{"id":4123,"date":"2006-12-09T23:55:50","date_gmt":"2006-12-09T23:55:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/big-surprise.html"},"modified":"2006-12-09T23:55:50","modified_gmt":"2006-12-09T23:55:50","slug":"big-surprise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/big-surprise.html","title":{"rendered":"Big surprise"},"content":{"rendered":"

Milingo admits Moon support.<\/a><\/p>\n

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The renegade Roman Catholic archbishop who was excommunicated by the Vatican after he installed married priests as bishops acknowledged today that the Rev. Sun Myung Moon was supporting his crusade against mandatory celibacy.<\/p>\n

At a weekend conference of married priests, Zambian Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo distributed a statement to participants headlined "Thanks," crediting the Korean evangelist for his backing for the meeting and for Milingo’s Married Priests Now! advocacy group.<\/p>\n

"Today we are present as beneficiaries of Rev. Moon," Milingo wrote. "In order to ensure the success of our convocation he dedicated his key organizations to give their utmost support in every way needed to the Married Priests Now!"<\/p>\n

Milingo was married to a Korean acupuncturist chosen for him by Moon in a mass Unification Church wedding in 2001. The archbishop appeared to drop those ties when he heeded pleas from Vatican officials and Pope John Paul II to renounce the marriage and return to Rome.<\/p>\n

When Milingo disappeared from Italy this year, resurfacing in the United States in July, he and his aides denied any link with Moon. They said they were fighting on their own to save the church from its clergy shortage and sex abuse crises that they blamed on celibacy.<\/p>\n

"He got his wife and now it’s over," a Milingo aide, the Rev. Dairo Ferrabolli, told the Associated Press in September.<\/p>\n

However, at this weekend’s meeting, Milingo overflowed with praise for Moon.<\/p>\n

"I have witnessed the zeal of Rev. Sun Myung Moon for the realization of the Kingdom for God," Milingo wrote. "His concern for the welfare of the whole world makes him not only a world benefactor, but more importantly a person whose vision, humility and saintly life has awakened our own courage and determination to organize and do what we ourselves know is right from God."<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And….<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
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The morning session today included a lecture by Margaret Starbird, an author who says Jesus was married to Mary Magdelene and that the two had a child. Author Dan Brown cited Starbird’s writing as a source for "The Da Vinci Code."<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Milingo admits Moon support. The renegade Roman Catholic archbishop who was excommunicated by the Vatican after he installed married priests as bishops acknowledged today that the Rev. Sun Myung Moon was supporting his crusade against mandatory celibacy. At a weekend conference of married priests, Zambian Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo distributed a statement to participants headlined "Thanks,"…<\/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-4123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nBig surprise - 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\/big-surprise.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Big surprise - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Milingo admits Moon support. The renegade Roman Catholic archbishop who was excommunicated by the Vatican after he installed married priests as bishops acknowledged today that the Rev. Sun Myung Moon was supporting his crusade against mandatory celibacy. At a weekend conference of married priests, Zambian Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo distributed a statement to participants headlined "Thanks,"…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/big-surprise.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-12-09T23:55:50+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":"Big surprise - 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\/big-surprise.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Big surprise - Via Media","og_description":"Milingo admits Moon support. The renegade Roman Catholic archbishop who was excommunicated by the Vatican after he installed married priests as bishops acknowledged today that the Rev. Sun Myung Moon was supporting his crusade against mandatory celibacy. 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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\/4123","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=4123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4123\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}