{"id":3116,"date":"2007-02-01T13:18:14","date_gmt":"2007-02-01T13:18:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/why-did-you-come-back.html"},"modified":"2007-02-01T13:18:14","modified_gmt":"2007-02-01T13:18:14","slug":"why-did-you-come-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/why-did-you-come-back.html","title":{"rendered":"Why did you come back?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s a lot of discussion and (justifiable) fretting out there about why people <em>leave <\/em>the Cathoilc Church. It&#8217;s a discussion we&#8217;ve had here, and will continue to have. But I want this thread to be something different, something I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ve seen before. <\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #3333cc;font-size: 1.2em\">If you&#8217;re a &quot;revert&quot; &#8211; why?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #3333cc;font-size: 1.2em\">What brought you back? <\/span><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d imagine for most it will be a combination of things. And it doesn&#8217;t matter why you &quot;left&quot; &#8211; although that will probably come into the discussion, too. What I mean to say is that if you &quot;left&quot; because after your parents had you baptized they never set foot in a Catholic church again, your story is just as interesting as that of the person who consciously left, as an adult. <\/p>\n<p>And, as in our &quot;What did you hear&quot; thread, let&#8217;s have this be, er&#8230;<em>sharing<\/em> only. (Eeek!) No discussion, if possible &#8211; no disputing others&#8217; stories, etc. I&#8217;ll pull some thoughts together over the weekend and we can discuss. Thank you in advance!<\/p>\n<p><u>Related: <\/u>There&#8217;s a new blog dedicated to the stories of converts and reverts. Click on the image below to go there:<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"VERT: for for Catholic converts and reverts\" href=\"http:\/\/onionboy.typepad.com\/vert\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/onionboy.typepad.com\/vert\/vertblogs1.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s a lot of discussion and (justifiable) fretting out there about why people leave the Cathoilc Church. It&#8217;s a discussion we&#8217;ve had here, and will continue to have. But I want this thread to be something different, something I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ve seen before. If you&#8217;re a &quot;revert&quot; &#8211; why? What brought you back? I&#8217;d&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-3116","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>Why did you come back? - 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\/why-did-you-come-back.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why did you come back? - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There&#8217;s a lot of discussion and (justifiable) fretting out there about why people leave the Cathoilc Church. It&#8217;s a discussion we&#8217;ve had here, and will continue to have. But I want this thread to be something different, something I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ve seen before. If you&#8217;re a &quot;revert&quot; &#8211; why? What brought you back? I&#8217;d&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/why-did-you-come-back.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-02-01T13:18:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/onionboy.typepad.com\/vert\/vertblogs1.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Why did you come back? - 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\/why-did-you-come-back.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Why did you come back? - Via Media","og_description":"There&#8217;s a lot of discussion and (justifiable) fretting out there about why people leave the Cathoilc Church. It&#8217;s a discussion we&#8217;ve had here, and will continue to have. But I want this thread to be something different, something I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ve seen before. If you&#8217;re a &quot;revert&quot; &#8211; why? What brought you back? I&#8217;d&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/why-did-you-come-back.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2007-02-01T13:18:14+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/onionboy.typepad.com\/vert\/vertblogs1.jpg"}],"author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/why-did-you-come-back.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/why-did-you-come-back.html","name":"Why did you come back? - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/why-did-you-come-back.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/why-did-you-come-back.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/onionboy.typepad.com\/vert\/vertblogs1.jpg","datePublished":"2007-02-01T13:18:14+00:00","dateModified":"2007-02-01T13:18:14+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/why-did-you-come-back.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/why-did-you-come-back.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/why-did-you-come-back.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/onionboy.typepad.com\/vert\/vertblogs1.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/onionboy.typepad.com\/vert\/vertblogs1.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/why-did-you-come-back.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Why did you come back?"}]},{"@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\/3116","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=3116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}