Christians Stay Home!

There is a fine line between the expectation of respect for the sensitivities of religious people and a none-too-subtle attempt to stifle religious expression.

When I went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, the group visited the Western Wall, believed to be the remnant of ancient Israel’s Temple and Judaism’s holiest site. While there I had no problem with the suggestion by the priest leading the group to remove our crosses, crucifixes, and other Christian emblems before visiting the Wall. I tucked mine under my shirt and the priest, who was wearing a baseball cap with a Jerusalem cross, opted not to go down to the Wall.

That is the kind of accommodation for the sensitivity of others that is reasonable. What I find unreasonable is the report that follows:

"A British airline banned its staff from taking Bibles and wearing crucifixes or St. Christopher medals on flights to Saudi Arabia to avoid offending the country’s Muslims.

"British Midland International also has told female flight attendants they must walk two paces behind male colleagues and cover themselves from head to foot in a headscarf and robe known as an abaya, the Mirror newspaper of London reported. […]

"Airline officials, who have sparked outrage, the paper says, explain the Islamic kingdom’s strict laws — enforced by religious police — prohibit public practice of Christianity….

"BMI spokesman Phil Shepherd said: ‘In providing air services people want, demand and use, we have an obligation to respect the customs of the destination country.’

"An airline employee who asked not to be named told the Mirror: ‘It’s outrageous that we must respect their beliefs but they’re not prepared to respect ours.’"

GET THE STORY.

Forcing employees to abandon their own religion’s emblems and spiritual comforts while traveling on business for the company is bad enough and outrageous in and of itself. But going beyond that to force employees to take on the customs of another religion (e.g., the abaya), one which they do not profess, is even worse.

In past centuries, the jihadists within Islam attempted to conquer the world through armed conquest. To the extent they succeed in this day and age, it will likely be through the collaboration of the PC Police.

Thoughts On Alito & Noonan

Capt_002I have to confess that, as much of a Supreme Court afficionado as I am, I really haven’t watched any of the hearings for then-Judge Roberts and now-Judge Alito. I mean, I have a job, and I don’t watch TV news (I get my news on the Internet), and–although I tried to watch a bit of the Alito hearings on web video–I had technical problems.

I have, though, been following Internet press accounts of the Alito hearings, as well as commentary on them from the blogosphere and the pundits.

I have to say that the performance of the Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee has been shocking to me, even without seeing it on TV.

R4139453491The pictures alone tell an amazing story, and I wonder how much the Dems on the JC realize how horrible they’re looking to the public. I mean, they’re coming across as a bunch of self-important, disingenuous, hyprocritical, McCarthyite blowhards.

Y’know: Just plain Evil.

I know they’ve got to phone in a performance for their base, but this just makes them look horrible to the public. There’s an election later this year. Do the Dems really want John Q. Public going into the voting booth with memories of the jackbooted thugs of their party trampling all over that nice, quiet Mr. Alito and making his poor wife cry?

I know, I know, public memories are short, but the more you confirm a negative stereotype of you that is out there, the worse off you are.

Alito060112And the performance is especially phony this time because, as I predicted long before the hearings began, there simply will not be a filibuster this time–barring an act of truly jaw-dropping, preternatural stupidity on somebody’s part (either Alito’s or a Democratic senator’s)–because to filibuster Alito would (unless he is the one who was stupid) result in the exercise of the constitutional option meaning that the filibuster WON’T BE AVAILABLE FOR JUDICIAL NOMINEEES when the next justice retires and there is a new nominee.

That new nominee will be the fifth vote to overturn Roe (assuming that Roberts and Alito join Scalia and Thomas in opposing Roe–as the Forces of Babykilling must presume they will), and so the Forces of Babykilling need to preserve the filibuster for next time AT ALL COSTS.

So what’s going on up on the Hill right now is just a hypocritical dog and pony show with hypocritical dogs and hypocritical ponies.

Barring something massively unexpected, Alito will be confirmed, and the thuggish performance by the Thugocrats on the Judiciary Committee is just an empty ritual being enacted for the benefit of their Moonbat base.

And all America–including the Moonbat base–knows it. The Moonbats–many of whom have already recognized the inevitability of Alito’s confirmation–simply want their Blood Sport first.

So those are some thoughts I’ve been having about the Alito confirmation.

Now. . . .

