{"id":62,"date":"2008-08-05T14:54:56","date_gmt":"2008-08-05T14:54:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2008\/08\/beach-blanket-bingo-too.html"},"modified":"2008-08-05T14:54:56","modified_gmt":"2008-08-05T14:54:56","slug":"beach-blanket-bingo-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/08\/beach-blanket-bingo-too.html","title":{"rendered":"Beach Blanket Bingo, too…?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Check this out this Reuters piece<\/a> about a blow-up church (real deal, Catholic and consecrated) and convent for a bit of beach ministry in Italy:<\/p>\n

ROME (Reuters) – Catholic nuns and priests in Italy are following their flocks to the beach this summer, establishing an inflatable church and a beach-convent in the sands to lure sunbathers.
\nThe 30-metre (98 ft) long blow-up church — staffed by priests ready to take confession — will debut on Saturday on the Adriatic coast in the Molise region, an organizer said.
\n“There will be four or five people singing, with music about God,” said Chiara Facci with Catholic group Sentinelli del Mattino. Night time activities, which will not include Mass, will run from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m.
\nThe first attempt to inaugurate the inflatable church last month on the holiday island of Sardinia failed after strong winds forced organizers to relocate, she said.
\nBig cities like Rome and Milan empty in August, when Italians head to the beach for summer holidays, leaving streets empty and many businesses closed. Churches are hardly immune, and also see their congregations thin.
\nOn the Mediterranean coast, nuns from a convent near the southern Italian city of Naples have relocated to beach cabins to join holidaymakers saying the rosary. An adjoining altar was set up under two tents.
\n“The concept of a beach-convent is something that is appreciated by vacationers and the nuns themselves,” priest Antonio Rungi, who helped spearheaded the initiative, told Italian news agency ANSA.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No luck finding a photo yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Check this out this Reuters piece about a blow-up church (real deal, Catholic and consecrated) and convent for a bit of beach ministry in Italy: ROME (Reuters) – Catholic nuns and priests in Italy are following their flocks to the beach this summer, establishing an inflatable church and a beach-convent in the sands to lure…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic","category-church","category-pop-culture"],"yoast_head":"\nBeach Blanket Bingo, too...? - Pontifications<\/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\/pontifications\/2008\/08\/beach-blanket-bingo-too.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Beach Blanket Bingo, too...? 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- Pontifications","og_description":"Check this out this Reuters piece about a blow-up church (real deal, Catholic and consecrated) and convent for a bit of beach ministry in Italy: ROME (Reuters) – Catholic nuns and priests in Italy are following their flocks to the beach this summer, establishing an inflatable church and a beach-convent in the sands to lure…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/08\/beach-blanket-bingo-too.html","og_site_name":"Pontifications","article_published_time":"2008-08-05T14:54:56+00:00","author":"David Gibson","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/08\/beach-blanket-bingo-too.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/08\/beach-blanket-bingo-too.html","name":"Beach Blanket Bingo, too...? - Pontifications","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-08-05T14:54:56+00:00","dateModified":"2008-08-05T14:54:56+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/#\/schema\/person\/122b0877ab87552bb8f14c366dd43e71"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/08\/beach-blanket-bingo-too.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/08\/beach-blanket-bingo-too.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/08\/beach-blanket-bingo-too.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Beach Blanket Bingo, too…?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/","name":"Pontifications","description":"Catholic Faith and Culture","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/#\/schema\/person\/122b0877ab87552bb8f14c366dd43e71","name":"David Gibson","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/19b\/19bb39c535cd2d776c73c7941f42622cx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/19b\/19bb39c535cd2d776c73c7941f42622cx96.jpg","caption":"David Gibson"},"description":"DAVID GIBSON is an award-winning religion journalist, author, filmmaker, and a convert to Catholicism. 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\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}