic Church called The Polish National Catholic Church (our priests could get married, have families, birth control was ok, abortion was ok but not encouraged). One of the most critical skills I learned in the Polish church was how to bowl, laying the foundation for my future glory as an undergrad when my team won the intramural bowling title during my senior year.

But spending a third of my life in the southern US has opened my eyes as to the role that religion plays in the lives of good people who are otherwise highly-critical thinkers. Understanding religious faith in my community has been important in helping to convince African-American men of the need for prostate cancer screening and women for breast cancer screening. I have dozens of students who have chosen to pursue careers in nursing or the laboratory sciences because they feel it is a service to their community that is consistent with their faith. And yes, they know how to conduct well-controlled experiments and think that my belief in a PCR fairy is ridiculous.

I don’t support the tax-exempt status for religious organizations with huge properties and hordes of vehicles nicer than those I drive but, like it or not, religion that is not at the extremes does serve the public good. Yes, at the extremes religious differences are at the heart of the 30 or so wars going on in the world right now. Religion is used by some to attack, devalue, or deny science. Mindless religious belief can lead to sloppy thinking in other areas of one’s life.

In many cases, religion is a threat to science. Religion is often used as a shield for racism and other discriminatory behaviors. I hate this part of religion. I see it here in the southern US. It is ugly. I’m even mystified how the faith that sustained the ancestors of some of my colleagues through slavery is now used to justify discrimination against my other colleagues who are gay and lesbian. These are problems – a big problems that we must fight.

But in other cases, religion drives people to become excellent scientists and live meaningful lives of service, generosity, and altruism. Yes, one doesn’t have to be religious to live this way. But why is that? Why can some great scientists also be religious pillars of their respective communities?

So that is why I’m happy that Chris is doing this fellowship. He’s a great writer who recognizes the need for lifelong personal and professional development. I’ll be very interested to read his writing that comes out of this fellowship.

Congratulations, Chris, on being awarded this fellowship. Best of luck in your journey!

Events, Poland - Polish - Polonia, , , , , , , , ,

Upcoming Capital Region events

This weekend: 2010 Annual Armenian Festival at St. Peter’s Armenian Apostolic Church, 100 Troy-Schenectady Road, Watervliet, New York on Saturday, June 12, 4:00 to 8:00 p.m. and Sunday, June 13, 12:00 noon to 4:00 p.m.

This year’s Festival will again be held for two days on the church grounds of St. Peter Armenian Church located on a majestic hilltop overlooking the city of Troy. Join our Saturday night Tavloo (Backgammon) Tournament: 4:30 P.M. $15 Registration Fee. Sunday afternoon free Armenian dance lessons will be offered. A local DJ will provide Armenian and Middle-Eastern music for dancing and listening enjoyment. Amusement rides as well as pony rides and games will be available for the children. Dinner & Ala Carte Menu (subject to change) including Kebab Medley Dinner: $15; Lamb Kebab Dinner: $13; Chicken Kebab Dinner: $11; Kid’s Meal: $5 (includes one hot dog, pilaf and tossed salad); Lahmejune: $3.00 each; Pilaf: $3.00 serving; and Cheese Beoreg: $3.00 serving.

The bakery will offer an array of Armenian pastries and homemade baked goods including paklava, cheoreg, simit, kadayif, boorma, kurabia as well as a variety of cookies, brownies, cakes and pies all sold at ala carte prices.

For more information, contact the St. Peter Church Office at (518) 274-3673.

At the Polish Community Center, 225 Washington Ave Ext, Albany NY

Friday, June 11: Polish-American buffet 4-8pm
Sunday, June 13: Jimmy Sturr Annual Polka Ball 3-7pm. Polish-American kitchen open as well as cash bar with variety of imported Polish beers!
Sunday, June 20: USA Ballroom Dance 6pm
Saturday, June 26: Mystery Dinner Theater 6pm

For more information, please contact the PCC at 518-456-3995.

Saturday, July 3, 2010: Bus trip to a Yankees Game! NY Yankees vs. Toronto Blue Jays. Leaving the PCC at 8:15 am, returning directly after the game (1:05 pm game time). Cost is $85 for PCC members, $90 for non-members. Price includes game ticket and round trip charter bus service. Seats in section 207 (main level). Contact Susan Matala at 518-355-7981 or by E-mail.

Poland - Polish - Polonia,

Condé Nast Traveler visits Poland

A few excerpts from Polish Renaissance

This was the country that set to rebuilding its churches and palaces and ancient cities. I ask Marek Kwiatkowski how this was possible. “We had to rebuild because we were poor!” he insists with great animation, as if annoyed that I had missed such an obvious point. “England didn’t have to rebuild Coventry Cathedral because it was a rich country.” Warsaw was the first city in Europe to decide to rebuild, because, he says once more, “we had to.”

