{"id":2718,"date":"2005-09-06T09:47:14","date_gmt":"2005-09-06T09:47:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/an-altered-life.html"},"modified":"2005-09-06T09:47:14","modified_gmt":"2005-09-06T09:47:14","slug":"an-altered-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/an-altered-life.html","title":{"rendered":"An Altered Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

A lovely story about a Methodist minister in KY who’s recently crossed the Tiber – <\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

For Allen, conversion was an eight-year process of study, prayer and reflection.<\/p>\n

It began in about 1997 with Graham Greene, a British novelist whose books Allen devoured.<\/p>\n

The writer "was kind of a tortured Catholic, and there were very strong Catholic themes in his books, and it really sparked an intellectual curiosity about Catholicism," Allen said.<\/p>\n

The Asbury Seminary graduate, who knew little about the 1.1 billion-member church, bought books on Catholic theology and tuned in to Catholic radio.<\/p>\n

There was much he didn’t understand: the devotion to Mary, the prayers to the Saints, the belief that the Eucharist becomes — literally — the body and blood of Christ.<\/p>\n

"I had a lot of false perceptions and presuppositions about the Catholic Church," he said.<\/p>\n

But as he studied the Scriptures, the catechism and the writings of the early church fathers, his views slowly shifted.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So there you go, all you folks (no, I don’t mean you….<\/em>I mean you…)<\/em> who dis Greene because of his less-than-orthodox faith. You never know. We have to admire these ministers who come into full communion – it’s a hard road. The bishop of Lexington’s given this fellow, father of 7, the position of Director of Marriage and Family Life for the diocese. Good call.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A lovely story about a Methodist minister in KY who’s recently crossed the Tiber – For Allen, conversion was an eight-year process of study, prayer and reflection. It began in about 1997 with Graham Greene, a British novelist whose books Allen devoured. 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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\/2718","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=2718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2718\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}