{"id":2198,"date":"2005-09-20T22:12:49","date_gmt":"2005-09-20T22:12:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/constitutional-questions.html"},"modified":"2005-09-20T22:12:49","modified_gmt":"2005-09-20T22:12:49","slug":"constitutional-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/constitutional-questions.html","title":{"rendered":"Constitutional Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chaldean bishops are concerned:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Catholic bishops in Iraq are seeking last-minute changes to their country’s draft constitution amid "grave concerns" that it would lead to discrimination against Christians. <\/p>\n

Chaldean Patriarch Emmanuel-Karim Delly of Baghdad, Iraq, met Iraqi interim President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari Sept. 18 and asked them to remove Article 2.1 (a) from the document. <\/p>\n

The article states that "no law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam," and Christian leaders fear it will inevitably lead to the country being governed by Shariah, or Islamic law. <\/p>\n

Church leaders in Iraq are opposed to Shariah because it demands inequalities between Muslims and non-Muslims and between men and women. Christians say it will make them second-class citizens and spark an exodus of the faithful from a country where Christian communities have existed since the first century. <\/p>\n

The Iraqi bishops’ conference made its concerns public in a statement Sept. 19, the day after the meeting. <\/p>\n

"The bishops’ conference expressed a grave concern and fear … about Article 2.1 (a)," the statement said. "This opens the door widely to passing laws that are unjust toward non-Muslims. This conference insists that this clause is amended or deleted." <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chaldean bishops are concerned: Catholic bishops in Iraq are seeking last-minute changes to their country’s draft constitution amid "grave concerns" that it would lead to discrimination against Christians. Chaldean Patriarch Emmanuel-Karim Delly of Baghdad, Iraq, met Iraqi interim President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari Sept. 18 and asked them to remove Article 2.1…<\/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-2198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nConstitutional Questions - 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\/2005\/09\/constitutional-questions.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Constitutional Questions - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Chaldean bishops are concerned: Catholic bishops in Iraq are seeking last-minute changes to their country’s draft constitution amid "grave concerns" that it would lead to discrimination against Christians. 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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\/2198","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=2198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2198\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}