I am very, very distressed to hear that.  As I have mentioned on other threads, my wife was adopted as an infant by a Chaldean couple.  My wife's mother had converted to Catholicism from Islam, before she met her husband.  I never met them, becasue they were dead before my wife and I met, but they seem to have been remarkable people and certainly raised a wonderful daughter.  

It is possible to change rites. I am living proof of that.  He should talk to a Latin rite priest he trusts about it (if the Latin rite is where he wants to be.  He might also consider another Eastern rite, perhaps Melkite.)

Don't be distressed - my friend believes that it's just an American thing. He told me that his family back home in Iraq is very faithful, but that they frequently live in fear of Mohammedans, as some of his family has been murdered, kidnapped, or blown up in church bombings.

However, when Chaldeans move to America, they are quick to absorb the culture and to become one with it. He says that a lot of Chaldean girls dye their eye blonde or other colors, and become your typical "look at my body" types. As for the Chaldean men, they drift towards being wannabe gangsta's (especially if they live in Detroit, which most Chaldeans from Iraq move to), or they become non-denominational Protestants.

So, seeing as how the Chaldean people culturally turn into Americans once they move here, it only makes sense that the Chaldean rite would try to emulate the way in which the majority of American Catholics "worship". My friend is certain that if his people never would have left Iraq, they would have been better off killed as martyrs than to be turned into Protestants, gangsta's, and whores.

Anyway, my friend tried to change rites because he thought his priests were incredibly stupid and un-Catholic, not to mention that the majority of them hate him, but now he feels that it's his purpose to become a Chaldean priest so that he can try to help restore the Chaldean rite to what it should be in America. Pray strongly that he may persevere in obtaining that goal, and that in the process of training to be a priest, he doesn't fall to the same errors that he is trying to combat.

Alex,

I wish your friend the best.

Is the women in the lower left hand corner of the picture above, the one in blue, wearing  a religious habit of some sort?