{"id":3836,"date":"2006-03-22T23:13:32","date_gmt":"2006-03-22T23:13:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/gods-territory.html"},"modified":"2006-03-22T23:13:32","modified_gmt":"2006-03-22T23:13:32","slug":"gods-territory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/gods-territory.html","title":{"rendered":"God’s Territory"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many of you have heard of Antoinette Bosco, longtime columnist for the Catholic press. In 1993, her son and daughter-in-law were brutally murdered in their sleep. Recently, Dr. Bosco spoke at St. John’s University about her opposition to the death penalty:<\/a><\/p>\n

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Forgiveness takes time,\u201d she says, \u201cbut nothing good comes of refusing to let go of anger. I continued to ask Jesus daily what he meant by love your enemies. I was so shattered by what had happened that I had to renew my faith every day. I realized that Jesus was sent here to show us how to make the world right.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cChoosing to show mercy and compassion has helped me move on with life, and that, I believe, is what victims need to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNow I knew [after entering the bedroom where her son and his wife had been killed] that I could never accept unnatural death at the hands of another again, not even when it is called legitimate, but more so, I knew why,\u201d she writes in her book: Choosing Mercy; A Mother of Murder Victims Pleads to End the Death Penalty<\/em> [Orbis Books, 1991].<\/p>\n

(That’s an incorrect publication date – 2001 is more like it)<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cLife and death are God\u2019s territory, not ours. I wanted the killer found, put away and punished. I knew I would have to struggle a long time with my feelings, because the anger was still so fresh. But never would I be able to say, kill the killer.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many of you have heard of Antoinette Bosco, longtime columnist for the Catholic press. In 1993, her son and daughter-in-law were brutally murdered in their sleep. Recently, Dr. Bosco spoke at St. John’s University about her opposition to the death penalty: Forgiveness takes time,\u201d she says, \u201cbut nothing good comes of refusing to let go…<\/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-3836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nGod's Territory - 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\/gods-territory.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"God's Territory - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Many of you have heard of Antoinette Bosco, longtime columnist for the Catholic press. In 1993, her son and daughter-in-law were brutally murdered in their sleep. Recently, Dr. Bosco spoke at St. John’s University about her opposition to the death penalty: Forgiveness takes time,\u201d she says, \u201cbut nothing good comes of refusing to let go…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/gods-territory.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-03-22T23:13:32+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":"God's Territory - 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\/gods-territory.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"God's Territory - Via Media","og_description":"Many of you have heard of Antoinette Bosco, longtime columnist for the Catholic press. 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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\/3836","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=3836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3836\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}