{"id":2806,"date":"2007-02-27T00:39:52","date_gmt":"2007-02-27T00:39:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/loving-frances.html"},"modified":"2007-02-27T00:39:52","modified_gmt":"2007-02-27T00:39:52","slug":"loving-frances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/loving-frances.html","title":{"rendered":"Loving Frances"},"content":{"rendered":"

NYTribute to Frances Kissling, stepping down from headship of Catholics for Free Choice.<\/a><\/p>\n

The only refreshing point of the article is that it actually states, right there in black and white:<\/p>\n

\n
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Its $3 million budget is largely financed by well-known secular foundations, including the <\/em>Ford Foundation<\/em><\/span><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

How different. To see that small point acknowledged.<\/p>\n

What the valedictory fails to do is to press Ms. Kissling on this whole "Catholic" thing. She trumpets, "Catholic" throughout the piece, ending by saying, <\/p>\n

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\n

\u201cThere are days when I think I can\u2019t be a Catholic and that I want to go join a community where I am welcomed, honored, where I can join a parish,\u201d she said. \u201cBut in the end, I don\u2019t want to be a Methodist. I\u2019m a member of the greatest religion in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

(Because that’s the ancient, well-documented reason all <\/em>the saints are a part of the Church…to be "honored.") <\/p>\n

So…why<\/em> is this the greatest religion in the world? The albs? The statues? The music? The faith in Jesus Christ, savior of a broken world? What?<\/p>\n

\"14_1\"<\/a> And of course, no one ever bothers to ask any self-professed theist who pimps and seeks to protect abortion how that works exactly. As in "If human life is created by this God you believe in, and if each human person is passionately loved by God…who are we <\/em>to decide that this life isn’t worth living? How does that calculus work, exactly?"<\/p>\n

We pray for Frances Kissling. That up there on her Uruguayan mountain, she’ll confront that question, of how God values a fetus "on the continuum of humanity," as the piece puts it, and be open to the possibility that it isn’t just "not nothing," as she puts it…and not even "something" – but someone. <\/em><\/p>\n

Find a Crisis Pregnancy Center in your area.<\/a> Help. <\/p>\n

Pray<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NYTribute to Frances Kissling, stepping down from headship of Catholics for Free Choice. The only refreshing point of the article is that it actually states, right there in black and white: Its $3 million budget is largely financed by well-known secular foundations, including the Ford Foundation. How different. To see that small point acknowledged. 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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\/2806","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=2806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2806\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}