{"id":395,"date":"2008-01-21T15:56:15","date_gmt":"2008-01-21T15:56:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2008\/01\/ridiculous-irony.html"},"modified":"2008-01-21T15:56:15","modified_gmt":"2008-01-21T15:56:15","slug":"ridiculous-irony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/01\/ridiculous-irony.html","title":{"rendered":"Ridiculous irony?"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the points raised in the wake of last week’s Sapienza <\/em>business that it was too ironic – insanely, laughably ironic – to hear a Pope or representatives thereof speak of “freedom of thought.”
\nAfter all…Bruni…Galileo…Wyclife…Index…<\/em>
\nSo what is the response?
\nI’ll tell you what I’m not terrifically interested in – the parsing of history to the end of isolating the “repressive” action in the past to the point at which we can say, well, technically speaking, looking at it all in context, officially, magisterially speaking…<\/em>the Church really had nothing to do with it, you know.
\nWhich is, too often, I’m afraid, the impression left by apologetics directed to these types of questions.
\nYes, there are contextual questions to consider. In the Middle Ages, for example, the contemporary arrangement of a secular state with freedom of religion would have been impossible for most to imagine. Having varieties of Christianity, lined up next to each other down the road, would have been unthinkable. People thought differently about authority, and it is impossible and unfair to try to impose our own understanding on that mileu.
\nHistory is often misunderstood.
\nYes, there is a distinction between what the Church teaches and how that is played out on the local level, in real time.
\nThese are important\u00a0<\/em>and history should be clarified. \u00a0But sometimes our essential consideration of these factors lead to an impression that we are brushing that same history off.
\nBut I think the insistence that religion, period, and especially Catholicism, \u00a0stands against human freedom, and historically always has, is a cry that is only going to get more fervent in the future.
\nSo what is the answer you would give?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the points raised in the wake of last week’s Sapienza business that it was too ironic – insanely, laughably ironic – to hear a Pope or representatives thereof speak of “freedom of thought.” After all…Bruni…Galileo…Wyclife…Index… So what is the response? I’ll tell you what I’m not terrifically interested in – the parsing of…<\/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-395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nRidiculous irony? - 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\/2008\/01\/ridiculous-irony.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ridiculous irony? - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"One of the points raised in the wake of last week’s Sapienza business that it was too ironic – insanely, laughably ironic – to hear a Pope or representatives thereof speak of “freedom of thought.” After all…Bruni…Galileo…Wyclife…Index… So what is the response? I’ll tell you what I’m not terrifically interested in – the parsing of…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/01\/ridiculous-irony.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-01-21T15:56:15+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":"Ridiculous irony? - 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\/2008\/01\/ridiculous-irony.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Ridiculous irony? - Via Media","og_description":"One of the points raised in the wake of last week’s Sapienza business that it was too ironic – insanely, laughably ironic – to hear a Pope or representatives thereof speak of “freedom of thought.” After all…Bruni…Galileo…Wyclife…Index… So what is the response? 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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\/395","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=395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}