{"id":4509,"date":"2006-02-17T08:45:33","date_gmt":"2006-02-17T08:45:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/good-for-them.html"},"modified":"2006-02-17T08:45:33","modified_gmt":"2006-02-17T08:45:33","slug":"good-for-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/good-for-them.html","title":{"rendered":"Good for them"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roman tour guides lead "Angles and Demons" tour…but use the moment to set folks straight<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Guides such as Polzer get into debates with novel-clutching tourists when they (the guides) reveal that the markers in St. Peter’s Square — which Brown says were placed by Bernini as lighting the way to the next stop along the path — were "in reality, \u2026 placed there two centuries later by a Vatican scientist." <\/p>\n

Other guides, such as Tyson Monfredini of Eternal City Tours (Rome’s Catholic guides), are busy pointing out to Brownies that there never was a church in Piazza Barberini, let alone it being moved. <\/p>\n

But architectural faux pas aren’t the biggest problem with fanciful fiction, lamented Monfredini. <\/p>\n

He warned of the spiritual damage that can come from using a fictional book as a blueprint guide to the heart of Christendom. It would be a shame, he said, for visitors who come to a place so filled with wondrous artifacts, to not uncover the faith behind the works. <\/p>\n

When Monfredini describes the reality of Bernini, the committed family man who followed papal directions, some tourists’ faces drop. "It seems that his being a pro-life Catholic, which is more logically consistent with our evidence, is more exciting these days than his representation as a pagan." <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Roman tour guides lead "Angles and Demons" tour…but use the moment to set folks straight Guides such as Polzer get into debates with novel-clutching tourists when they (the guides) reveal that the markers in St. Peter’s Square — which Brown says were placed by Bernini as lighting the way to the next stop along the…<\/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-4509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nGood for them - 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\/02\/good-for-them.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Good for them - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Roman tour guides lead "Angles and Demons" tour…but use the moment to set folks straight Guides such as Polzer get into debates with novel-clutching tourists when they (the guides) reveal that the markers in St. Peter’s Square — which Brown says were placed by Bernini as lighting the way to the next stop along the…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/good-for-them.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-02-17T08:45:33+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":"Good for them - 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\/02\/good-for-them.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Good for them - Via Media","og_description":"Roman tour guides lead "Angles and Demons" tour…but use the moment to set folks straight Guides such as Polzer get into debates with novel-clutching tourists when they (the guides) reveal that the markers in St. Peter’s Square — which Brown says were placed by Bernini as lighting the way to the next stop along the…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/good-for-them.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-02-17T08:45:33+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\/02\/good-for-them.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/good-for-them.html","name":"Good for them - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-02-17T08:45:33+00:00","dateModified":"2006-02-17T08:45:33+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/good-for-them.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/good-for-them.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/good-for-them.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Good for them"}]},{"@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\/4509","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=4509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4509\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}