{"id":3821,"date":"2006-03-23T13:17:07","date_gmt":"2006-03-23T13:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/good-job-1.html"},"modified":"2006-03-23T13:17:07","modified_gmt":"2006-03-23T13:17:07","slug":"good-job-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/good-job-1.html","title":{"rendered":"Good Job"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to this poll, Catholics approve of torture in higher proportion than the general public does. <\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

\u201cThis may be a reaction to 9\/11, the horrible loss of life and the atrocities of those acting in the name of Islam,\u201d says Bishop John H. Ricard of Pensacola-Tallahassee, Fla., member of the bishops\u2019 Committee on International Policy. \u201cSome people feel the situation is out of control. They feel a vulnerability and a temptation to respond in kind. We have to resist that.\u201d<\/p>\n

A survey by the Pew Research Center in October showed that 15 percent of Americans believe torture is \u201coften\u201d justified, and another 31 percent believe it is \u201csometimes\u201d justified. Add to that another 17 percent who said it is \u201crarely\u201d justified, and you have two out of three Americans justifying torture under certain circumstances. Only 32 percent said it is \u201cnever\u201d justified, while another 5 percent didn\u2019t know or refused to answer.<\/p>\n

But the portion of Catholics who justify torture is even higher, according to the survey. Twenty-one percent of Catholics surveyed said it is \u201coften\u201d justified and 35 percent said it is \u201csometimes\u201d justified. Another 16 percent said it is \u201crarely\u201d justified, meaning that nearly three of four Catholics justify it under some circumstances. Four percent of Catholics \u201cdidn\u2019t know\u201d or refused to answer and only 26 percent said it is \u201cnever\u201d justified, which is the official teaching of the church.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

(Whatever "Catholic" means in this survey – self-identified, practicing, weekly Mass-goers. Not evident from the data).<\/p>\n

Distressing. And, one is tempted to say in regard to the Church’s catechetical efforts, the same thing that one wag rhetorically remarked to Woody Allen’s longtime psychotherapist after he married his adopted daughter: "Good job!"<\/p>\n

But, my cycnical self says – this survey trumpeted in NCR(eporter) with the implication being that there is a failure here – a failure to communicate the teachings of the Church.<\/p>\n

However, when NCR(eporter) does surveys that suggest that large proportions of American Catholics, have, shall we say, a "nuanced" view of abortion, the implied conclusion in those reports is not <\/em>that the Church has failed to teach and support those truths, but that the Church needs to catch up with the sensus fidelium <\/em>and get with the program and be where the people are.<\/p>\n

Funny how that works.<\/p>\n

(And, to be fair, the other "side" does it as well, particularly in regard to, say, economic issues.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to this poll, Catholics approve of torture in higher proportion than the general public does. \u201cThis may be a reaction to 9\/11, the horrible loss of life and the atrocities of those acting in the name of Islam,\u201d says Bishop John H. Ricard of Pensacola-Tallahassee, Fla., member of the bishops\u2019 Committee on International Policy.…<\/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-3821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nGood Job - 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\/good-job-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Good Job - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"According to this poll, Catholics approve of torture in higher proportion than the general public does. \u201cThis may be a reaction to 9\/11, the horrible loss of life and the atrocities of those acting in the name of Islam,\u201d says Bishop John H. Ricard of Pensacola-Tallahassee, Fla., member of the bishops\u2019 Committee on International Policy.…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/good-job-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-03-23T13:17:07+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":"Good Job - 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\/2006\/03\/good-job-1.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Good Job - Via Media","og_description":"According to this poll, Catholics approve of torture in higher proportion than the general public does. \u201cThis may be a reaction to 9\/11, the horrible loss of life and the atrocities of those acting in the name of Islam,\u201d says Bishop John H. 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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\/3821","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=3821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3821\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}