{"id":440,"date":"2008-02-22T12:06:04","date_gmt":"2008-02-22T12:06:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2008\/02\/preparing-for-the-pope.html"},"modified":"2008-02-22T12:06:04","modified_gmt":"2008-02-22T12:06:04","slug":"preparing-for-the-pope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/02\/preparing-for-the-pope.html","title":{"rendered":"Preparing for the Pope"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Did you know the Pope is coming to the United States?<\/div>\n<ul><\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/catalog.osv.com\/Catalog.aspx?SimpleDisplay=true&amp;ProductCode=P729\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" vspace=\"20\" align=\"left\" width=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/catalog.osv.com\/images\/products\/P729_150.gif\" hspace=\"20\" height=\"350\" \/><\/a>Oh, you did?<br \/>\nOkay.<br \/>\nAnyway, things are gearing up for the visit. The Papal Master of Ceremonies has been in the country the past few days checking out the lay of the land.\u00a0 <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com\/2008\/02\/papal-worship-yankee-style.html\">Rocco&#8217;s got a post here<\/a> and <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/wdtprs.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/msgr-guido-marini-in-the-usa\/\">Fr. Z has a posted a photo of Msgr. Marini with some seminarians from the Archdiocese of NY. <\/a><br \/>\n<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.pope2008.com\/\">National Catholic Register has started a webpage\/blog\/resource page for the visit. <\/a>\u00a0It&#8217;s really good &#8211; Tim Drake is going to be constantly updating with news items.<br \/>\n(Go to the NCRegister blog for links to all of the official sites for the visit, from the USCCB, the Archdioceses of NY and DC, CUA, etc.)<br \/>\n<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.osv.com\/papalvisit\">Our Sunday Visitor also has a dedicated webpage. <\/a>Look for frequent updates &#8211; they&#8217;ll be doing some things with Facebook, and once the visit starts, their correspondents will be blogging. They have a nice prayer card you can <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.osv.com\/Portals\/0\/images\/pdf\/PopeBenedictPrayerCard.pdf\">download<\/a>\u00a0or <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/catalog.osv.com\/lp.aspx?code=Y81bbf63\">order in bulk. <\/a><br \/>\n<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/catalog.osv.com\/Catalog.aspx?SimpleDisplay=true&amp;ProductCode=P729\">Our Sunday Visitor has also published a pamphlet on the Pope\u00a0written by some hack they dug up from the snow. <\/a><br \/>\nAll of the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/catalog.osv.com\/lp.aspx?code=Y81bbf63\">B16-related OSV materials can be ordered from this page. <\/a>\u00a0The last two Pope-related pamphlets I&#8217;ve done are also available in Spanish.\u00a0 Don&#8217;t worry, I didn&#8217;t do the translations, so they&#8217;re trustworthy.<br \/>\nAnd, of course, members of the secular media are super-busy digging out the &#8220;Pope Visits US&#8221; templates from what &#8211; 1999? &#8211; that are labeled &#8220;Divisions in the Church&#8221; &#8220;Like the Man\/Ignore the Message&#8221; and &#8220;Pope Scolds ________&#8221; In addition, they&#8217;re busy creating a new template they&#8217;re calling &#8220;Pope Tries to Soften Image.&#8221;<br \/>\n(Full disclosure &#8211; so far, I&#8217;ve been contacted by FoxNews &#8211; a few weeks ago. Mostly for background on my views on Da Pope. I doubt I&#8217;ll be seeing any airtime with anyone\u00a0partly because..well, what do I know, and partly because of logistical issues, as I discovered over and over in 2005. \u00a0Let John Allen do all the work, I say!)<br \/>\nBut anyway, here&#8217;s an assignment for you. I&#8217;m going to keep this post going &#8211; in that I&#8217;ll put in on my sidebar after it falls off this front page &#8211; because I want it to be an ongoing source, not only for blog readers but, dare we hope, for the media, looking for a sense of what some Catholics, in fact, think of Pope Benedict.<br \/>\nIf you care to comment on this post, please muse on the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<div>How has the papacy of Pope Benedict (or even, thinking more broadly, his work and writings as Ratzinger) affected you? What have you learned from him? Has anything about this papacy affected any kind of change in your understanding or experience of faith?<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>Have you changed your mind about Pope Benedict in any way over the past few years?<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>What do you think are the most striking elements of his papacy so far?<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>What is your prayer for Pope Benedict?<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Please be honest and charitable in your honesty, especially if you have anything negative or cautionary to say.<br \/>\nAnd if there&#8217;s anyway you can identify yourself, even vaguely by age\/previous experience with Catholicism\/area of the country of the world in which you live, that would be very helpful!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Did you know the Pope is coming to the United States? Oh, you did? Okay. Anyway, things are gearing up for the visit. The Papal Master of Ceremonies has been in the country the past few days checking out the lay of the land.\u00a0 Rocco&#8217;s got a post here and Fr. Z has a posted&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-440","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>Preparing for the Pope - 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\/2008\/02\/preparing-for-the-pope.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Preparing for the Pope - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Did you know the Pope is coming to the United States? Oh, you did? Okay. Anyway, things are gearing up for the visit. The Papal Master of Ceremonies has been in the country the past few days checking out the lay of the land.\u00a0 Rocco&#8217;s got a post here and Fr. 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Oh, you did? Okay. Anyway, things are gearing up for the visit. The Papal Master of Ceremonies has been in the country the past few days checking out the lay of the land.\u00a0 Rocco&#8217;s got a post here and Fr. Z has a posted&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/02\/preparing-for-the-pope.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2008-02-22T12:06:04+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/catalog.osv.com\/images\/products\/P729_150.gif"}],"author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/02\/preparing-for-the-pope.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/02\/preparing-for-the-pope.html","name":"Preparing for the Pope - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/02\/preparing-for-the-pope.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/02\/preparing-for-the-pope.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/catalog.osv.com\/images\/products\/P729_150.gif","datePublished":"2008-02-22T12:06:04+00:00","dateModified":"2008-02-22T12:06:04+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/02\/preparing-for-the-pope.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/02\/preparing-for-the-pope.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/02\/preparing-for-the-pope.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/catalog.osv.com\/images\/products\/P729_150.gif","contentUrl":"http:\/\/catalog.osv.com\/images\/products\/P729_150.gif"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/02\/preparing-for-the-pope.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Preparing for the Pope"}]},{"@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\/440","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=440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}