{"id":1852,"date":"2007-05-02T23:12:13","date_gmt":"2007-05-02T23:12:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/05\/indifference.html"},"modified":"2007-05-02T23:12:13","modified_gmt":"2007-05-02T23:12:13","slug":"indifference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/05\/indifference.html","title":{"rendered":"Indifference"},"content":{"rendered":"

The new rector of an Iraq seminary is blunt:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

\u201cChristians in Iraq are on their way to extinction, cut off from the country\u2019s political process,\u201d said Redemptorist Fr Bashar Warda, newly-appointed rector of the St Peter Major Seminary, which was recently moved from Baghdad to Ankawa (Kurdistan) for security reasons. <\/p>\n

Through AsiaNews<\/em> he wants to appeal to the government in Baghdad to make an effort to work for peaceful coexistence in the country, protecting its defenceless and voiceless minorities.<\/p>\n

Father Warda\u2019s message comes on the eve of the May 3-4 summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, where the international community is set to discuss plans for Iraq\u2019s future. <\/p>\n

Iraq\u2019s bishops made a similar appeal on AsiaNews <\/em>webpage<\/a> against what they consider a virtual campaign of persecution.<\/p>\n

The clergyman is critical of a democracy that has \u201cturned into a simplistic expression of majority will and the systematic violation of minority rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

In listing some of the aspects of the grave crisis that is affecting especially the Christian community, he stressed \u201chigher unemployment among Christians, arbitrary seizure of properties owned by Christian families in Baghdad and Mosul, violations of religious freedom and freedom of though, abductions, attacks and sectarian threats.\u201d<\/p>\n

He wonders why, for many years, no one has acted. \u201cThe answer is simple; the indifference of Iraqi leaders,\u201d he said. \u201cThey do not consider us as belonging to this nation, our human and intellectual participation as Iraqis to the country\u2019s progress along with all the other religious groups that live here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey take advantage of us because we have no outside support or our own militia,\u201d the rector explained. \u201cThey know that all we can do is make appeals and complain. Politicians act convinced that our community is bound to disappear in a few years.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The new rector of an Iraq seminary is blunt: \u201cChristians in Iraq are on their way to extinction, cut off from the country\u2019s political process,\u201d said Redemptorist Fr Bashar Warda, newly-appointed rector of the St Peter Major Seminary, which was recently moved from Baghdad to Ankawa (Kurdistan) for security reasons. Through AsiaNews he wants to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nIndifference - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/05\/indifference.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Indifference - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The new rector of an Iraq seminary is blunt: \u201cChristians in Iraq are on their way to extinction, cut off from the country\u2019s political process,\u201d said Redemptorist Fr Bashar Warda, newly-appointed rector of the St Peter Major Seminary, which was recently moved from Baghdad to Ankawa (Kurdistan) for security reasons. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1852\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}