{"id":490,"date":"2008-03-16T12:47:12","date_gmt":"2008-03-16T12:47:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2008\/03\/the-real-issues.html"},"modified":"2008-03-16T12:47:12","modified_gmt":"2008-03-16T12:47:12","slug":"the-real-issues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/03\/the-real-issues.html","title":{"rendered":"The Real Issues"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s a fantastic post from Terry Mattingly at Get Religion, in anticipation of you-know-what:<\/a><\/p>\n

You see, journalists who cover religion are all waiting for the arrival of the tidal wave that is a papal visit, which is kind of the Olympic games of the Godbeat, or, better yet, our version of a national political convention. And, above all, we are waiting to find out what the \u201creal\u201d issue will be for this papal visit.
\nYou know. The. Real. Issue.
\nWe all know that the pope will talk about things that do not really matter, like prayer, Jesus, confession, the Eucharist and all those other religious doctrines. But there will have to be a \u201creal\u201d issue or two in there to cover, which means, of course, anything that can be seen as affecting politics and, thus, real life.
\nIf he talks about poverty and health, that will impact discussions of national health care, which may be seen as a covert hint to Catholic swing voters in Ohio that they can, under Vatican II, vote for Bill and Hillary Clinton with a clear conscience despite their records on other life and death issues. You see how it works? Heaven help us all if he mentions the environment. Even if he speaks on the nature of the priesthood, that text will be parsed for language that will have an impact on discussion of gay rights. Will he meet with the presiding bishop of the U.S. Episcopal Church? Same thing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At Pope2008, Tim Drake has coined the acronym <\/a>(watch out, Episcopalians!) WOCHA: (W<\/strong>omen’s O<\/strong>rdination, C<\/strong>ontraception, H<\/strong>omosexuality, A<\/strong>bortion) – for the media template to keep a watch out for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s a fantastic post from Terry Mattingly at Get Religion, in anticipation of you-know-what: You see, journalists who cover religion are all waiting for the arrival of the tidal wave that is a papal visit, which is kind of the Olympic games of the Godbeat, or, better yet, our version of a national political convention.…<\/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-490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Real Issues - 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\/03\/the-real-issues.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Real Issues - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Here’s a fantastic post from Terry Mattingly at Get Religion, in anticipation of you-know-what: You see, journalists who cover religion are all waiting for the arrival of the tidal wave that is a papal visit, which is kind of the Olympic games of the Godbeat, or, better yet, our version of a national political convention.…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/03\/the-real-issues.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-03-16T12:47:12+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":"The Real Issues - 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\/2008\/03\/the-real-issues.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Real Issues - Via Media","og_description":"Here’s a fantastic post from Terry Mattingly at Get Religion, in anticipation of you-know-what: You see, journalists who cover religion are all waiting for the arrival of the tidal wave that is a papal visit, which is kind of the Olympic games of the Godbeat, or, better yet, our version of a national political convention.…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/03\/the-real-issues.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2008-03-16T12:47:12+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/03\/the-real-issues.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/03\/the-real-issues.html","name":"The Real Issues - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-03-16T12:47:12+00:00","dateModified":"2008-03-16T12:47:12+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/03\/the-real-issues.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/03\/the-real-issues.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/03\/the-real-issues.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Real Issues"}]},{"@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\/490","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=490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}