{"id":2444,"date":"2007-03-21T13:02:28","date_gmt":"2007-03-21T13:02:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/on-that-judas-novel.html"},"modified":"2007-03-21T13:02:28","modified_gmt":"2007-03-21T13:02:28","slug":"on-that-judas-novel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/on-that-judas-novel.html","title":{"rendered":"On that Judas novel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cwnews.com\/offtherecord\/offtherecord.cfm?task=singledisplay&amp;recnum=4148\">A clarfication from Fr. Paul Mankowski, S.J., over at CWNews:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>A week ago, we Jesuits of the Pontifical Biblical Institute were informed in the course of a regular community meeting that our main lecture hall would be in use on March 20 at the request of a former faculty member (Salesian Father Frank Moloney) for the public launch of a novel he had co-authored with <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jeffrey_Archer\" target=\"_blank\">Jeffrey Archer<\/a>. The Rector apologized in advance for any inconvenience caused by the event itself and for any ructions caused by attendant publicity. <\/p>\n<p>That publicity &#8212; both before and after the event &#8212; gave rise to lurid headlines (&quot;Pope Gives Blessing to Gospel of Jeffrey Archer&quot;) and to nonsense of other kinds as well. Here&#8217;s the lede from the <em>Times<\/em> of London: <\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Jesus never turned water into wine, He did not walk on the water and He never calmed the storm on the Sea of Galilee, according to a new &#8216;Gospel&#8217; published today with Vatican approval and co-authored by Jeffrey Archer.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The following points are offered in correction of errors of fact, emphasis, or interpretation given in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/news\/world\/europe\/article1490111.ece\" target=\"_blank\">English<\/a>&#8211;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/comment\/faith\/article1542945.ece\" target=\"_blank\">speaking<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2007\/03\/20\/AR2007032001967.html\" target=\"_blank\">media<\/a>: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Pope did not &quot;bless&quot; the Archer-Moloney novel. <\/li>\n<li>The Pontifical Biblical Institute provided the bottled water at the speaker&#8217;s rostrum for the Archer-Moloney press conference. Its scholars had nothing whatever to do with the book&#8217;s content. <\/li>\n<li>The Archer-Moloney novel was not &quot;published with Vatican approval.&quot; <\/li>\n<li>No biblical scholar, including my former colleague Fr. Frank Moloney, believes Fr. Frank Moloney to be &quot;the world&#8217;s greatest living biblical scholar.&quot; <\/li>\n<li>Fr. Moloney is not &quot;one of the Pope&#8217;s top theological advisers.&quot; <\/li>\n<li>The International Theological Commission, of which Fr. Moloney was a member, has the same level of teaching authority as the Philatelic Office of the Holy See &#8212; that&#8217;s to say: zero. <\/li>\n<li>The teaching of the dogmatic constitution <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vatican.va\/archive\/hist_councils\/ii_vatican_council\/documents\/vat-ii_const_19651118_dei-verbum_en.html\" target=\"_blank\">Dei Verbum<\/a> \u00a711 has not been abrogated. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In crudely commercial terms, the authors&#8217; choice of Rome as a launch-site and their promiscuous use of the terms &quot;Vatican&quot; and &quot;Pontifical&quot; in their promotional efforts was a shrewd move. Hype apart, though, the notion that biblical scholarship or Church teaching has been advanced by the novel is unwarranted. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">All well and good, but the questions still goes begging: Why did the Pontifical Biblical Institute accede to Moloney&#8217;s request? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A clarfication from Fr. Paul Mankowski, S.J., over at CWNews: A week ago, we Jesuits of the Pontifical Biblical Institute were informed in the course of a regular community meeting that our main lecture hall would be in use on March 20 at the request of a former faculty member (Salesian Father Frank Moloney) for&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-2444","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>On that Judas novel - 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\/2007\/03\/on-that-judas-novel.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"On that Judas novel - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A clarfication from Fr. Paul Mankowski, S.J., over at CWNews: A week ago, we Jesuits of the Pontifical Biblical Institute were informed in the course of a regular community meeting that our main lecture hall would be in use on March 20 at the request of a former faculty member (Salesian Father Frank Moloney) for&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/on-that-judas-novel.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-03-21T13:02:28+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":"On that Judas novel - 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\/2007\/03\/on-that-judas-novel.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"On that Judas novel - Via Media","og_description":"A clarfication from Fr. Paul Mankowski, S.J., over at CWNews: A week ago, we Jesuits of the Pontifical Biblical Institute were informed in the course of a regular community meeting that our main lecture hall would be in use on March 20 at the request of a former faculty member (Salesian Father Frank Moloney) for&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/on-that-judas-novel.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2007-03-21T13:02:28+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/on-that-judas-novel.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/on-that-judas-novel.html","name":"On that Judas novel - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-03-21T13:02:28+00:00","dateModified":"2007-03-21T13:02:28+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/on-that-judas-novel.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/on-that-judas-novel.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/on-that-judas-novel.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"On that Judas novel"}]},{"@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\/2444","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=2444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2444\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}