The occasion for me presenting them is that I want to point you to an exceptionally well-written column by Peggy Noonan.

Mickey Kaus has a little thing at the bottom of his blog in which he links and comments on various other folks in the blogosphere, and his remark on Peggy Noonan is "gold in every column."

Quite so.

And Kaus is well qualified to say so, as he’s a very good writer himself.

But Peggy’s most recent column doesn’t just have gold in it. It’s CHOCK-FULL of gold in terms of how well it’s written.

I mean, you may have thought that last week’s piece with the STEAMROLLER METAPHOR was outstandingly written, but in terms of style this week’s column totally rocks! Agree with her politics or not, Noonan is just a darn good writer.

GET THE STORY.

Beloved Leader Missing??

KimjongilapKim Jong Il, North Korea’s Supreme Dictator and all-around nut job, may have disappeared on his way to Beijing from Pyongyang, according to THIS STORY over at Monsters and Critics (via Catholic Exchange).

I haven’t verified it through any major news outlets, though.

If true, it is a fascinating scenario, involving the Asian Mob, the island of Macao (which is kinda like a modern-day Casablanca), money laundering, counterfeiting in the tens of millions of U.S. dollars, noo-que-lar weapons, intrigue, the inscrutable Chinese government… and starring Kim Jong Il (that iron-fisted, but loveable psychopath) as himself.

Someone should get right to work on a screenplay.

Is it possible that Kim Jong Il has gone to visit Jimmy Hoffa?

GET THE STORY.

(JIMMY ADDS: If so, no floral basket for the Asian Mafia!)

No Christian T-Shirt = Denying Christ?

A reader writes:

I am in a bit of a quandary, and I hope you can spare a few minutes to give
me your thoughts, eithe r in your blog or privately.

As Christmas gift, I was given a shirt with an imprint of the figure of the
Divine Mercy Jesus

Something like this, but in bright yellow:


http://www.cafepress.com/ctso.38480255

I do not want to wear it because:

– my personality and clothing style does not suit these types of shirts
– I am honestly embarassed to wear blatantly religious clothes (although not
embarassed to be Catholic).
– I’m not really a devotee of the Divine Mercy

My concern is, is my embarassment and reluctance to wearing these clothes
tantamount to denying Christ?  Because, frankly speaking, one of the reasons
I do not want to wear it is because I am embarassed to appear "too
religious".  Am I acting like St. Peter when he denied Christ?

(I don’t think I will have qualms about wearing tasteful ones though, like
the "Decided" or "Family Circus" shirts that Catholic Answers sell).

Let’s star with that "denying Christ" means. When Scripture uses this phrase it means something specific: Issuing a denial that has Christ as its object. This could mean denying that Jesus is the Christ or it could mean denying that you are an adherent of the Christian faith.

But one thing it does not mean is simply keeping your mouth shut. In order to deny Christ you have to open your mouth (or use sign language or e-mail or some other form of interpersonal communication) to specifically issue a denial.

Now: If you put on a shirt that had a picture of Jesus with a big circle around him and a slash through the image then THAT could be a denial of Christ in the form of a T-shirt, but merely not wearing a religious T-shirt is not a denial of Christ.

If it were then the Church would be telling us that we are all obliged under pain of mortal sin to go out and buy religious T-shirts, because to deny Christ knowingly and deliberately is a mortal sin. (Scripture is real clear on that point.)

The Church is not telling us that. The Church has never told us that. Therefore, it isn’t. There’s just a difference between not witnessing for Christ on every possible occasion and DENYING Christ. The latter is a sin; the former is not.

We simply aren’t obliged to take every possible opportunity to witness. Witnessing is a good thing, but if you try to do it on every single occasion where it’s physically possible for you to do so then you’ll actually DAMAGE the cause of Christ because you’ll be ramming the Christian message down people’s throats. You’ll also end up taking time away from your family that you should be spending on them. You’ll fail to study for things you should study for. You’ll fail to do a whole bunch of things that you should do and end up looking like a nut to non-Christians (as well as fellow Christians) if you try to implement a witness-every-single-moment method.

And they’ll be RIGHT to regard you as a nut, because you’ll drive yourself nuts doing this.

God didn’t design humans to operate in that manner. He created us to live lives in which we attend to many different things (our families, our work, ourselves) in addition to witnessing to our faith. He didn’t just create us to be witnessing machines.

