{"id":3906,"date":"2005-08-13T00:41:12","date_gmt":"2005-08-13T00:41:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/i-love-my-parish-because.html"},"modified":"2005-08-13T00:41:12","modified_gmt":"2005-08-13T00:41:12","slug":"i-love-my-parish-because","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/i-love-my-parish-because.html","title":{"rendered":"“I love my parish because…”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, actually I don’t, but that’s not the point. I mean – it’s fine, and it’s good, but my fundamental lack of ability to engage with some of the discussions we have here is that, as an only child raised in a mixed-religion household in which parish membership\/involvement\/attachment was so unimportant as to be totally unimportant, and as a lifelong non-joiner, I just can’t relate to some of the needs expressed in comments here.<\/p>\n

But I know a lot of you, among the thousands who visit here every day, are<\/em> a part of great parishes and that Catholic life on the ground in this country isn’t <\/em>a complete desert. So tell us about it. If you want to name it, great, but that’s not required. Tell us why you love (or even just like!) your parish and how being connected to that parish nourishes your faith and life. This isn’t<\/em> a discussion thread, please – just a "share your story" (bleh!) thread. I want to hear, and I think others do, too.<\/p>\n

(And I want to make something else clear – no apologies necessary if your parish *isn’t* what you might think some commentors would see as ideal. Yes, some commentors like a traditionalist St. Agnes\/ St. John Cantius kind of place, but that’s their ideal, not everyone’s – and certainly not mine. So don’t apologize if the parish that strengthens your faith and in which you serve doesn’t seem to meet the High Church requirement of some here.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, actually I don’t, but that’s not the point. I mean – it’s fine, and it’s good, but my fundamental lack of ability to engage with some of the discussions we have here is that, as an only child raised in a mixed-religion household in which parish membership\/involvement\/attachment was so unimportant as to be totally…<\/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-3906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n"I love my parish because..." - 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\/i-love-my-parish-because.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""I love my parish because..." - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Well, actually I don’t, but that’s not the point. I mean – it’s fine, and it’s good, but my fundamental lack of ability to engage with some of the discussions we have here is that, as an only child raised in a mixed-religion household in which parish membership\/involvement\/attachment was so unimportant as to be totally…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/i-love-my-parish-because.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-08-13T00:41:12+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":"\"I love my parish because...\" - 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\/2005\/08\/i-love-my-parish-because.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"\"I love my parish because...\" - Via Media","og_description":"Well, actually I don’t, but that’s not the point. I mean – it’s fine, and it’s good, but my fundamental lack of ability to engage with some of the discussions we have here is that, as an only child raised in a mixed-religion household in which parish membership\/involvement\/attachment was so unimportant as to be totally…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/i-love-my-parish-because.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2005-08-13T00:41:12+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/i-love-my-parish-because.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/i-love-my-parish-because.html","name":"\"I love my parish because...\" - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2005-08-13T00:41:12+00:00","dateModified":"2005-08-13T00:41:12+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/i-love-my-parish-because.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/i-love-my-parish-because.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/i-love-my-parish-because.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"“I love my parish because…”"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. 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\/3906","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=3906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3906\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}