{"id":1711,"date":"2005-10-03T12:23:47","date_gmt":"2005-10-03T12:23:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/re-entry.html"},"modified":"2005-10-03T12:23:47","modified_gmt":"2005-10-03T12:23:47","slug":"re-entry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/re-entry.html","title":{"rendered":"Re-entry"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Church and politics in Italy<\/a><\/p>\n

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\n

For four decades after the end of WWII, the Catholic Church wielded power in Italy through the Christian Democrats<\/span><\/a>, so thorougly discredited by corruption scandals that the party was dissolved in the early 1990s after its last Premier, Giulio Andreotti<\/span><\/a>, was found by a court to have extensive Mafia ties. But now, following 15 years of enforced slumber, the Roman Catholic Church has made the decision to relaunch the Church in Italy as a political force — and all signs are that it will work. And even as the front-running Prodi campaigns up and down the Italian peninsula from a proletarian yellow bus, the Vatican — with a vintage1950 political ideology and strategy — has moved into higher gear too.<\/p>\n

Other events that should be getting attention are being stifled by the press:<\/span><\/strong> the Italian-version of an Enron trial<\/span><\/a>, that of giant food multi-national Parmalat’s founder, Calisto Tanzo, and 15 other Parmalat execs, started Wednesday in Milan, as tiny articles on inside pages testified. Similarly neglected was the serious wrestling match which pits the Governor of the Bank of Italy Antonio Fazio<\/span><\/a> — who was caught playing dirty pool and is under investigation for abuse of office by Rome prosecutors<\/span><\/a>, but is backed by the secretive and powerful, Vatican-favored Opus Dei<\/span><\/a> cult — against those in Italian and international banking who are demanding he resign.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Instead, day after day, the big headlines are going to the Church — for example, to a debate over whether  high school and university students in Siena had a right to boo the Cardinal Primate of Italy, the austere Cardinal Ruini, for saying that he opposes "de facto marital unions," meaning unwed heterosexuals as well as gay couples. In this September 23 incident, 40 students ousted from the hall where Riuni was speaking then congregated outside, waving placards like, "Free love in a free State," and "We are all homosexuals."<\/span><\/p>\n

\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

Via Vatican Watcher<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Church and politics in Italy For four decades after the end of WWII, the Catholic Church wielded power in Italy through the Christian Democrats, so thorougly discredited by corruption scandals that the party was dissolved in the early 1990s after its last Premier, Giulio Andreotti, was found by a court to have extensive Mafia…<\/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-1711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nRe-entry - 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\/re-entry.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Re-entry - 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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\/1711","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=1711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1711\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}