We are meant to live what Catholic theology terms in modo humano or "in a human manner." This means devoting adequate attention to all of our duties, including our duty (when it is appropriate) to witness to our faith.

There is thus, as Ecclesiastes might say, a time to witness and a time to refrain.

Over the centuries the Church has thought a good bit about when it is a time to refrain. The era of persecutions forced that on us. A conclusion that was reached was that there are situations in which the prudent thing to do is to refrain from witnessing–for one’s own sake (there are also situations where it is prudent to refrain from witnessing for the sake of the person you’re trying to help; e.g., if doing it at this moment would push him away from Christ instead of drawing him closer).

After all, Jesus himself told us:

When they  persecute you in one town, flee to the next (Matthew 10:23).

So there can be reasons not to witness in a particular set of circumstances.

This means that, unless you are in some REALLY strange circumstances (like the Roman emperor has declared that failure to wear a religious T-shirt will be construed as a denial of the Christian faith), failing to wear a religious T-shirt is NOT denying Christ.

If you don’t want to wear the T-shirt, you don’t have to. You do have to witness to your Christian faith in SOME circumstances in SOME way, when it’s appropriate and productive, but you don’t have to witness to your Christian faith in THIS way.

That being said, I don’t know that being embarrassed about wearing overtly religious clothes is a spiritually healthy impulse. If society were more hostile to Christianity than it is (e.g., if we were living in Stalinist Russia) then this would be understandable. But in much of the developed world we aren’t (yet) in that situation, and we have some duty to do what we can to keep Christianity visible in the public square. Wearing religious clothing is ONE WAY to do that (though not the only way).

Even though it would not be a sin to refrain from wearing this T-shirt or any other religious article of clothing, I’d still counsel you to take your feeling of embarrassment as an occasion of sanctification–something you can work on to grow in holiness by learning to be more comfortable testifying to your religious identity through what you wear.

That doesn’t mean I’m counselling you to wear this shirt. I haven’t seen it, and it may be hideous–or radically contrary to your personal style or conveying an impression that you are a devotee of a particular devotion that you aren’t a devotee or whatever.

But I would think about maybe wearing–on occasion, when it’s appropriate–something that would help you eat away at the feeling of embarrassment that you presently feel and so grow in holiness.

The Justifications Of Abraham

A reader writes:

I am having some trouble with an argument I have been
running into lately…

In response to numerous attempts by Catholics on a
message board to exegete James 2:24 a Protestant
seminary says:

"You are in gross error in your understanding of James
2:24. Your interpretation of James 2:24 CANNOT BE
CORRECT – because it places Abraham’s justification
before God AFTER his circumcision and Paul says in
Romans 4:10 that it was ‘NOT AFTER BUT BEFORE he was
circumcised’ that he was justified before God. The
offering of Isaac (which is what James 2 is
discussing) happened *long after* Abraham was
circumcized. Hence, you are misusing James 2:24. And
why are you misusing it – because your tradition tells
you what to find in Scripture, and lo and behold, you
find it – context means nothing. Let’s see if you can
offer a contextually sound defense of what you say…"

I am not sure how to answer this charge.  St. Paul
does, in fact, say "not after but before" – which
(while it may not prove that justification is a
one-time forensic declaration) *seems* to indicate
that St. James is eithr not using the word "justify"
as St. Paul does or he is contradicting St. Paul
(which both the Reformed and Catholic person must
reject), as it seems to create a chronology ("not
after but before") in which the Abraham’s
"justificion" in St. James *seemingly* cannot be the
same thing as the one in St. Paul…

I think I understand his argument… how can I answer
(in a satisfactory manner) it exegetically (i.e. a
"contextually sound defense")?

Your seminarian friend is presupposing that justification is an event that occurs only once in the life of the believer. This is a false assumption. Scripture does not indicate this. In fact, the case of Abraham demonstrates this quite clearly.

Begin by looking at Hebrews 11. In this chapter we read:

1: Now faith is the assurance of things hoped  for, the conviction of things not seen.
2: For by it the  men of old received divine approval.

This sets the context of the chapter as saving faith, the kind that receives divine approval. The chapter goes on to list a bunch of people who had this kind of faith, including Abraham:

8: By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a
place which he was to receive as an inheritance; and he went out, not
knowing where he was to go.