Gdańsk may be the most successful reconstruction in the country. With its high-gabled houses, its golden fountains, and its face toward the sea, the Baltic port feels closer to Amsterdam or Stockholm than to Warsaw or Kraków—”or it did, until I decided to walk over to the National Museum to see the famous Memling brought here in 1473, after pirates snatched it off the English coast.

It is easy to imagine what such a beautiful museum might have meant to the people living toilet-paper-less in those dingy apartments: a hope of dignity, for themselves and their nation. “My generation had only one goal: the independence of our country,” Kwiatkowski tells me. But with the Red Army occupying Poland, there could be no question of political or economic independence. A degree of cultural independence was the best the Poles could hope for, and as it happened the very existence of Polish culture was controversial enough to make its manifestations far more powerful than they would have been elsewhere.

This was because something about Poland so irritated its neighbors that they went to great lengths to wipe it out. In the nineteenth century, Russians seeking justification of their conquest settled on the excuse that the Catholic Poles threatened the unity of the Orthodox Slavs. In the human taxonomy devised by the Nazis, only Jews ranked lower than the Poles: Hitler did not want to exterminate them entirely, but, unlike other occupied peoples, they were to be reduced to slavery, their culture eradicated.

The occupiers devoted a startling amount of effort to destroying all symbols of Polish culture, from statues of Chopin and Copernicus to professors at Kraków’s Jagiellonian University. Thirty percent of Poland’s university teachers were killed, along with twenty-one percent of its judges, forty percent of its physicians, and fifty-seven percent of its lawyers. All told, a third of Poland’s population was displaced or murdered in the war.

But preserving the culture their enemies tried to annihilate was the one way the Poles could show the world that they were not a race of slaves.

…

Not much had changed since the days of King Stanisław, who could transmit a barbed political message by having a god petulantly stare at a nymph across a Baroque ceiling. Under communism, art and culture were the most powerful weapons the Poles had; and in his final book, Travels with Herodotus, the great Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński recalled why even that ancient Greek historian couldn’t be published in Stalinist Poland.

“All our thinking,” he wrote, “our looking and reading, was governed during those years by an obsession with allusion. Each word brought another one to mind; each had a double meaning, a false bottom, a hidden significance; each contained something secretly encoded, cunningly concealed.”Architecture was all the more eloquent in such an environment, and after Stalin died, in 1953, its expressive potential was unleashed.

A people under foreign occupation, whose intellectuals had been massacred and whose economy had trouble keeping up with the demand for toilet paper, had to piece together the accumulated artistic legacy of centuries—”in a country nearly as large as France.

…

The Polish language, spread across a giant area, has almost no dialects—”a situation unique in Europe, where even different neighborhoods in the same city can have starkly different dialects. And Poland’s ethnic and religious homogeneity is also unique: The population is almost entirely Polish and Catholic, although historically Poland was one of Europe’s most diverse and tolerant nations. Untroubled by the Reformation, which tore apart societies across Europe, Poland became known as a Paradisus Hereticorum, and those heretics included the Jews, so welcomed in Poland that the community soon became the world’s largest.

Christian Witness, Perspective, , ,

From Communist to Priest

A Greek Catholic priest, Fr. Yurko Kolasa, reflects on his journey from communism to a vocation as a married man and a priest. He speaks of the martyrs of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, his personal journey, his marriage, vocation, pastoral work, and a program he developed to support married life.

From ZENIT: From Communism To Catholicism To Priest: An Interview With Father Yurko Kolasa of the Ukraine

Raised in the communist Soviet Union, Yurko Kolasa knew nothing of the Catholic faith until he was well into his teens. Once the Greek-Catholic Church went from an underground following to being an openly practiced and respected religion in Ukraine, this future priest’s whole world opened up.

Today, Father Kolasa is the prefect of the training program for priests, seminarians and religious, at the International Theological Institute in Vienna. He is also a married priest of the Eastern Rite Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, and a father of four.

He also tells of the marriage preparation program he developed, how it has positively impacted the marriage success rate in Ukraine and is quickly becoming the proto-type for marriage preparation programs throughout various dioceses in Eastern Europe.

ZENIT: You have said that you accepted the ideas of Communism until you were 15. What happened that made you turn away from that ideology and turn toward the truths of the Catholic faith?

Father Kolasa: Most of my relatives were very active in communist party. As a boy I did not know anything about the persecution of the Greek-Catholic Church in the Soviet Union. It was only in 1989, when the Greek Church was legalized that I began to learn about thousands and thousands of martyrs of this Church — Greek Catholic bishops, clergy, monastics, and laity.

