{"id":4058,"date":"2006-03-16T09:03:57","date_gmt":"2006-03-16T09:03:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/why-rome-is-awesome.html"},"modified":"2006-03-16T09:03:57","modified_gmt":"2006-03-16T09:03:57","slug":"why-rome-is-awesome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/why-rome-is-awesome.html","title":{"rendered":"Why Rome is Awesome"},"content":{"rendered":"

I need to stop reading this stuff. Just too, too much.<\/p>\n

First off, Zadok the Roman on a spot in Rome associated with St. Phillip Neri that is open to the public only one day a year – today. <\/a><\/p>\n

Matthew at Shrine of the Holy Whapping picks up on the post<\/a> and is then reminded that yesterday was the Ides of March, which brings back memories of Fr. Reggie Foster’s <\/a> Ides of March tour: <\/p>\n

\n
\n

Well, it’s the Ides, of course, and I hope those of our readers in the \u00c6ternal City who were lucky to go on the traditional Reggie Foster Julius Caesar Magical Murder Mystery Tour earlier this week had a grand old time. You can’t say you’ve seen the Forum until you’ve sung Ecce Caesar Nunc Triumphans<\/em> to the tune of Oh My Darling Clementine<\/em> in the shadow of the statue of Gaius Julius himself. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And then you must, must proceed to read his account from last year of his own experience of this tour. <\/a>In the company of Zadok, I’m guessing.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

So, at two-forty-five I found myself beneath the great travertine shadow of Sant\u2019 Andrea, for once on time. My friend the Seminarian generally expects me to be late, considering the number of essays I\u2019ve written that begin with me getting to mass in the middle of the Kyrie. Still, I was well-rewarded: the crowd that had gathered was just about as interesting as the tour itself. <\/p>\n

The Seminarian later told me with a smile on his face that he thought \u201cwe were officially what is known as a motley crew.\u201d And how. Students, Gregorian alums, even ordinary \u201cFoster groupies,\u201d as my friend put it. There were men in baseball caps; matched sets of pudgy children and pudgy mothers; priests; a black-robed Benedictine novice with a pale El Greco face and a vast shaven pate; an Anglican vicar with prim round-lensed gold-rimmed spectacles and a graying Rowan Atkinson bowl haircut; and several pleasantly pretty college girls. (People, I\u2019m not made of stone, you know).<\/p>\n

And then there was \u201cfresh-faced\u201d Father Reggie. He\u2019s not fresh-faced; he\u2019s far too interesting-looking to be handsome, his vast bald head, bull neck and florid face like an imagined Roman pugilist\u2019s. Cracked veins stood out on his ruddy cheeks like an anatomical diagram. And I smiled, because I saw he was wearing his own habit\u2014not immaculately Carmelite but distinctly and weirdly Fosterian. Yes, here he was, in powder-blue windbreaker and navy pants, looking all the world like God\u2019s own Maytag man. I started scribbling down furiously, telling my Seminarian friend I was getting some local color. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

*****<\/p>\n

\n
\n

But the fun wasn\u2019t over. Reggie turned to us and said we\u2019d stop by the Forum for one final parting bit of fun, we\u2019d go find Caesar\u2019s statue and sing.<\/p>\n

\u201cSing?\u201d I said to the Seminarian.<\/p>\n

An older woman, obviously a regular, overheard me and said \u201cSing, yes, and drink!\u201d Now I couldn\u2019t miss this, could I?<\/p>\n

*****<\/p>\n

My friend the Seminarian had asked me earlier, with a jaunty tone in his voice, if I had gotten enough local color. It was the understatement of the month. This was the Eternal City, in all it sublime weirdness, incarnate. Our alcoholic salute to Gaius Julius seemed a wholly surreal, wholly Roman and wholly fitting way to end this afternoon of murder, mayhem and cats with this odd little clump of dead-language tourists and their impromptu chorale to the man murdered on Tram No. 8 two thousand years ago.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Latin Lover’s page at Vatican Radio.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I need to stop reading this stuff. Just too, too much. First off, Zadok the Roman on a spot in Rome associated with St. Phillip Neri that is open to the public only one day a year – today. Matthew at Shrine of the Holy Whapping picks up on the post and is then reminded…<\/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-4058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy Rome is Awesome - 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\/03\/why-rome-is-awesome.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why Rome is Awesome - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I need to stop reading this stuff. Just too, too much. First off, Zadok the Roman on a spot in Rome associated with St. Phillip Neri that is open to the public only one day a year – today. Matthew at Shrine of the Holy Whapping picks up on the post and is then reminded…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/why-rome-is-awesome.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-03-16T09:03:57+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":"Why Rome is Awesome - 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\/03\/why-rome-is-awesome.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Why Rome is Awesome - Via Media","og_description":"I need to stop reading this stuff. Just too, too much. First off, Zadok the Roman on a spot in Rome associated with St. Phillip Neri that is open to the public only one day a year – today. Matthew at Shrine of the Holy Whapping picks up on the post and is then reminded…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/why-rome-is-awesome.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-03-16T09:03:57+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\/03\/why-rome-is-awesome.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/why-rome-is-awesome.html","name":"Why Rome is Awesome - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-03-16T09:03:57+00:00","dateModified":"2006-03-16T09:03:57+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/why-rome-is-awesome.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/why-rome-is-awesome.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/why-rome-is-awesome.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Why Rome is Awesome"}]},{"@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\/4058","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=4058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4058\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}