Okay, so Abraham had faith of the kind this chapter is discussing (the kind that receives divine approval) when he went out from his homeland to journey to the promised land.

Now: When did that happen?

Genesis 12.

So Abraham already had divine approval in Genesis 12. But if that’s the case then he must have been justified at that point.

Now let’s more forward a bit in Genesis to chapter 14. What happens there? Abraham goes out and fights a battle and resues a bunch of people and afterward Melchizedek pronounces a blessing on him (14:19-20). This is more stuff sounding like Abraham is right with God (justified) at this point in his life. Also Abraham refuses to take anything from the king of Sodom, thus turning down any reward from the king of so wicked a place.

Then IMMEDIATELY when we turn the corner into chapter 15, with Abraham just having turned down a reward from the king of Sodom,  God declares:

1: . . . "Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your  reward shall be very great."

So Abraham is so right with God that God is promising him a really cool (i.e., great) reward for what he’s done and how he’s followed God and conducted himself in righteousness. Again: Abraham is justified at this point.

Then Abraham queries God what his reward will be because, no matter what God gives him, he has no son and so a slave will inherit it. He can’t pass on the reward that God plans to give him.

So God says:

5: . . . "Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them." Then he said to him, "So shall your descendants be."
6: And he believed the LORD; and he reckoned it to him as righteousness.

Now this (Gen. 15:6) is the verse that Paul uses in Romans 4:3 to say that Abraham was right with God (righteous/justified) before his circumcision in Gen. 17.

Fine.

But what kind of justification are we talking about here?

Protestant theology commonly conceives of justification as an event that occurs once in a person’s life, when he moves from a state of being unrighteous (not right with God) to a state of being righteous (right with God). If that’s what you interpret Genesis 15:6 as referring to then you’ve got a huge problem because the text gives us absolutely zero reason to think that Abraham only suddenly got right with God in Genesis 15:6. All the evidence is going the other way. He didn’t even get the promise of a multitude of descendants until God was wanting to reward him for having followed him so well. And he’d been following him well for years, for he left home to go to the promised land (AGAIN, trusting in a divine promise) back in Genesis 12, which Hebrews testifies was an act of faith of the kind that receives divine approval.

I mean, the alternative is saying that Abraham was this repropate guy in mortal sin who left his homeland trusting in God with the kind of faith that wins divine approval, yet for some reason God was really unhappy with him and didn’t give him divine approval. In fact, he was SO UNHAPPY with Abraham back in Genesis 12 that he had promised him a new homeland and that he would make him a blessing to everybody on earth. I mean, God must have been REALLY unhappy with Abraham back there since he promised to bless those who bless Abraham and curse those who curse him. Right? I know I’D think that God wsa unhappy with me if he told ME that.

And then Abraham deals magnanimously with his nephew Lot by letting Lot have the better pastureland in chapter 13 and then he rescues Lot’s butt in chapter 14 (putting his own life and those of his men at risk) and then Melchizedek pronounces a blessing on him and Abraham refuses to take a reward from the king of a wicked city and God is SO UNHAPPY with Abraham about all this that he promises him a really great reward–PLUS descendants who can inherit it–and it’s only when Abraham says "Yeah, okay, I guess I will have descendants" that God suddenly decides that Abraham is on his good side.

This is not a very plausible interpretation.

It is a much MORE plausible interpretation to say that Abraham was right with God (justified) no later than the time he left his homeland in faith, having trusted in the divine promises, and that he continued to act righteously in his dealings with others (or at least in many of them) so that God chose to give him a big reward and children he could leave it to. When Abraham believed that God would do what he said, that was yet another thing Abraham did that was righteous and so God, naturally, reckoned it as such.

Genesis 15:6 therefore does not refer to the time when Abraham passed from being unrighteous (unjustified) to being righteous (justified). It represents a continuing growth in his righteousness. He is more pleasing to God now than he was before because he has stayed faithful as he has walked with God.

This is problematic if your theology limits you to talking about justifcation only as a once-in-a-life event where you pass from unrighteousness to righteousness, with no potential for growth in righteousness. But it makes all the sense in the world if you acknowledge (as Catholic theology does) that justification is both something that happens at the begging of the Christian life to put you in a state of rightness with God and that you can then grow in righteousness.