It was the authenticity of their faith that radically changed my life. I was crushed by the fact that there were so many people who have resisted compromise with the oppressive regime of that time and overcame the greatest moral challenges of the 20th century: the suppression of God-given freedom and human dignity by ideological totalitarianism. They gave the strongest testimony of their faith — their blood.

ZENIT: Despite the government’s effort to stamp out Christianity, the people’s faith prevailed. Can you describe how people continued to practice, or at least hold on to, their faith in such conditions?

Father Kolasa: By the end of 1947, male and female religious, lay faithful and hundreds of priests who refused to “convert” to orthodoxy, often with their wives and children, were arrested and sent to labor camps, where they endured horrific hardships. Parishes where the pastor had been arrested were to become the backbone of the underground. The faithful sang outside closed churches or worshiped at churches not registered with the regime. Priests who had avoided arrest tried to make pastoral visits to these underground communities. Nuns maintained contact between the priests and the laity, arranging secret religious services and catechizing children.

With Stalin’s death in March 1953, many priests who survived the camps were allowed to return home where they often resumed their pastoral activities. Priests celebrated the sacraments in forests or in private apartments, late at night or early in the morning, in addition to their legal jobs. Sometimes they were caught and again sentenced.

Until it emerged from the underground in 1989, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was the world’s largest illegal church. It was also the most extensive network of civil opposition in the Soviet Union. Despite relentless persecution, church life continued through an elaborate system of clandestine seminaries, monasteries, ministries, parishes and youth groups until the church was legalized on Dec. 1, 1989.

ZENIT: You are a Greek-Catholic priest, you are married, and you have four children. For those not familiar with the tradition of married clergy in the Eastern Catholic rites, could you explain how this difference in tradition came about?

Father Kolasa: The tradition of married clergy comes from the apostolic times. In the early years of the Church some married men were even consecrated bishops. The Eastern Church has always allowed the possibility of married men being ordained to the priesthood.

Please note that not a single practicing priest in the Church has ever married; there have only been instances of married men who later became ordained. The Western Church has cherished the discipline of only unmarried men being ordained, except for some Protestants who have entered the Church in recent years.

I always have a great respect and high esteem for unmarried priests and always try to encourage them to treasure and to protect the gift they have received. St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 7:7 said; “I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.”

ZENIT: You were ordained in 2001. As you approach your 10th anniversary as a priest, could you share with us some reflections on your vocation, and how your life has changed since your ordination?

Father Kolasa: One of the most powerful experiences of being a priest is to be an eyewitness of the tremendous power of the holy sacraments, and to know that as unworthy as I am, God is using me to be a channel of his infinite divine love.

I will never forget this one moment in my life when, after a long, exhausting day of fulfilling different tasks at the parish, I was called to give the anointing of the sick to a very sick man. When I came, the poor man was in terrible pain. His whole body was caught in convulsion. I tried to communicate with him, but he would not respond. I do not know if he even heard or saw me. I began to pray the prayers of the rite of anointing of the sick. All this time the convulsions would only increase. The moment I finished with the word Amen, his body suddenly rested. His eyes were closed. He was still breathing.

I said to his sister that stood next to me, let us pray together and thank God for his mercy. As we began to recite the Our Father, the man gently opened his eyes; he looked at his sister then at me and then he smiled at me with the most blissful and peaceful smile, then he closed his eyes and breathed his last. At this moment I could not stop thanking God for saving his soul and for the gift of the priesthood…

He gets it and lives it.

Art, Perspective, Poland - Polish - Polonia,

Historic Moments

The Cosmopolitan Review discusses the Year of Chopin in Poland, marking the 200th anniversary of Frederyk Chopin’s birth, and what he might think of life in today’s free Poland:

There’s much to celebrate, starting with the 200th birthday of Poland’s most famous exile, Frederic Chopin, born in Żelazowa Wola, just outside of Warsaw. We join the festivities bearing gifts of poetry, prose and a guide to Chopin events worldwide. In CR’s first fiction, Eva Stachniak transforms her readers into aristocratic guests at a salon in Paris in the company of Polish exiles, among them, Chopin himself.

Were the composer alive today, would he accept an invitation to give a concert at Warsaw’s Soviet-built Palace of Culture and Science? Would he dance in the Palace’s hip club Kafe Kulturalna? Or would he side with Minister of Foreign Affairs Radek Sikorski, who is suggesting Poland “demolish its own symbol of communist misrule”?

This year also marks the rehabilitation and reburial of Copernicus, labeled a heretic long before Galileo was ever hit with that charge. From the AP via Yahoo! News: Astronomer Copernicus reburied as hero in Poland

Nicolaus Copernicus, the 16th-century astronomer whose findings were condemned by the Roman Catholic Church as heretical, was reburied by Polish priests as a hero on Saturday, nearly 500 years after he was laid to rest in an unmarked grave.

