{"id":3977,"date":"2005-08-12T10:14:09","date_gmt":"2005-08-12T10:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/a-word-with-you.html"},"modified":"2005-08-12T10:14:09","modified_gmt":"2005-08-12T10:14:09","slug":"a-word-with-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/a-word-with-you.html","title":{"rendered":"A Word With You"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Allen has an excellent WYD backgrounder today: <\/a>why the gathering is important, and what to look for in terms of Benedict’s meetings and talks during the event:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Third, youth are critical to a pope\u2019s capacity to lift the church out of the ideological ruts of a given era. Adults tend to become locked in debates over a limited set of issues, recycling those arguments in endless combinations. In the 16th and 17th centuries, for example, Jesuits and Dominicans clashed over competing theories of grace; in the 19th century, Catholic democrats and Catholic traditionalists locked horns over the \u201cRoman question\u201d; today, \u201cliberals\u201d and \u201cconservatives\u201d go at one another over sexuality, dissent, and the authority of the pope. Sometimes resolution of these debates is less a matter of victory for one side, than the capacity to see the entire matter in a new light. That\u2019s what young Catholics have to offer \u2013 a fresh perspective, not defined by the categories of the past. In order for that to work, young people have to be willing to invest their energy and creativity in the church. World Youth Day has the capacity to awaken such passion and commitment.<\/p>\n

If Benedict XVI wants to challenge the dictatorship of relativism in the West, he\u2019s going to need motivated, well-formed youth, and there\u2019s no place like World Youth Day to assemble his team. The extent to which Benedict XVI succeeds in connecting with the youth who assemble to hear him in Cologne, therefore, should tell us a great deal about where his pontificate is headed. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

John also links to what looks to be an invaluable resource – a press pool site of freelance journalists covering the event<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Allen has an excellent WYD backgrounder today: why the gathering is important, and what to look for in terms of Benedict’s meetings and talks during the event: Third, youth are critical to a pope\u2019s capacity to lift the church out of the ideological ruts of a given era. Adults tend to become locked in…<\/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-3977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nA Word With You - 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\/a-word-with-you.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Word With You - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"John Allen has an excellent WYD backgrounder today: why the gathering is important, and what to look for in terms of Benedict’s meetings and talks during the event: Third, youth are critical to a pope\u2019s capacity to lift the church out of the ideological ruts of a given era. Adults tend to become locked in…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/a-word-with-you.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-08-12T10:14:09+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":"A Word With You - 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\/a-word-with-you.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"A Word With You - Via Media","og_description":"John Allen has an excellent WYD backgrounder today: why the gathering is important, and what to look for in terms of Benedict’s meetings and talks during the event: Third, youth are critical to a pope\u2019s capacity to lift the church out of the ideological ruts of a given era. Adults tend to become locked in…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/a-word-with-you.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2005-08-12T10:14:09+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\/a-word-with-you.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/a-word-with-you.html","name":"A Word With You - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2005-08-12T10:14:09+00:00","dateModified":"2005-08-12T10:14:09+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/a-word-with-you.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/a-word-with-you.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/a-word-with-you.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"A Word With You"}]},{"@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\/3977","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=3977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3977\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}