{"id":14,"date":"2008-03-27T15:33:49","date_gmt":"2008-03-27T15:33:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/benedictions\/2008\/03\/apologia-pro-blog-suaan-introd.html"},"modified":"2008-03-27T15:33:49","modified_gmt":"2008-03-27T15:33:49","slug":"apologia-pro-blog-suaan-introd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/2008\/03\/apologia-pro-blog-suaan-introd.html","title":{"rendered":"Apologia pro Blog Sua–an Introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Actually, that may be \u201csuo.\u201d Is \u201cblog\u201d masculine? I trust this blog is. Perhaps Reggie Foster, the pope’s inimitable Latinist, can help out here. I don\u2019t have enough Latin to know. And it\u2019s not because I am a convert to Catholicism. As a post-Vatican II Catholic, I probably wouldn\u2019t have learned enough Latin to know anyway. But I did live and work in Rome for five years, much of it for and around the Vatican, a hegira that ended with my conversion\u2014a miracle in itself, many would say.
\nHence the title of this introductory \u201cBenedictions\u201d post, referring to the defense of his own conversion penned by the nineteenth-century Englishman, John Henry Newman. I doubt I\u2019ll be made a cardinal, though Newman\u2019s own elevation may not have been a sure thing in today\u2019s rough-and-tumble church. Newman himself was as orthodox as the Pope, but could also critique the Vatican and the Church for misuses of authority, and power. That, too, is a model I\u2019d like to emulate.
\nSo what can you expect on this blog?<\/p>\n


\nI\u2019d like it to be \u201ccatholic,\u201d as in universal, finding both profundity and whimsy\u2014even absurdity\u2014that inevitably accompanies the traveling circus that is a papal visit. (See some of my thoughts on popes in the U.S. in this National Catholic Reporter essay<\/a>.) I\u2019d like to bring my nearly 25 years experience covering the popes and the church to bear\u2014but I also hope to be challenged, contradicted, even corrected, when I, sad to say, prove to be fallible. The end result is that we are all better informed through the conversation.
\nA pope\u2019s appearances and talks are inevitably loaded with meanings inside of meanings, like a set of Russian nesting dolls, but no pope packs in as many layers as Joseph Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI. Theology, philosophy, piety, politics and, of course, the pope\u2019s personality, are all aspects of his papacy, and all will be on display for the next few weeks, and afterwards. For a starting point, check out my handy guide <\/a>of six things you absolutely have to know about Benedict.
\nIf you want to know more\u2014and I hope you do\u2014I\u2019d of course steer you toward my biography of the pope, titled (not terribly original), \u201cThe Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World.\u201d<\/a> It\u2019s the only biography (to date) of Benedict as pope, rather than Joseph Ratzinger as a cardinal, and I hope it brings a 360-degree perspective on the man whose papacy is having such an impact on the church\u2014even though most Catholics aren\u2019t quite sure how. Also remember that Joseph Ratzinger himself is a prolific writer, and his own memoir, \u201cMilestones,\u201d <\/a>is a fine small volume to begin to get a sense of the man from the man himself.
\nBut just as it is important for us to understand Benedict XVI\u2014and he will be the focus over the next few weeks\u2014it is also important for Benedict and the rest of the church to understand the lives of American Catholics in the pews, of priests in the pulpits, and the vowed religious serving everywhere. The challenges facing the American church, especially in the past few years of scandal and turmoil, are truly daunting, and yet they actually highlight the profound fidelity and enthusiasm that American Catholics have for the church, even as they struggle with the institution and the doctrines and traditions.
\nI hope this blog is a two-way lens that helps explain the pope to American Catholics, and represents the voices and concerns of American Catholics. I\u2019ll be looking forward to hearing your thoughts, and having some fun along the way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Actually, that may be \u201csuo.\u201d Is \u201cblog\u201d masculine? I trust this blog is. Perhaps Reggie Foster, the pope’s inimitable Latinist, can help out here. I don\u2019t have enough Latin to know. And it\u2019s not because I am a convert to Catholicism. As a post-Vatican II Catholic, I probably wouldn\u2019t have learned enough Latin to know…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nApologia pro Blog Sua-an Introduction - Benedictions: The Pope in America<\/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\/benedictions\/2008\/03\/apologia-pro-blog-suaan-introd.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Apologia pro Blog Sua-an Introduction - Benedictions: The Pope in America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Actually, that may be \u201csuo.\u201d Is \u201cblog\u201d masculine? I trust this blog is. Perhaps Reggie Foster, the pope’s inimitable Latinist, can help out here. I don\u2019t have enough Latin to know. And it\u2019s not because I am a convert to Catholicism. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}