{"id":1368,"date":"2007-06-19T13:26:42","date_gmt":"2007-06-19T13:26:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/table-talk.html"},"modified":"2007-06-19T13:26:42","modified_gmt":"2007-06-19T13:26:42","slug":"table-talk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/table-talk.html","title":{"rendered":"Table talk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bishop Tobin of Providence, recently in the limelight because of his Rudy Giuliani column, visitis a columnist.<\/a> And has some questions for him. <\/em><\/p>\n

(I don’t know anything about the columnist or the reason for the visit – M. Charles Bakst of the Providence Journal <\/em>– is he their most venerable, well-known columnist?)<\/p>\n

It’s good stuff, and really, one of the (many) things it would be great to see more bishops doing – really putting themselves out there, directly engaging, being the voice of the Church and asking questions – <\/em> where ever they can.<\/p>\n

\n
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He\u2019s personable \u2014 and he\u2019s tough. With his communications aide Mike Guilfoyle on hand, we sat in a conference room for over an hour, and the bishop peppered me with questions that drew on my background and my writing and made me think about things I hadn\u2019t always thought much about, and sometimes, when answers seemed flabby, or, I guess, from his standpoint, wrong, he sought to shake me into reexamining the implications of my views.Things went well enough early on, as I sought to explain how my understanding of Jewish values \u2014 such as helping people, speaking up, repairing the world \u2014 often influences what I write about or how. It prompts me to tackle issues such as Darfur or state budget cuts or even medical marijuana, and to try to focus attention on the importance of saving those who need rescue, or treating with fairness and dignity Rhode Islanders who struggle. (Indeed, in a strain of thinking I didn\u2019t even touch on with Bishop Tobin, I actually sense that much of the outrage I voice about corruption is informed by Jewish culture. It\u2019s not just the constant drumbeat one hears from early on about righteousness. It\u2019s also the scandal of embarrassing one\u2019s family and community.) <\/p>\n

But now I faltered. There was some talk about the inscriptions at the graves of my father \u2014 a believer in justice \u2014 and mother \u2014 a believer in charity \u2014 and the bishop asked what I\u2019d like on my tombstone. A terrific question to which I could only fumble for an answer. <\/p>\n

I offered some general ideas but felt bad that I couldn\u2019t come up with something clever, concise or poignant, and I actually felt bad for him \u2014 because I know what it\u2019s like to pose a great question, only to have the interviewee come up with just a so-so answer. Which is why you need to come equipped with a lot of questions. And he did. <\/p>\n

He asked what role I thought religion should play in society. I spoke about standing up on a matter, whether from a religious perspective or not. I said that when columnists do take a stand, as opposed to saying on the one hand this\/on the other hand that, it makes for a better column and contributes to society. <\/p>\n

Now the bishop pounced. \u201cSo the need to stand up for something when you see it\u2019s wrong \u2014 would that apply to someone like Rudy Giuliani, who says, \u2018I think abortion is wrong but I\u2019m going to let people choose\u2019?\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re good,\u201d I said. \u201cI think he needs to stand up for his beliefs.\u201d But, of course, Giuliani\u2019s views on this topic are ambivalent. You run into the same thing with several other Catholic politicians, such as Sen. Jack Reed, who also personally opposes abortion but says he\u2019s obligated as a public servant to uphold the Constitution. <\/p>\n

Bishop Tobin wanted to know if I\u2019d call myself a liberal, if I considered myself a secularist, if I believe in objective moral truth. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bishop Tobin of Providence, recently in the limelight because of his Rudy Giuliani column, visitis a columnist. And has some questions for him. (I don’t know anything about the columnist or the reason for the visit – M. Charles Bakst of the Providence Journal – is he their most venerable, well-known columnist?) It’s good stuff,…<\/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-1368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nTable talk - 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\/06\/table-talk.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Table talk - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Bishop Tobin of Providence, recently in the limelight because of his Rudy Giuliani column, visitis a columnist. And has some questions for him. 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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\/1368","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=1368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1368\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}