{"id":3971,"date":"2006-12-14T10:16:24","date_gmt":"2006-12-14T10:16:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/reaching-out.html"},"modified":"2006-12-14T10:16:24","modified_gmt":"2006-12-14T10:16:24","slug":"reaching-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/reaching-out.html","title":{"rendered":"Reaching Out"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s a creative use of the internet. From a reader:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>In what may be a first for one of the Church&#8217;s public policy arms, Jeff Caruso, Executive Director of the Virginia Catholic Conference, is holding a live blog to discuss the upcoming Virginia General Assembly.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>Shaun Kenney will be hosting the live blog and they are now taking questions.&nbsp; (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.shaunkenney.com\/2006\/12\/liveblog-jeff-caruso-with-virginia.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span style=\"color: #003399\">click here<\/span><\/a>)&nbsp; I&#8217;m hoping you can make mention of this to your readers, as the success of this first attempt to reach out through the Internet could encourage other Catholic Conferences to do the same.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a few things that the Conference will be taking up in the new legislative session:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Prohibiting state funding for embryonic stem cell research <\/li>\n<li>Abortion clinic regulations <\/li>\n<li>Increasing the minimum wage <\/li>\n<li>Providing state assistance to parents whose children attend non-public schools for the purchase of their non-religious textbooks <\/li>\n<li>Preventing minor&#8217;s access to pornography.&nbsp; (Bishop Loverde just wrote <a href=\"http:\/\/www.arlingtondiocese.org\/offices\/communications\/boughtprice.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span style=\"color: #003399\">an excellent pastoral letter<\/span><\/a> on the subject.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The full .pdf is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vacatholic.org\/documents\/VCC-LegislativeAgendaItemsFor2007Session.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span style=\"color: #003399\">here<\/span><\/a>.&nbsp; It is an open-ended forum, though, so folks can feel free to ask any other questions they may have.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.shaunkenney.com\/2006\/12\/liveblog-jeff-caruso-with-virginia.htm\">The Q &amp; A is scheduled for 12\/19 at 10 AM <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s a creative use of the internet. From a reader: In what may be a first for one of the Church&#8217;s public policy arms, Jeff Caruso, Executive Director of the Virginia Catholic Conference, is holding a live blog to discuss the upcoming Virginia General Assembly.&nbsp; Shaun Kenney will be hosting the live blog and they&hellip;<\/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-3971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Reaching Out - 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\/reaching-out.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Reaching Out - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Here&#8217;s a creative use of the internet. From a reader: In what may be a first for one of the Church&#8217;s public policy arms, Jeff Caruso, Executive Director of the Virginia Catholic Conference, is holding a live blog to discuss the upcoming Virginia General Assembly.&nbsp; Shaun Kenney will be hosting the live blog and they&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/reaching-out.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-12-14T10:16:24+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":"Reaching Out - 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\/reaching-out.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Reaching Out - Via Media","og_description":"Here&#8217;s a creative use of the internet. From a reader: In what may be a first for one of the Church&#8217;s public policy arms, Jeff Caruso, Executive Director of the Virginia Catholic Conference, is holding a live blog to discuss the upcoming Virginia General Assembly.&nbsp; Shaun Kenney will be hosting the live blog and they&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/reaching-out.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-12-14T10:16:24+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/reaching-out.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/reaching-out.html","name":"Reaching Out - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-12-14T10:16:24+00:00","dateModified":"2006-12-14T10:16:24+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/reaching-out.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/reaching-out.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/reaching-out.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Reaching Out"}]},{"@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\/3971","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=3971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3971\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}