{"id":1705,"date":"2006-05-24T13:18:58","date_gmt":"2006-05-24T13:18:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/just-fiction-1.html"},"modified":"2006-05-24T13:18:58","modified_gmt":"2006-05-24T13:18:58","slug":"just-fiction-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/just-fiction-1.html","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Just Fiction&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Present at my talk last night was a Nigerian priest who took some time to share with us the impact of DVC&#8230;in <em>Nigeria<\/em>, telling the story of a woman who spoke to him when he was there at Christmastime, asking him what it was about this book &#8211; three of her adult children had read it, been captivated, and turned away from the Church, in part, she claimed, because of the novel&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>He mentioned the insanity of over 200 people dying in riots in Nigeria because of cartoons published in a Danish newspaper. But he wondered why, in this country, people were apparently allowed to write anything they wanted with no consequences (he was speaking particularly of the treatment of Opus Dei) &#8211; why there could be no lawsuits, and so on. I understand that OD was told by some to go ahead and sue when the book was published, but they declined,&nbsp; &#8211; I am not sure why, but perhaps in the spirit of what this priest concluded &#8211; Christians suffer for the truth, and that&#8217;s just the way it is. Or because it would backfire, or give more weight to the book than it deserves. Their approach seems to have actually worked quite well. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Present at my talk last night was a Nigerian priest who took some time to share with us the impact of DVC&#8230;in Nigeria, telling the story of a woman who spoke to him when he was there at Christmastime, asking him what it was about this book &#8211; three of her adult children had read&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-1705","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>&quot;Just Fiction&quot; - 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\/2006\/05\/just-fiction-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"&quot;Just Fiction&quot; - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Present at my talk last night was a Nigerian priest who took some time to share with us the impact of DVC&#8230;in Nigeria, telling the story of a woman who spoke to him when he was there at Christmastime, asking him what it was about this book &#8211; three of her adult children had read&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/just-fiction-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-05-24T13:18:58+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":"\"Just Fiction\" - 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\/2006\/05\/just-fiction-1.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"\"Just Fiction\" - Via Media","og_description":"Present at my talk last night was a Nigerian priest who took some time to share with us the impact of DVC&#8230;in Nigeria, telling the story of a woman who spoke to him when he was there at Christmastime, asking him what it was about this book &#8211; three of her adult children had read&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/just-fiction-1.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-05-24T13:18:58+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/just-fiction-1.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/just-fiction-1.html","name":"\"Just Fiction\" - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-05-24T13:18:58+00:00","dateModified":"2006-05-24T13:18:58+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/just-fiction-1.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/just-fiction-1.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/just-fiction-1.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"&#8220;Just Fiction&#8221;"}]},{"@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\/1705","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=1705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1705\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}