His burial in a tomb in the cathedral where he once served as a church canon and doctor indicates how far the church has come in making peace with the scientist whose revolutionary theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun helped usher in the modern scientific age.

Copernicus, who lived from 1473 to 1543, died as a little-known astronomer working in a remote part of northern Poland, far from Europe’s centers of learning. He had spent years laboring in his free time developing his theory, which was later condemned as heretical by the church because it removed Earth and humanity from their central position in the universe.

His revolutionary model was based on complex mathematical calculations and his naked-eye observations of the heavens because the telescope had not yet been invented.

After his death, his remains rested in an unmarked grave beneath the floor of the cathedral in Frombork, on Poland’s Baltic coast, the exact location unknown.

On Saturday, his remains were blessed with holy water by some of Poland’s highest-ranking clerics before an honor guard ceremoniously carried his coffin through the imposing red brick cathedral and lowered it back into the same spot where part of his skull and other bones were found in 2005.

A black granite tombstone now identifies him as the founder of the heliocentric theory, but also a church canon, a cleric ranking below a priest. The tombstone is decorated with a model of the solar system, a golden sun encircled by six of the planets…

I had visited his home in Toruń, Poland, and the church in which he was baptized. I found the juxtaposition with the on-going closings and desecration of historic churches throughout the United States to be amazing. The R.C. Church was wiping out churches 100 to 150 years old, and here I stood in a church that predated 1473. I will never be able to show my children the churches their grandparents were baptized in. They have all closed.

Christian Witness, Perspective,

Seyfo – The Genocide of Christians in Iraq

A trailer for the film Seyfo: The Year of the Sword, The Ongoing Genocide. 2010 winner – The Indie Fest. The film looks at the evil of the genocide being committed against the indigenous Christians of Mesopotamia: the Assyrians, Chaldeans and Syriacs. More information is available from the Iraqi Christian Relief Council.

“In the name of the father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
Love is our anthem.
If we say something, No one would care…
If we ask about something, No one would Answer.

But I ask from God; I ask from God and I beg of him
And Our Prayers to the Messiah and God:
We are not enemies to anyone.
We did not do anything against anyone.
We built Iraq, and we will build it again.

What did we do? Why? Why are you coming after us?
Is this how you define sincerity?
We give them Respect and Love, And they give us bombs.
Where are they?
They say we will protect them,
but no one is here to protect us.

I am sorry,
The flowers in the garden
but they all stepped on them with their feet.
Why is it like that? Do they not have fear from God?
But we do not, do like them.
We have one word to them.
And that is that we forgive them and we thank them …”

Christian Witness, Perspective, PNCC, , , , , ,

Ethnic Marketing – alive and well

From friends at the CapturaGroup: Are Hispanics Really More Social?

Getting to the bottom of this question is critical because there seems to be a disconnect among Hispanic marketers when it comes to social media. On one hand, there are countless studies indicating that Hispanics are extremely engaged with social media. On the other hand, few marketers are proactively leveraging social media to reach online Hispanics…

…answerng the question in: Hispanics are really more social

In addition to being highly social, Hispanics consume a ton of media. I came across statistics that indicate that Hispanics teens spend 13 hours per day with media, more than any other ethnic group.

I then took a look at technology usage and showed that Hispanics are leapfrogging to the latest and greatest technologies, including mobile. What’s more, Hispanics have an extremely positive view of the technology and once they get their hands on it, the use it and love it…

When you combine the highly social Hispanic culture with strong technology usage, you get a perfect storm. I argued that social media is the perfect avenue to unleash the Hispanic culture. For the most part, every day Hispanic culture is confined to neighborhoods throughout America. Social media changes that. It gives every day Hispanics a voice and provides a global, viral platform for spreading the culture.

Answering the question goes to more than just selling widgets.

As Bishop Hodur pointed out, each culture brings its unique gifts and attributes together in the most social of all setting, the Church. Honoring culture is more than just window dressing and getting down with quaint traditions. It involves understanding people where they are at, blessing what they offer, and being increased and blessed by the gifts they bring. The Gospel message is beyond nation and place, yet grows in the world God created, because of the talents and gifts every nation and people offers.

Is the PNCC just the Church of one nation, one people? No, but it fully honors, respects, and works to build upon and maintain the gifts each nation and people bring. You do not have to stop being American, Polish, Hispanic, Italian, or any aspect of your nature because God honors it in using what you bring for the promotion of the everlasting message that is beyond any border or boundary.

What we can understand from the above is that Church needs to go out and meet people where they are, drawing them in, not by a few “ethnic” parishes, but by fully honoring their self determination and identity in a Catholic and democratic Church.

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