{"id":1284,"date":"2007-07-10T00:06:34","date_gmt":"2007-07-10T00:06:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/07\/open-wide-the-doors.html"},"modified":"2007-07-10T00:06:34","modified_gmt":"2007-07-10T00:06:34","slug":"open-wide-the-doors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/07\/open-wide-the-doors.html","title":{"rendered":"Open Wide the Doors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Also in Conyers:<\/p>\n<p>Outside:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/img392.imageshack.us\/img392\/1330\/exteriorchurchyc5.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Inside:<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Photo Sharing\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/amywelborn\/766136082\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" height=\"275\" alt=\"P1010594\" src=\"https:\/\/farm2.static.flickr.com\/1378\/766136082_908a8fdd89.jpg\" width=\"400\" \/><\/a> <\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Photo Sharing\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/amywelborn\/765313321\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" height=\"275\" alt=\"P1010588\" src=\"https:\/\/farm2.static.flickr.com\/1148\/765313321_30824016b1.jpg\" width=\"400\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Photo Sharing\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/amywelborn\/765311805\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" height=\"275\" alt=\"P1010591\" src=\"https:\/\/farm2.static.flickr.com\/1294\/765311805_9669f80702.jpg\" width=\"400\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Photo Sharing\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/amywelborn\/766136124\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" height=\"275\" alt=\"P1010593\" src=\"https:\/\/farm2.static.flickr.com\/1260\/766136124_c38c0e1b16.jpg\" width=\"400\" \/><\/a> <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/motherofgodchurch.org\/mog\/\">Mother of God Catholic Church, Byzantine-Ukrainian Rite<\/a>. The parish is located on the property formerly known, back in the 80&#8217;s, as the site of the purported visions of Nancy Fowler, long since gone, I think, to Florida. (If you were Catholic in the Southeast in the 90&#8217;s you knew all about the Conyers apparitions and maybe even went there. The greatest volume of negative mail I received in my days as a <em>Florida Catholic <\/em>columnist was in response to a 2-parter I did on Conyers, when it was all still going on. I visited the place, read all of the materials and concluded&#8230;er&#8230;maybe not. Lots of people wrote me to tell me they would be praying for me. Which, a friend remarked, was not a <em>bad <\/em>thing, you know.)<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, this gorgeous little church is there now &#8211; click on the photos for much clearer photos, or <a href=\"http:\/\/motherofgodchurch.org\/mog\/\">go to the website.<\/a> Michael could tell you more about the iconographer. He used an icon written by her as the cover and interior art on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/1592760686\/spiritualthoug09\">for <em>When Did We See You, Lord?<\/em> a book on Matthew 25, written by Fr. Benedict Groeschel and Bishop Robert Baker.<\/a> He initially saw the art on the back wall of this church (which I didn&#8217;t photograph today), but I think the versions of the icon they used were from a church in Pennsylvania. Beautiful stuff, hidden in plain sight in the Georgia hills.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Also in Conyers: Outside: Inside: Mother of God Catholic Church, Byzantine-Ukrainian Rite. The parish is located on the property formerly known, back in the 80&#8217;s, as the site of the purported visions of Nancy Fowler, long since gone, I think, to Florida. (If you were Catholic in the Southeast in the 90&#8217;s you knew all&hellip;<\/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-1284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Open Wide the Doors - 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\/2007\/07\/open-wide-the-doors.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Open Wide the Doors - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Also in Conyers: Outside: Inside: Mother of God Catholic Church, Byzantine-Ukrainian Rite. The parish is located on the property formerly known, back in the 80&#8217;s, as the site of the purported visions of Nancy Fowler, long since gone, I think, to Florida. 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The parish is located on the property formerly known, back in the 80&#8217;s, as the site of the purported visions of Nancy Fowler, long since gone, I think, to Florida. (If you were Catholic in the Southeast in the 90&#8217;s you knew all&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/07\/open-wide-the-doors.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2007-07-10T00:06:34+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/img392.imageshack.us\/img392\/1330\/exteriorchurchyc5.jpg"}],"author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/07\/open-wide-the-doors.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/07\/open-wide-the-doors.html","name":"Open Wide the Doors - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/07\/open-wide-the-doors.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/07\/open-wide-the-doors.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/img392.imageshack.us\/img392\/1330\/exteriorchurchyc5.jpg","datePublished":"2007-07-10T00:06:34+00:00","dateModified":"2007-07-10T00:06:34+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/07\/open-wide-the-doors.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/07\/open-wide-the-doors.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/07\/open-wide-the-doors.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/img392.imageshack.us\/img392\/1330\/exteriorchurchyc5.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/img392.imageshack.us\/img392\/1330\/exteriorchurchyc5.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/07\/open-wide-the-doors.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Open Wide the Doors"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?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\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. 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\/1284","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=1284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1284\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}