{"id":3427,"date":"2006-04-04T00:17:11","date_gmt":"2006-04-04T00:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/albanian-days.html"},"modified":"2006-04-04T00:17:11","modified_gmt":"2006-04-04T00:17:11","slug":"albanian-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/albanian-days.html","title":{"rendered":"Albanian Days"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At First Things, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.firstthings.com\/onthesquare\/?p=220\">Jody Bottum previews an article in the latest issue:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>A decade ago\u2014after the fall of the Communist regimes in eastern Europe\u2014John Paul II promised help for Albania\u2019s recovery, and in his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.firstthings.com\/\"><u>F<span style=\"font-size: 0.8em\">IRST <\/span>T<span style=\"font-size: 0.8em\">HINGS<\/span><\/u><\/a> article, Schwartz sharply castigates the Vatican for its failure to fulfill the pope\u2019s promise: Though only a jump across the Adriatic from Italy, Albania seems to remain <em>terra incognita<\/em> to Rome, and the Vatican officials sent to the capital, Tirana, have not yet joined in the rebuilding of the damaged Catholic culture in such traditional centers as Shkodra, seventy miles to the north.<\/p>\n<p>A key part of Schwartz\u2019s analysis is the claim that Albania offers unique possibilities for interreligious work: Precisely because they all suffered so much under the Communists, the Albanian Catholics, Orthodox, and Muslims are willing to set aside much of their old, Ottoman-era antagonism and joined in the effort to revitalize the religious life of the nation<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">A counter-argument might be the recent protest by Albanian Muslims about a proposed statue of Mother Teresa. But..Jody does a Paul Harvey on us and tells us&#8230;<em>the rest of the story<\/em>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At First Things, Jody Bottum previews an article in the latest issue: A decade ago\u2014after the fall of the Communist regimes in eastern Europe\u2014John Paul II promised help for Albania\u2019s recovery, and in his FIRST THINGS article, Schwartz sharply castigates the Vatican for its failure to fulfill the pope\u2019s promise: Though only a jump across&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-3427","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>Albanian Days - 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\/albanian-days.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Albanian Days - 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Via Media","og_description":"At First Things, Jody Bottum previews an article in the latest issue: A decade ago\u2014after the fall of the Communist regimes in eastern Europe\u2014John Paul II promised help for Albania\u2019s recovery, and in his FIRST THINGS article, Schwartz sharply castigates the Vatican for its failure to fulfill the pope\u2019s promise: Though only a jump across&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/albanian-days.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-04-04T00:17:11+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/albanian-days.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/albanian-days.html","name":"Albanian Days - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-04-04T00:17:11+00:00","dateModified":"2006-04-04T00:17:11+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/albanian-days.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/albanian-days.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/albanian-days.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Albanian Days"}]},{"@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\/3427","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=3427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3427\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}