{"id":496,"date":"2008-03-24T08:59:44","date_gmt":"2008-03-24T08:59:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2008\/03\/man-of-mystery.html"},"modified":"2008-03-24T08:59:44","modified_gmt":"2008-03-24T08:59:44","slug":"man-of-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/03\/man-of-mystery.html","title":{"rendered":"Man of mystery!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/insightscoop.typepad.com\/2004\/2008\/03\/benedict-xvi-in.html\">Carl Olson does a nice job with this one:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>What happens when an American journalist with a typically dualistic &#8220;conservative vs. liberal&#8221;, politics-are-everything perspective tries to understand Pope Benedict XVI? He becomes a bit befuddled, as does Gerry Stern, in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/news\/religion\/2008-03-23-pope3years_N.htm\"><font color=\"#003366\">a piece posted<\/font><\/a> by <em>USA Today <\/em>titled, &#8220;Benedict still a mystery after 3 years as pope&#8221;:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I have a suggestion for other befuddled journos out there:<br \/>\nOkay, a few suggestions:<br \/>\n1) Questions assumptions. Part of the paradigm that&#8217;s being constructed in B16-coverage is that JPII was a &#8220;Rock star&#8221; who was beloved by many and B16 is more of a&#8230;mystery.\u00a0 It might be fruitful to consider the possibility that<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<div>some, if not many of those who were truly inspired by John Paul II are, indeed <em>not <\/em>mystified by Benedict and might even understand what he&#8217;s about. It&#8217;s just that anyone who would have taken the time to read at least some of JPII&#8217;s writings and learn from them was <em>probably <\/em>(I&#8217;m just guessing here) not going to shut down once JPII passed away, plug up their ears and sing &#8220;la-la-la&#8221; when B16 started to speak.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>2) So, given that possibility&#8230;might we try to find some of these people?<br \/>\nI&#8217;m serious. This is not a joke post. This is for real, because this &#8220;no one really gets Benedict&#8221; meme is out there and getting reinforced by the day.\u00a0 You have to go beyond the rolodex of Catholic punditry, but you might try the following:<br \/>\n1) The books and other works of Benedict have sold very well in the three years since he was elected Pope. Talk to people at Our Sunday Visitor, Ignatius, Doubleday and the Vatican publishing house about this. People are buying works by and about him, and they are not all &#8220;Church insiders.&#8221; And they are not buying the books because they are befuddled by the mysterious Benedict and darned if they&#8217;re not going to figure the guy out.<br \/>\n2) Explore the Internet &#8211; the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/freeforumzone.leonardo.it\/cartella.aspx?c=65482&amp;f=65482&amp;idc=12058\">Papa Ratzinger Forum<\/a>. <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/theratzingerforum.yuku.com\/\">The Pope Benedict XVI Fan Club Discussion Board<\/a>, leaping over the ocean if you want, check out the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.papanews.it\/default.asp#a\">Petrus news site. <\/a>\u00a0Look at this <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/catholicblogs.blogspot.com\/#PRIESTS\">list of blogging Catholic\u00a0clergy and religious\u00a0and contact some of them<\/a>\u00a0about what they know about and think of Benedict.<br \/>\n3) <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"\/viamedia\/2008\/02\/preparing-for-the-pope.html\">Look at this thread &#8211; a modest thread from this blog <\/a>(and I&#8217;d invite you folks to add to it!) in which readers discuss their own impressions of Pope Benedict.<br \/>\nThe point is, claiming that &#8220;Benedict is still a mystery&#8221; doesn&#8217;t seem to me to be an assertion that belongs in a news article. It&#8217;s in the same category (or even worse) as claiming that &#8220;many believe&#8221; something without any evidence that, in fact, &#8220;many believe&#8221; that thing at all. (Just as the phrase &#8220;critics say&#8221; can function as a way\u00a0of framing a story around a writer&#8217;s own opnion or agenda). I mean, how is &#8220;Benedict is still a mystery&#8221; a news story? Are there big questions being raised on Catholic blogs or in Catholic parishes or chanceries in which people are sitting around scratching their heads wondering, &#8220;Who is Benedict? I just don&#8217;t <em>get <\/em>him?&#8221; Are they publishing articles and holding meetings to address the mystery?<br \/>\nTo begin a news article with the assertion\u00a0that &#8220;Benedict is still a mystery&#8221; is not, in fact, news reporting. It&#8217;s the creation of a thesis and then finding voices to support the thesis.\u00a0 It would be fantastic if, over the next month, journalists could get back to basics, stop trying to create stories and simply report: <em>This is who Benedict is. This is what he writes about. This is what he talks about. These are the ideas that have formed his intellectual life and spirituality. <\/em><br \/>\nMystery solved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Carl Olson does a nice job with this one: What happens when an American journalist with a typically dualistic &#8220;conservative vs. liberal&#8221;, politics-are-everything perspective tries to understand Pope Benedict XVI? He becomes a bit befuddled, as does Gerry Stern, in a piece posted by USA Today titled, &#8220;Benedict still a mystery after 3 years as&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-496","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>Man of mystery! - 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\/man-of-mystery.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Man of mystery! - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Carl Olson does a nice job with this one: What happens when an American journalist with a typically dualistic &#8220;conservative vs. liberal&#8221;, politics-are-everything perspective tries to understand Pope Benedict XVI? He becomes a bit befuddled, as does Gerry Stern, in a piece posted by USA Today titled, &#8220;Benedict still a mystery after 3 years as&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/03\/man-of-mystery.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-03-24T08:59:44+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":"Man of mystery! - 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\/man-of-mystery.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Man of mystery! - Via Media","og_description":"Carl Olson does a nice job with this one: What happens when an American journalist with a typically dualistic &#8220;conservative vs. liberal&#8221;, politics-are-everything perspective tries to understand Pope Benedict XVI? 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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\/496","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=496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}