{"id":3886,"date":"2005-08-15T08:29:00","date_gmt":"2005-08-15T08:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/let-me-count-the-ways.html"},"modified":"2005-08-15T08:29:00","modified_gmt":"2005-08-15T08:29:00","slug":"let-me-count-the-ways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/let-me-count-the-ways.html","title":{"rendered":"Let me count the ways…"},"content":{"rendered":"

…in which I appreciate this Pope. Number 73: this interview with Vatican Radio<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

\u201c Holy Father, can you tell me what you would like to transmit to the youth of the world? What is the main issue you would like to \u201cbring about\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes \u2013 I would like to show them how beautiful it is to be Christian, because the widespread idea which continues to exist is that Christianity is composed of laws and bans which one has to keep and, hence, is something toilsome and burdensome \u2013 that one is freer without such a burden. I want to make clear that it not a burden to be carried by a great love and realization, but it is like having wings. It is wonderful to be a Christian with this knowledge that it gives us a great breadth, a large community: As Christians we are never alone \u2013 in the sense that God is always with us, but also in the sense that we are always standing together in a large community, a community for The Way, that we have a project for the future – and in this way a Being which is worth believing in. This is the joy of being a Christian and is the beauty of believing.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Do go read it, and put it in your pocket for the "Oh, this Pope just wants to roll back Vatican II."<\/p>\n

I think what strikes me is the rather astonishing, and to me, very accurate assesment of human nature, the challenges of being a Christian in the contemporary world, and the dynamics of the modern Church that permeates his words. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…in which I appreciate this Pope. Number 73: this interview with Vatican Radio: \u201c Holy Father, can you tell me what you would like to transmit to the youth of the world? What is the main issue you would like to \u201cbring about\u201d? Yes \u2013 I would like to show them how beautiful it is…<\/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-3886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nLet me count the ways... - 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\/2005\/08\/let-me-count-the-ways.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Let me count the ways... - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"…in which I appreciate this Pope. Number 73: this interview with Vatican Radio: \u201c Holy Father, can you tell me what you would like to transmit to the youth of the world? What is the main issue you would like to \u201cbring about\u201d? 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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\/3886","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=3886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3886\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}