{"id":3822,"date":"2006-12-21T01:27:32","date_gmt":"2006-12-21T01:27:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/guarding-st-patricks.html"},"modified":"2006-12-21T01:27:32","modified_gmt":"2006-12-21T01:27:32","slug":"guarding-st-patricks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/guarding-st-patricks.html","title":{"rendered":"Guarding St. Patrick’s"},"content":{"rendered":"

A little slice of New York life:<\/a><\/p>\n

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Patrick Michael Ward\u2019s is the face that many visitors to New York City see smiling at them in photographs they take back to their homes around the world. He is the police officer who guards St. Patrick\u2019s Cathedral, the man in a blue uniform before a limestone and marble church facade with each black shoe planted in a different institution.<\/p>\n

There he is, Officer Ward: a former military policeman in the Army, the officer with the big hazel eyes, hair cut short, and a black and silver mustache like a wire brush. Officer Ward: Jean and Thomas Ward\u2019s son, easy with a laugh, still remembers his mother\u2019s catechism lessons, wears his uncle Edward Murphy\u2019s shield (No. 19712) and keeps a Mass card for Cardinal John J. O\u2019Connor tucked inside his hat.<\/p>\n

The police world and the Roman Catholic world are heavy with history. They are parallel societies whose roots run deep; both are hierarchical and ritualistic. Officer Ward\u2019s radio crackles with calls from the precinct station, Midtown North. The radio chatter mingles with the church organ\u2019s religious hymns. He keeps a list of soup kitchens and shelters for the homeless in his memo book.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A little slice of New York life: Patrick Michael Ward\u2019s is the face that many visitors to New York City see smiling at them in photographs they take back to their homes around the world. He is the police officer who guards St. Patrick\u2019s Cathedral, the man in a blue uniform before a limestone and…<\/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-3822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nGuarding St. Patrick's - 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\/12\/guarding-st-patricks.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Guarding St. Patrick's - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A little slice of New York life: Patrick Michael Ward\u2019s is the face that many visitors to New York City see smiling at them in photographs they take back to their homes around the world. He is the police officer who guards St. Patrick\u2019s Cathedral, the man in a blue uniform before a limestone and…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/guarding-st-patricks.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-12-21T01:27:32+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":"Guarding St. Patrick's - 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\/12\/guarding-st-patricks.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Guarding St. Patrick's - Via Media","og_description":"A little slice of New York life: Patrick Michael Ward\u2019s is the face that many visitors to New York City see smiling at them in photographs they take back to their homes around the world. 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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\/3822","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=3822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3822\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}