{"id":2246,"date":"2005-09-19T22:25:17","date_gmt":"2005-09-19T22:25:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/da-vinci-code-on-downing-street.html"},"modified":"2005-09-19T22:25:17","modified_gmt":"2005-09-19T22:25:17","slug":"da-vinci-code-on-downing-street","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/da-vinci-code-on-downing-street.html","title":{"rendered":"Da Vinci Code on Downing Street"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/main.jhtml?xml=\/news\/2005\/09\/20\/nblair20.xml&amp;sSheet=\/portal\/2005\/09\/20\/ixportal.html\">Forget Tony. Did <em>Cherie<\/em> receive Communion when she met the Pope??????<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"story\">Scott&#8217;s book claims that Mrs Blair was disappointed in her own political ambitions, obsessed with money and caught up in weird New Age practices. <\/p>\n<p class=\"story\">It alleges she apparently wielded enormous influence over her husband, constantly putting herself at the centre of key decisions in government. <\/p>\n<p class=\"story\">It also claims that Mrs Blair&#8217;s lifestyle guru, Carole Caplin, continued to have a very close relationship with the couple. She controlled many decisions in their lives, often with &quot;disastrous consequences&quot;. <\/p>\n<p class=\"story\">The book&#8217;s main claims are: <\/p>\n<p class=\"story\">\u2022 Mrs Blair has borrowed a practice from white witchcraft and on a regular basis she casts a circle, a deeply symbolic act in magic, to create &quot;sacred space&quot;; <\/p>\n<p class=\"story\">\u2022 Mrs Blair submitted herself to a New Age sexual technique before becoming pregnant with Leo; <\/p>\n<p class=\"story\">\u2022 Miss Caplin used to wash Cherie in the bath as part of her &quot;pampering service&quot; and regularly took day-time &quot;power-naps&quot; in the Blairs&#8217; bed; <\/p>\n<p class=\"story\">\u2022 Mr Blair always keeps a grey velvet pouch in his breast pocket. It contains a small piece of red ribbon and a piece of rolled-up paper. Even his closest advisers do not know its significance, but he cannot operate without it. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"story\" dir=\"ltr\">Of course, it&#8217;s all false. No truth. Lies, lies. Except I hope the pouch thing is true. That&#8217;s <em>very<\/em> DVC. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Forget Tony. Did Cherie receive Communion when she met the Pope?????? Scott&#8217;s book claims that Mrs Blair was disappointed in her own political ambitions, obsessed with money and caught up in weird New Age practices. It alleges she apparently wielded enormous influence over her husband, constantly putting herself at the centre of key decisions in&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-2246","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>Da Vinci Code on Downing Street - 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\/09\/da-vinci-code-on-downing-street.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Da Vinci Code on Downing Street - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Forget Tony. Did Cherie receive Communion when she met the Pope?????? Scott&#8217;s book claims that Mrs Blair was disappointed in her own political ambitions, obsessed with money and caught up in weird New Age practices. It alleges she apparently wielded enormous influence over her husband, constantly putting herself at the centre of key decisions in&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/da-vinci-code-on-downing-street.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-09-19T22:25:17+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":"Da Vinci Code on Downing Street - 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\/09\/da-vinci-code-on-downing-street.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Da Vinci Code on Downing Street - Via Media","og_description":"Forget Tony. Did Cherie receive Communion when she met the Pope?????? Scott&#8217;s book claims that Mrs Blair was disappointed in her own political ambitions, obsessed with money and caught up in weird New Age practices. It alleges she apparently wielded enormous influence over her husband, constantly putting herself at the centre of key decisions in&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/da-vinci-code-on-downing-street.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2005-09-19T22:25:17+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\/09\/da-vinci-code-on-downing-street.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/da-vinci-code-on-downing-street.html","name":"Da Vinci Code on Downing Street - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2005-09-19T22:25:17+00:00","dateModified":"2005-09-19T22:25:17+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/da-vinci-code-on-downing-street.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/da-vinci-code-on-downing-street.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/da-vinci-code-on-downing-street.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Da Vinci Code on Downing Street"}]},{"@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\/2246","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=2246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}