{"id":3491,"date":"2006-04-01T22:25:57","date_gmt":"2006-04-01T22:25:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/romeward-bound.html"},"modified":"2006-04-01T22:25:57","modified_gmt":"2006-04-01T22:25:57","slug":"romeward-bound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/romeward-bound.html","title":{"rendered":"Romeward Bound"},"content":{"rendered":"

An Episcopal priest continue the journey…(via Pontifications)<\/a><\/p>\n

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When considering becoming a Roman Catholic the first thing that most people would obviously take into consideration would be the Pope. I realized that people who have a high view of the Pope are almost always Catholic. The reason for this I believe is that there is an explicit dislike for the Papacy within all Protestant bodies which I believe is a lingering effect of the Reformation. On the other hand, I realized that I, and most other Anglo-Catholics that I know, have an affinity for the Pope. And many of us view him as a necessary and positive influence upon the Church. So I wondered why so many Protestant bodies seemed to detest the Pope. Was there something wrong with what he teaches? To answer this question for myself I read three of Pope Benedict\u2019s books that he had written before his election and found that I was in complete agreement with everything he had written. I also read many encyclicals from previous Popes and found that I was in agreement with them as well. That is not to say that I have understood completely everything I have read nor do I understand fully the Catholic faith in its entirety. But on the whole I have discovered that I agree with and can submit to everything that the Catholic Church teaches. Therefore I came to the conclusion that there was nothing to stop me from becoming Catholic. After all, being a Protestant means that you are protesting against something \u2013 that is what the Reformation was all about; but I found that there was nothing that I could protest against with regards to the Pope or the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Episcopal priest continue the journey…(via Pontifications) When considering becoming a Roman Catholic the first thing that most people would obviously take into consideration would be the Pope. I realized that people who have a high view of the Pope are almost always Catholic. The reason for this I believe is that there is an…<\/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-3491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nRomeward Bound - 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\/romeward-bound.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Romeward Bound - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"An Episcopal priest continue the journey…(via Pontifications) When considering becoming a Roman Catholic the first thing that most people would obviously take into consideration would be the Pope. 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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. 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