{"id":3788,"date":"2006-03-24T09:20:20","date_gmt":"2006-03-24T09:20:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/parish-visit.html"},"modified":"2006-03-24T09:20:20","modified_gmt":"2006-03-24T09:20:20","slug":"parish-visit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/parish-visit.html","title":{"rendered":"Parish visit"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Sunday, Benedict will visit a parish church located on the outskirts of Rome, one of 50 new parish churches built in the diocese for the Jubilee. It’s Church Dio Padre Misericordioso <\/a>. <\/p>\n

Today, Sandro Magister wonders<\/a> what the Pope will say, considering that the design of the church stands as an antithesis to everything he has said and written about Christianity, art, architecture, the sacred, and liturgy:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n
\n

The church is held to be a masterpiece of contemporary religious architecture, and is the destination for many visitors and tourists. <\/p>\n

These are told that the church is in the form of a boat: the barque of the church, with the successor of Peter at the helm. <\/p>\n

It is explained that the three sails of smooth white cement symbolize the Trinity, and that the largest sail indicates God\u2019s protection of his people. <\/p>\n

It is pointed out to them that, at sunset, a ray of light illuminates the crucifix placed above the altar. <\/p>\n

But the point is that all of this must be spoken and explained. Because the church is bare, barren, taciturn, both inside and outside. It was designed this way, in homage to the absence of images that is the dogma of so much of modern sacred architecture. <\/p>\n

The same crucifix that is above the altar \u2013 a beautiful seventeenth century crucifix made of wood and pasteboard \u2013 had to be brought in from another church on the outskirts of Rome. <\/p>\n

In another corner, a blue and white statue of Mary on a plastic pedestal has been set up haphazardly. <\/p>\n

These last instances are signs of a desire to fill up an emptiness that is felt as unbearable. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

He finishes the  column by reprinting an essay by another writer reflecting on the cathedral in Monreale, Sicily – rather a different space.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Sunday, Benedict will visit a parish church located on the outskirts of Rome, one of 50 new parish churches built in the diocese for the Jubilee. It’s Church Dio Padre Misericordioso . Today, Sandro Magister wonders what the Pope will say, considering that the design of the church stands as an antithesis to everything…<\/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-3788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nParish visit - 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\/03\/parish-visit.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Parish visit - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On Sunday, Benedict will visit a parish church located on the outskirts of Rome, one of 50 new parish churches built in the diocese for the Jubilee. 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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. 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\/3788","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=3788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3788\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}