{"id":2853,"date":"2006-04-21T12:56:03","date_gmt":"2006-04-21T12:56:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/preciousmoments.html"},"modified":"2006-04-21T12:56:03","modified_gmt":"2006-04-21T12:56:03","slug":"preciousmoments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/preciousmoments.html","title":{"rendered":"Precious….Moments?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Faithful reader Julia was inspired by the 15th Station to send along a link to something I had no idea existed – the Precious Moments…what? Compound? <\/a> located in Missouri. Highlight is a chapel – if you go to the site (photos are in flash format, so I can’t grab) – you’ll see folks in there standing in rapt attention at the paintings of the big-eyed children and angels doing Biblical and spiritual things. <\/p>\n

It’s an eye-opener.<\/p>\n

But then…read on. in this otherwise snide look at the place<\/a>, we see that Sam Butcher, the PM originator had a son who died – at the age of 30, true – but a dead child will always, in sense be a child. And so, the kitsch still alternately horrifies and amuses, but the angels welcoming children "home" to heaven takes on a different tone that resembles the struggle to bring some light into a crushing shadow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Faithful reader Julia was inspired by the 15th Station to send along a link to something I had no idea existed – the Precious Moments…what? Compound? located in Missouri. Highlight is a chapel – if you go to the site (photos are in flash format, so I can’t grab) – you’ll see folks in there…<\/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-2853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nPrecious....Moments? - 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\/2006\/04\/preciousmoments.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Precious....Moments? - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Faithful reader Julia was inspired by the 15th Station to send along a link to something I had no idea existed – the Precious Moments…what? 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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\/2853","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=2853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2853\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}