{"id":1146,"date":"2001-08-27T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2001-08-27T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2001\/08\/27\/2001-08-27-prime-minister-s-remarks-has-catholic-community-up-in-arms\/"},"modified":"2001-08-27T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2001-08-27T12:00:00","slug":"2001-08-27-prime-minister-s-remarks-has-catholic-community-up-in-arms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2001\/08\/27\/2001-08-27-prime-minister-s-remarks-has-catholic-community-up-in-arms\/","title":{"rendered":"Prime Minister&#8217;s Remarks has Catholic Community Up in Arms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.thenewspapertoday.com\/india\/inside.phtml?NEWS_ID=24823\">GO TO SOURCE<\/A><\/P><br \/>\n<P><\/p>\n<p>NEW DELHI, INDIA, August 19, 2001: A statement last Saturday by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on the conversion motive of Christians has the Catholic community up in arms. &#8220;I am questioning the welfare activities being carried out by some Christian missionaries in the country&#8217;s backward areas, and it was not proper though conversion was permissible under law,&#8221; said the Prime Minister. The Chairman of the Northern Region Catholic Council, Vincent Concessao, fears that what he termed a &#8220;hate campaign&#8221; against Christian priests, nuns, and religious workers will be fueled by the Prime Minister&#8217;s remarks. Reminding Vajpayee that his government&#8217;s constitution guarantees religious freedom, Catholic leaders have appealed to the Prime Minister to uphold the law. These same leaders state that, &#8220;Christian doctrine always denounced fraudulent and forcible conversions.&#8221; The article fails to mention the Pope&#8217;s explicit statements to the Indian Catholics in Delhi a year ago that &#8220;evangelization must be your absolute priority,&#8221; &#8220;Catholic schools play an important role in evangelization&#8221; and &#8220;I pray to the Lord to send many more committed laborers to reap the harvest of souls which I see as ready and plentiful [in Asia].&#8221;<br \/>\n<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GO TO SOURCE NEW DELHI, INDIA, August 19, 2001: A statement last Saturday by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1146\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}