Link (here) to the book The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iraq
A modern day photo of a Mandaean baptism
From the outside, Baghdad College seems an unlikely nursery for a would-be suicide bomber.
Established by American Jesuits in the 1930s, the school is in Shamasia, a suburb of Adhamiya, one of the oldest neighbourhoods of the Iraqi capital.The former pupil contacted by the BBC Scotland News website said most of those who attend come from secular, modern and well-off families. The education provided is considered the best in the country with all classes, barring history and geography of the world, taught in English. Scientific subjects such as maths, physics, chemistry and biology are at the forefront of the teaching. According to the former pupil, about 85% of pupils go on to become doctors, dentists, or engineers - two of those three professions being dedicated to the care and well being of others.
Link (here)
Jesuit in Iraq Paul Shaughnessey, SJ, a chaplain in Iraq was interviewed for a Veterans Day program on Catholic TV.
Father Paul J. Shaughnessy (great link) has a unique congregation: spread out over 32,000 square miles in Iraq's Anbar province, about the size of South Carolina.
Shaughnessy serves troops of all religions in numerous outposts in the far-flung province as the Catholic chaplain for the Marines' Regimental Combat Team 5. At the mega-base at Al Asad, a Mass may attract a hundred or more Marines, sailors, soldiers and others; at a tiny outpost on the Syrian border, he recently performed Mass for a single Marine.
Now in his fourth deployment to Iraq, Shaughnessy, a Jesuit, keeps on the move: by Osprey (when available), by regular helicopter (when necessary) and sometimes by slow-moving overland convoys (done at night as part of a U.S. policy to give back the roads to Iraqis.)
The goal, Shaughnessy said in a telephone interview, is presence. The more times the troops see him, the more comfortable they are, more liable to open up with the issues that bother them, the less reluctant to discuss faith.
"When you're with them all the time, you're not as threatening," he said. "They're not worried you're going to hit them with religion."
As the pace of the U.S. mission in Iraq slows down, Shaughnessy said, the Marines have become "more contemplative, more interested in their relationship with God." He's taught a class about the references to modern Iraq in the Bible.
"Outside of Israel, Iraq is cited more times than any other region in the Bible," said Shaughnessy, 58, a native of Worcester, Mass., who worked for the FBI before entering the seminary.
And it's not just religion that piques the interest of the young Marines and sailors. A common question is about the definition of priestly celibacy. "When I tell them, the reaction usually is, 'Are you kidding me?' " he said.
Like the rest of the regiment, Shaughnessy will return this winter to Camp Pendleton. And after that?
"I've always wanted to see Afghanistan," he said.
— Tony Perry
Photo: Father Paul Shaughnessy, Catholic priest and Navy officer, says a prayer for a solider on the eve of battle in Najaf, 2004. Credit: Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times
Link (here)
Articles by Fr. Paul Shaughnessy, S.J.
The Other Side of Ancient LiturgyA longtime professor of liturgy and patristics at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome, he served the early years of his priesthood in Baghdad. During civil unrest in the late 1950s, he traveled the Iraqi countryside observing the liturgies of the Syriac-speaking villages and monasteries. And there he got hooked on liturgics. Since then, he’s written about three dozen books and several hundred articles on the ancient liturgies and the Fathers. He is a Catholic priest of both the Latin and Byzantine rites.
Father Taft sets out to give us a “bottom-up” view of the Byzantine liturgy, as it was experienced by the congregations of late antiquity, rather than explicated by the mystagogues. The situation was, as he points out, “not all incense and icons.”
