{"id":410,"date":"2011-04-29T11:21:51","date_gmt":"2011-04-29T15:21:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/?p=410"},"modified":"2011-04-29T13:00:07","modified_gmt":"2011-04-29T17:00:07","slug":"the-abbey-and-the-basilica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/04\/the-abbey-and-the-basilica.html","title":{"rendered":"The Abbey and the Basilica"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>In the Great Ecclesiastical Bake-Off of 2011 between the Royal Wedding and the Papal Beatification, the historian in me can only say that it’s terrific to see Westminster Abbey and St. Peter’s Basilica elbowing each other for pride of place in the public eye. And don’t the two look fabulous!<\/p>\n

Both events have been arranged to put some shine on a couple of pretty tarnished institutions. The fairytale of Kate and Will will presumably enable the British Monarchy to limp well into the 21st century as a living reminder of what England used to be. Of course, the fact that it took a commoner to rescue the House of Windsor from endless tawdry scandal might suggest to the Brits that it would be a lot less bother just to let the royal line live on at Madame Tussaud’s.<\/p>\n

And speaking of endless tawdry scandal, John Paul II’s Excellent Posthumous Adventure seeks to return the papacy to the glory days of the last century, when its escutcheon read Liberator of Poland, not Shield of Pedophilia. Whether or not the last Bishop of Rome deserves his fast track to sainthood, it’s a mixed blessing to be reminded that within recent memory, he bestrode this narrow world like a colossus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Great Ecclesiastical Bake-Off of 2011 between the Royal Wedding and the Papal Beatification, the historian in me can only say that it’s terrific to see Westminster Abbey and St. Peter’s Basilica elbowing each other for pride of place in the public eye. And don’t the two look fabulous! Both events have been arranged…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[25,24],"class_list":["post-410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-pope-john-paul-ii","tag-royal-wedding"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Abbey and the Basilica - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk<\/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\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/04\/the-abbey-and-the-basilica.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Abbey and the Basilica - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the Great Ecclesiastical Bake-Off of 2011 between the Royal Wedding and the Papal Beatification, the historian in me can only say that it’s terrific to see Westminster Abbey and St. Peter’s Basilica elbowing each other for pride of place in the public eye. 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After teaching at Harvard in the Department of History and Literature for three years, he became editor of the Boston Review. In 1987 he joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he worked variously as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist. In 1996 he became the founding director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and in 1998 founding editor of Religion in the News, a magazine published by the Center that examines how the news media handle religious subject matter. In 2005, he was named director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, comprising both the Greenberg Center and a new Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture directed by Barry Kosmin. In 2007, he became Professor of Religion in Public Life at the College. Professor Silk is the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America. He is co-editor of Religion by Region, an eight-volume series on religion and public life in the United States, and co-author of The American Establishment, Making Capitalism Work, and One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. In 2007 he inaugurated Spiritual Politics, a blog on religion and American political culture.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/author\/msilk"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":415,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410\/revisions\/415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}