{"id":1638,"date":"2005-10-05T09:16:58","date_gmt":"2005-10-05T09:16:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/can-we-velcro-that-thing-down.html"},"modified":"2005-10-05T09:16:58","modified_gmt":"2005-10-05T09:16:58","slug":"can-we-velcro-that-thing-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/can-we-velcro-that-thing-down.html","title":{"rendered":"Can we velcro that thing down?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/news?tmpl=story&amp;u=\/051005\/photos_en_afp\/0510051349479vowo75e_photo0\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/us.news3.yimg.com\/us.i2.yimg.com\/p\/afp\/20051005\/capt.sge.ods55.051005134941.photo00.photo.default-384x246.jpg?x=380&amp;y=243&amp;sig=e_5ajaeqBAqrnToGSY_tVA--\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.agi.it\/english\/news.pl?doc=200510051158-1055-RT1-CRO-0-NF11&amp;page=0&amp;id=agionline-eng.oggitalia\">A little bit from today&#8217;s General Audience:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p><em>Today&#8217;s world runs a serious risk of reverting to idolatry, &quot;which is a deceitful form of religion,&quot; said Pope Benedict XVI in his General Hearing today, before a massive 50,000-plus crowd gathered at St. Peter&#8217;s square. &quot;Idols are nothing but the work of human hands,&quot; he said, &quot;a product of human desires. They will never overcome human limitations.&quot; Idolatry is &quot;man&#8217;s eternal temptation to seek refuge in the works of his own hands, putting his hopes in wealth, power, success, material expectations. But none of these are destined to survive death,&quot; he continued, &quot;and the fate of those who worship them is to become similar to them, ie powerless, fragile and sluggish.&quot;<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A little bit from today&#8217;s General Audience: Today&#8217;s world runs a serious risk of reverting to idolatry, &quot;which is a deceitful form of religion,&quot; said Pope Benedict XVI in his General Hearing today, before a massive 50,000-plus crowd gathered at St. Peter&#8217;s square. &quot;Idols are nothing but the work of human hands,&quot; he said, &quot;a&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-1638","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>Can we velcro that thing down? - 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\/can-we-velcro-that-thing-down.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Can we velcro that thing down? - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A little bit from today&#8217;s General Audience: Today&#8217;s world runs a serious risk of reverting to idolatry, &quot;which is a deceitful form of religion,&quot; said Pope Benedict XVI in his General Hearing today, before a massive 50,000-plus crowd gathered at St. Peter&#8217;s square. &quot;Idols are nothing but the work of human hands,&quot; he said, &quot;a&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/can-we-velcro-that-thing-down.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-10-05T09:16:58+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/us.news3.yimg.com\/us.i2.yimg.com\/p\/afp\/20051005\/capt.sge.ods55.051005134941.photo00.photo.default-384x246.jpg?x=380&amp;y=243&amp;sig=e_5ajaeqBAqrnToGSY_tVA--\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Can we velcro that thing down? - 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\/can-we-velcro-that-thing-down.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Can we velcro that thing down? - Via Media","og_description":"A little bit from today&#8217;s General Audience: Today&#8217;s world runs a serious risk of reverting to idolatry, &quot;which is a deceitful form of religion,&quot; said Pope Benedict XVI in his General Hearing today, before a massive 50,000-plus crowd gathered at St. Peter&#8217;s square. &quot;Idols are nothing but the work of human hands,&quot; he said, &quot;a&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/can-we-velcro-that-thing-down.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2005-10-05T09:16:58+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/us.news3.yimg.com\/us.i2.yimg.com\/p\/afp\/20051005\/capt.sge.ods55.051005134941.photo00.photo.default-384x246.jpg?x=380&amp;y=243&amp;sig=e_5ajaeqBAqrnToGSY_tVA--"}],"author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/can-we-velcro-that-thing-down.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/can-we-velcro-that-thing-down.html","name":"Can we velcro that thing down? 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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\/1638","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=1638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1638\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}