{"id":3406,"date":"2005-08-24T08:44:19","date_gmt":"2005-08-24T08:44:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/long-way-to-go.html"},"modified":"2005-08-24T08:44:19","modified_gmt":"2005-08-24T08:44:19","slug":"long-way-to-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/long-way-to-go.html","title":{"rendered":"Long way to go.."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Scary things. From a reader:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p><em>An alarming experience I thought you&#8217;d appreciate: I am taking the &quot;Education for Ministry&#8217; class offered by the Diocese of XXXXX.&nbsp; Last week, as I was waiting patiently for the Old Testament teacher to arrive for our first class, I couldn&#8217;t help overhearing the woman in the chair next to me telling another student that she had to finish reading &quot;Angels and Demons&quot; soon so she&#8217;d have time to read the Bible and Catechism for our class. I assumed she was reading the book to educate herself about Dan Brown so she could, you know, refute the claims of the books when they came up in an RCIA session or something, since most of us are training to be catechists. But, no, It turns out she&#8217;s a HUGE fan&#8230;She went on to recommend DaVinci Code to this other student, saying &#8216;Oh, Catholics who complain about these books just don&#8217;t want their faith challenged&quot; and then proclaiming, &quot;I, for one, want to know the truth.&quot;<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Some folks still think that this is a silly issue. As I related before, sometimes before I start a talk on it, <em>I <\/em>think it&#8217;s a silly issue and wonder how long I&#8217;m going to have to keep addressing this stupidity.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">But there ya go. And let&#8217;s not think this is unique. It&#8217;s one of those great underground issues that I&#8217;ve decided is just gnawing away at authentic Christian faith, because what it&#8217;s doing is delegitimizing the gospels and early Christian witness. It&#8217;s reinforcing the idea that many gained from their religious education that the Scriptures are not particularly reliable and that, in the end, what story you buy into is a crap shoot.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scary things. From a reader: An alarming experience I thought you&#8217;d appreciate: I am taking the &quot;Education for Ministry&#8217; class offered by the Diocese of XXXXX.&nbsp; Last week, as I was waiting patiently for the Old Testament teacher to arrive for our first class, I couldn&#8217;t help overhearing the woman in the chair next to&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-3406","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>Long way to go.. - 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\/08\/long-way-to-go.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Long way to go.. - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Scary things. From a reader: An alarming experience I thought you&#8217;d appreciate: I am taking the &quot;Education for Ministry&#8217; class offered by the Diocese of XXXXX.&nbsp; Last week, as I was waiting patiently for the Old Testament teacher to arrive for our first class, I couldn&#8217;t help overhearing the woman in the chair next to&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/long-way-to-go.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-08-24T08:44:19+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":"Long way to go.. - 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\/08\/long-way-to-go.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Long way to go.. - Via Media","og_description":"Scary things. From a reader: An alarming experience I thought you&#8217;d appreciate: I am taking the &quot;Education for Ministry&#8217; class offered by the Diocese of XXXXX.&nbsp; Last week, as I was waiting patiently for the Old Testament teacher to arrive for our first class, I couldn&#8217;t help overhearing the woman in the chair next to&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/long-way-to-go.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2005-08-24T08:44:19+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\/08\/long-way-to-go.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/long-way-to-go.html","name":"Long way to go.. - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2005-08-24T08:44:19+00:00","dateModified":"2005-08-24T08:44:19+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/long-way-to-go.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/long-way-to-go.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/long-way-to-go.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Long way to go.."}]},{"@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\/3406","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=3406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3406\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}