{"id":2874,"date":"2005-09-02T10:51:21","date_gmt":"2005-09-02T10:51:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/what-the-catholic-church-can-do.html"},"modified":"2005-09-02T10:51:21","modified_gmt":"2005-09-02T10:51:21","slug":"what-the-catholic-church-can-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/what-the-catholic-church-can-do.html","title":{"rendered":"What the Catholic Church can do:"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The suggestions are coming in:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<div>I just emailed my chancery office and suggested that the empty rectories in our diocese be offered to displaced families in the South.<\/div>\n<div> <\/div>\n<div>We have one here in our town and it is furnished, sitting empty.&nbsp; Four bedrooms, three stories.&nbsp; Empty.<\/div>\n<div> <\/div>\n<div>How many other empty rectories are there around the country that could be spruced up in the next couple weeks and opened up to those in need?&nbsp; <\/div>\n<div> <\/div>\n<div>I don&#8217;t know the best way to get the word out but my first thought was Catholic Charities.&nbsp; <\/div>\n<div> <\/div>\n<div>Is this worth contacting the USCCB about?<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"http:\/\/corner.nationalreview.com\/\">From Jack Fowler at the Corner:<\/a><\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\"><\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">TIME FOR CATHOLIC CHURCH TO STEP UP \u2026 EVEN MORE [Jack<br \/>Fowler]<br \/>Catholic Charities, the Catholic Relief Service, and<br \/>other RC organizations have all cylinders clicking in<br \/>the massive Katrina relief effort. Bishop William<br \/>Skylstad, president of the United States Catholic<br \/>Conference, is calling for a national collection for<br \/>aid (bravo Your Excellency). Much is being done. But<br \/>there\u2019s much more the Church can do, and I expect will<br \/>do, as the relief effort plays out. Two suggestions<br \/>along those lines. The first is that the Bishop\u2019s<br \/>Conference should formally direct every Catholic<br \/>parish in America to adopt a dislocated\/homeless<br \/>family and relocate them, house them, pay for the<br \/>housing for a year, clothe them, furnish and outfit<br \/>their new home (from pots to clothespins) and even<br \/>give them a car. It can be done and it should be done<br \/>(and heck, by every parish or congregation, regardless<br \/>of creed). The second is to open up the many Church<br \/>facilities across the country that are deserted\/empty.<br \/>Closed colleges, seminaries, convents, mother houses,<br \/>parochial schools, etc. \u2013 these facilities simply<br \/>cannot remain unused or underused when millions will<br \/>need long-term housing (of course, since most dioceses<br \/>are strapped for funds because of lawsuits, the feds<br \/>should help pick up the tab). The moment is here for<br \/>the Church to do something extraordinary, for the sake<br \/>of doing good, which may help the Church redeem itself<br \/>after this past terrible decade. This is the moment<br \/>for renewal.&quot;<\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\"><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">Or even&#8230;those big almost-empty convents that dot the landscape??? Sisters?<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The suggestions are coming in: I just emailed my chancery office and suggested that the empty rectories in our diocese be offered to displaced families in the South. We have one here in our town and it is furnished, sitting empty.&nbsp; Four bedrooms, three stories.&nbsp; Empty. How many other empty rectories are there around the&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-2874","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>What the Catholic Church can do: - 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\/what-the-catholic-church-can-do.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What the Catholic Church can do: - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The suggestions are coming in: I just emailed my chancery office and suggested that the empty rectories in our diocese be offered to displaced families in the South. We have one here in our town and it is furnished, sitting empty.&nbsp; Four bedrooms, three stories.&nbsp; Empty. How many other empty rectories are there around the&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/what-the-catholic-church-can-do.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-09-02T10:51:21+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":"What the Catholic Church can do: - 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\/what-the-catholic-church-can-do.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"What the Catholic Church can do: - Via Media","og_description":"The suggestions are coming in: I just emailed my chancery office and suggested that the empty rectories in our diocese be offered to displaced families in the South. We have one here in our town and it is furnished, sitting empty.&nbsp; Four bedrooms, three stories.&nbsp; Empty. How many other empty rectories are there around the&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/what-the-catholic-church-can-do.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2005-09-02T10:51:21+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\/what-the-catholic-church-can-do.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/what-the-catholic-church-can-do.html","name":"What the Catholic Church can do: - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2005-09-02T10:51:21+00:00","dateModified":"2005-09-02T10:51:21+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/what-the-catholic-church-can-do.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/what-the-catholic-church-can-do.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/what-the-catholic-church-can-do.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"What the Catholic Church can do:"}]},{"@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\/2874","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=2874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2874\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}