Viewed from that perspective, it’s quite appropriate for Paul to point out that Abraham was right with God before he was circumcized, because he was. You DON’T NEED to be circumcized to be right with God, as Abraham’s case shows. He was right with God LONG before he got circumcized in Genesis 17. He was right with God no later than Genesis 12, and we have explicit testimony to his rightness with God in Genesis 15:6.

But suppose that, even though you are right with God and have been for years, God then asks you to get circumcized.

Whew! That’s a painful thing! You naturally want to avoid that pain. But–if that’s what God’s told you to do and you go ahead and do it–God’s going to reckon that you did a thing that was right (just).

("Right" and "just" are just different English translations of the same underlying word in Hebrew–as well as in Greek. "Justification" and "Righteousness" mean the same thing in biblical theology, as do "To justify" and "to make right." English has this crazy vocabularly that obscures the fact that we’re talking about the same underlying terms here, so I’m filling them in parenthetically.)

So you go ahead and get circumcized and God judges you righteous for doing it–for subordinating your natural desire to avoid pain to your desire to follow his will–and this represents one more stage in your growth in righteousness as you walk with God.

And that’s what James is talking about. He also is not talking about when Abraham first passed from unrighteousness to righteousness. Like Paul, he is talking about Abraham’s growth in righteousness (justice, justification).

Paul seizes on an earlier aspect of Abraham’s experience to show that you don’t need to be circumcized in order to be right with God (which is important to his gentile readers since–unlike Abraham–THEY have not been giving a divine command to be circumcized).

James seizes on a later aspect of Abraham’s experience to show the importance of more than intellectually assenting to the truths of theology but of actually obeying God–even when it’s painful. (Whis is important to his readers since some of them seem to have the idea that obeying God isn’t important, just acknowleding the truths of theology.)

In neither case, when they cite the story of Abraham, are they talking about the time when Abraham was first made right with God, because that happened years and years earlier–no later than Genesis 12.

Incidentally, in handling these passages the Catholic Church only cites James 2 in connection with growth in justification. Check Trent’s Decree on Justification and you’ll see what I mean. It mentions James 2 when talking about growth in righteousness–which is what James is talking about–but not in connection with how we first come to God and are justified at the beginning of the Christian life.

See my book The Salvation Controversy for more, as well as my other writings on the subject on the web (try Googling "Jimmy Akin" or "James Akin" together with "Abraham," "justification," etc.).

What A Year It’s Been

On December 22, Pope Benedict gave an address to the Roman Curia in which he reflected on the events of the past year, which included the death of John Paul II, the interregnum, his own election, and the first year of his pontificate (including World Youth Day and the Synod on the Eucharist).

I recently read one prelate who described this address as amounting to "almost an encyclical," and I’ve read rumors that B16 has delayed the release of his first encyclical (by a couple of weeks; word is it’ll be out in the second half of January) in order to let this address sink in before hitting the Church with something new to absorb.

It really is a wide ranging address–including discussions not only of the above-mentioned topics but also the correct and incorrect interpretations of Vatican II, the relationship of the Church to science, and the Church’s social teaching–delivered with the characteristic frankness of B16.

It’s well worth your while to read, so

CHECK IT OUT.

Anointing Of The Seats

The senators, witnesses, and Judge Alito may want to spot-check their chairs before sitting down for the upcoming hearings. The oil they may find their seats won’t be Lemon Pledge.

"Insisting that God ‘certainly needs to be involved’ in the Supreme Court confirmation process, three Christian ministers today blessed the doors of the hearing room where Senate Judiciary Committee members will begin considering the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito on Monday.

"Capitol Hill police barred them from entering the room to continue what they called a consecration service. But in a bit of one-upsmanship, the three announced that they had let themselves in a day earlier, touching holy oil to the seats where Judge Alito, the senators, witnesses, Senate staffers and the press will sit, and praying for each of the 13 committee members by name.

"’We did adequately apply oil to all the seats,’ said the Rev. Rob Schenck, who identified himself as an evangelical Christian and as president of the National Clergy Council in Washington.

"Rev. Schenck called the consecration service the kick-off in a series of prayer meetings that will continue throughout the confirmation hearing."

GET THE STORY.

Just another indication of the inherent Catholicity of human beings, even those who do not profess Catholicism. One wonders what the Evangelical Christian minister’s official position on the efficacy of sacramentals is, given his own crypto-sacramentalism.

