{"id":2979,"date":"2007-02-11T16:41:17","date_gmt":"2007-02-11T16:41:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/yac.html"},"modified":"2007-02-11T16:41:17","modified_gmt":"2007-02-11T16:41:17","slug":"yac","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/yac.html","title":{"rendered":"YAC"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, CNS ran a piece on a recently-published study of the views and practices of young adult Catholics – <\/a>concluding that their institutional loyalty is largely negligible. Bill Cork has a critique and questions.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Another point on methodology. The article says \u201cThe margin of error was plus or minus 9 percentage points.\u201d That\u2019s a huge margin of error! How can they speak in such dogmatic terms about a period of life that is in flux, with a margin of error this large!<\/p>\n

\n

Young adult Catholics see the church as having \u201cno credibility, no plausibility, no authority,\u201d he added.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Some do, to be granted. But how many? He gives no numbers. And if he did, we could add or substract 9 points. And then we\u2019d have to ask whether these are Catholics that go to mass, even for Christmas and Easter and weddings and funerals. Others see something different; yes, there are young adult Catholics who are unchurched and many who are \u201cchurched\u201d who are uncatechized (lots of blame to go around there). But there is a core of young adult Catholics who are faithful, and who will make a difference. They\u2019re already making a difference, as even this survey shows when it talks about younger priests. Let\u2019s not write off young Catholics; let\u2019s not write off even those who may not be professing the Catholic faith or living in accord with it today. Their story isn\u2019t finished yet, and there are signs of hope. I see these signs every day.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Bill also has an excellent post on the Pope (not this one), American bishops, and slavery.<\/a><\/p>\n

He quotes from and explains Pope Gregory XVI’s 1836 condemnation of the slave trade<\/a> and then moves on to the American bishops’ response:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Bishop John England of Charleston, South Carolina, wrote a series of public letters to Forsyth (Secretary of State) <\/em>begging him to understand that the pope was being misunderstood. He wasn\u2019t really talking about American slavery at all\u2013he was merely condemning the slave trade as practiced by Spain and Portugal. He gave his own history, a history in which slavery was a positive good, in which no pope ever criticized it, in which all slaves were happy and content.<\/p>\n

Shortly thereafter Philadelphia\u2019s bishop, Francis Patrick Kenrick, wrote a moral theology whose description of slavery was another attempt to pretend that Pope Gregory had said nothing, and that slavery as it existed was a lesser evil to what would happen if slaves were freed.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Oddly, perversely comforting, in a distressing sort of way. Plus \u00e7a change <\/em>and all that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, CNS ran a piece on a recently-published study of the views and practices of young adult Catholics – concluding that their institutional loyalty is largely negligible. Bill Cork has a critique and questions. Another point on methodology. The article says \u201cThe margin of error was plus or minus 9 percentage points.\u201d That\u2019s a…<\/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-2979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nYAC - 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\/02\/yac.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"YAC - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Last week, CNS ran a piece on a recently-published study of the views and practices of young adult Catholics – concluding that their institutional loyalty is largely negligible. Bill Cork has a critique and questions. Another point on methodology. The article says \u201cThe margin of error was plus or minus 9 percentage points.\u201d That\u2019s a…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/yac.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-02-11T16:41:17+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":"YAC - 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\/02\/yac.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"YAC - Via Media","og_description":"Last week, CNS ran a piece on a recently-published study of the views and practices of young adult Catholics – concluding that their institutional loyalty is largely negligible. Bill Cork has a critique and questions. Another point on methodology. The article says \u201cThe margin of error was plus or minus 9 percentage points.\u201d That\u2019s a…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/yac.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2007-02-11T16:41:17+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\/02\/yac.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/yac.html","name":"YAC - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-02-11T16:41:17+00:00","dateModified":"2007-02-11T16:41:17+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/yac.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/yac.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/yac.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"YAC"}]},{"@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\/2979","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=2979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2979\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}