{"id":1439,"date":"2005-10-07T13:36:40","date_gmt":"2005-10-07T13:36:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/i-need-to-join-aa.html"},"modified":"2005-10-07T13:36:40","modified_gmt":"2005-10-07T13:36:40","slug":"i-need-to-join-aa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/i-need-to-join-aa.html","title":{"rendered":"I need to join AA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By that I mean Andrew Anonymous. By which means I hope to break my evidently foolish expectation that Andrew Sullivan will recover his senses when it comes to Catholicism.<\/p>\n<p>First off, I&#8217;ll let you know, that to my knowledge he never retracted and certainly never apologized for his mischaracterization of my NYTimes piece, <em>vis-a-vis<\/em> my previous blog entry on the Guide to Witch Hunt Rumors. <\/p>\n<p>So, this morning, Andrew gets the news of the slightly more weighty rumors of the document, as we all did, and declares that &quot;Benedict Retreats&quot; and has &quot;backed off his reported intent&quot; to ban all gay seminarians, blah, blah, blah.<\/p>\n<p>As I wrote him&#8230;wha? Such a characterization assumes that Benedict is solely responsible for the content of the document and has been since the beginning. It presumes that there has, indeed, been a change when for all we know, this has been the content of the document all along. It implies that the backtracking is a result of the outcry of the past two weeks. It implies&#8230; a lot. And it&#8217;s dishonest and disgraceful. Andrew is all about decrying spin in political discourse and exhorting the world to tell it like it is politically.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s just so&#8230;discouraging. As I posted in our previous kerfuffle, say what you will, take any position you like, but at least represent the opposition and the known reality accurately. Too much to ask? Apparently.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By that I mean Andrew Anonymous. By which means I hope to break my evidently foolish expectation that Andrew Sullivan will recover his senses when it comes to Catholicism. First off, I&#8217;ll let you know, that to my knowledge he never retracted and certainly never apologized for his mischaracterization of my NYTimes piece, vis-a-vis my&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-1439","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>I need to join AA - 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\/2005\/10\/i-need-to-join-aa.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"I need to join AA - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By that I mean Andrew Anonymous. By which means I hope to break my evidently foolish expectation that Andrew Sullivan will recover his senses when it comes to Catholicism. First off, I&#8217;ll let you know, that to my knowledge he never retracted and certainly never apologized for his mischaracterization of my NYTimes piece, vis-a-vis my&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/i-need-to-join-aa.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-10-07T13:36:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"I need to join AA - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/i-need-to-join-aa.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"I need to join AA - Via Media","og_description":"By that I mean Andrew Anonymous. By which means I hope to break my evidently foolish expectation that Andrew Sullivan will recover his senses when it comes to Catholicism. First off, I&#8217;ll let you know, that to my knowledge he never retracted and certainly never apologized for his mischaracterization of my NYTimes piece, vis-a-vis my&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/i-need-to-join-aa.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2005-10-07T13:36:40+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/i-need-to-join-aa.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/i-need-to-join-aa.html","name":"I need to join AA - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2005-10-07T13:36:40+00:00","dateModified":"2005-10-07T13:36:40+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/i-need-to-join-aa.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/i-need-to-join-aa.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/i-need-to-join-aa.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"I need to join AA"}]},{"@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\/1439","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=1439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1439\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}