“Lord, Lord”

A reader writes:

A question I have long wondered about.

In the Gospels (which are historical –as noted by the Church)  various persons refer to Jesus as "lord’ and he himself refers to people saying "lord lord" but not doing what he teaches.

The question is — how are we to understand the usage of these people –who I think for the most part are Jews?  Do they mean ‘lord’ the same way as did the Church later in its profession "Dominus Jesus!"  Jesus is Lord!?

Some thoughts have been:

A. They were inspired by the Holy Spirit.  Thus they really profess that he is God.

B. The Greek they use must mean (in most cases) something else –some title of respect but not a calling Jesus –God.

C. Something else entirely.

Any help would be great!

What people meant in these cases is probably a mix of different things. For some the New Testament references to him as "Lord" are confessions that he is God. We know this because in the Greek text the word kurios is often used of Jesus when giving a quotation from the Old Testament, and when you look up the original in Hebrew it has Yahweh–the divine name–where the Greek quotation has kurios referring to Jesus.

These quotations tend to be later, though, and aren’t in the voices of people who were talking to him during his ministry (e.g., they’re in the mouth of a later author as narrator or epistle-writer), so what consciousnessness there was of Jesus as God during his ministry is not entirely clear.

Certainly there are references by people during the Gospels referring to him to his face as "Son of God," and this is certainly to be understood as reference to him as a supernatural and even a divine figure. Something similar applies (paradoxically) to the title "Son of Man," which is not simply a straightforward reference to Jesus’ humanity. (In some literature of the person "the Son of Man" was also a supernatural figure.)

How much of this conscoiusness is loaded into their use of "Lord," though, is unclear. They certainly weren’t walking around referring to him as "Yahweh" to his face. We know that in this period the divine name had already become taboo, so people showed their reverence for it by not pronouncing it (except on special occasions). That’s a big part of why we have kurios so much in the New Testament–because people used it as a Greek substitute for the divine name instead of writing Yahweh in Greek letters.

So if people didn’t call Jesus "Yahweh" to his face, what did they call him?

Maran.

Or at least Mar.

Mar is the Aramaic word for "Lord," and when you put the –an suffix on it it means "Our Lord." This is where we get Maranatha = Maran athe ("Our Lord comes").

The thing about Mar, though, is that it has a pretty broad semantic range, just like "Lord" does in English. "Lord" can mean God, but it can also be a title of nobility.

There’s also the possibility that in first century Palesting Mar functioned like the Spanish word Senor, which can not only be a title of Christ but also simply a term of polite respect, meaning "Sir" or "Mister."

I don’t know if we know precisely how broad the semantic range of Mar was in the first century, but it had significant flexibility and could certainly be used as a term of respect that did not presuppose either nobility or divinity.

This means that when we’re dealing with people who call Jesus "Lord" in the Gospels that we can’t say with certainty what was in their minds. Some of them (at least some of the core disciples after a certain point in his ministry) may have meant it to have divine overtones, but for many it was more likely undrestood as a term of respect.

I also suspect, though, that the Evangelists may have intended us to understand divine overtones even when the person using the term wouldn’t have had them in mind. In other words, when people called Jesus Maran (or Mari, "My Lord") they were in some fashion acknowledging his divinity without even realizing it. At least it’s possible that the Evangelists want us to hear the word with these unintentional overtones (the same way that the high priest prophesies about Jesus without realizing it in John 11).

In case you’re curious, Mar is still used with several different meanings in contemporary Aramaic. Today it is used sometimes distinctively of God (as in the term Maran for "Our Lord" or as in the greeting Mar hubba, or "The Lord is Love"–used by Maronites) but also of humans, as when it is used as the Aramaic equivalent of the title "Saint" in a name (e.g., Mar Toma = St. Thomas) or as the equivalent of the title "Bishop" in a name (e.g., Mar Ibrahim Ibrahim and Mar Sarhad Jammo = Bishop Abraham Abraham and Bishop Sarhad Jammo, the Chaldean bishops for the eastern and western United States, respectively).

Incidentally, whenever I’ve spoken to a Chaldean or Assyrian bishop, I’ve always greeted him as Mari ("My Lord" = Monsignor, a title used for bishops in Europe) and I’ve never had one blink when I used the term (except over the fact that it was an American cowboy so greeting him).