{"id":4354,"date":"2005-08-07T23:16:01","date_gmt":"2005-08-07T23:16:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/more-vocations.html"},"modified":"2005-08-07T23:16:01","modified_gmt":"2005-08-07T23:16:01","slug":"more-vocations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/more-vocations.html","title":{"rendered":"More vocations…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Football player-turned-priest in Milwaukee<\/a><\/p>\n

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– If it’s a Sunday and you see 6-foot-5 and 365-pound Mike Lightner wearing green and gold, you could be forgiven for musing about the Green Bay Packers rather than your own salvation – even if you are in church<\/p>\n

You can’t ignore the imposing physical features of the nearly bald and bushy-bearded Lightner, a former college football lineman who could also pass as the leader of a motorcycle gang. <\/p>\n

Even with the traditional collar complementing his green-and-gold vestments, the newly ordained Lightner isn’t a typical priest – but it’s because of what he says as well as how he looks.<\/p>\n

Lightner says he became a priest after demanding, and receiving, signs from God. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Football player-turned-priest in Milwaukee – If it’s a Sunday and you see 6-foot-5 and 365-pound Mike Lightner wearing green and gold, you could be forgiven for musing about the Green Bay Packers rather than your own salvation – even if you are in church You can’t ignore the imposing physical features of the nearly bald…<\/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-4354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nMore vocations... - 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\/more-vocations.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"More vocations... - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Football player-turned-priest in Milwaukee – If it’s a Sunday and you see 6-foot-5 and 365-pound Mike Lightner wearing green and gold, you could be forgiven for musing about the Green Bay Packers rather than your own salvation – even if you are in church You can’t ignore the imposing physical features of the nearly bald…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/more-vocations.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-08-07T23:16:01+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":"More vocations... - 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\/more-vocations.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"More vocations... - 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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\/4354","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=4354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4354\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}