{"id":497,"date":"2008-03-22T13:10:31","date_gmt":"2008-03-22T13:10:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2008\/03\/blogging-around.html"},"modified":"2008-03-22T13:10:31","modified_gmt":"2008-03-22T13:10:31","slug":"blogging-around","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/03\/blogging-around.html","title":{"rendered":"Blogging around"},"content":{"rendered":"

This will be a catch-all post, added to throughout the day…
\nFirst, I’m going to pretty much insist that you go vist Jen Ambrose’s blog for her photos and videos of the Holy Week services she’s attended in China.<\/a> It’s so moving – especially the brief video of a congregation singing Stabat Mater<\/em>, but in (I presume?) Mandarin. <\/a>
\nFr. Edward Oakes, SJ on atonement…and Atonement<\/em>.<\/a>
\n\u00a0David Scott takes on Bart Ehrman’s latest – on theodicy – at Godspy<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Ehrman, for all his talent and training as textual critic, never rises to the task of a biblical study of evil and innocent suffering. Instead, he builds God\u2019s Problem<\/i> to his own alternative to theodicy. Call it the Testament of Bart.
\nIt goes something like this: There\u2019s only this one life to live, hence we should live life to the fullest, seeking to avoid pain and to pursue the simple joys and pleasures of \u201cliving for the moment\u201d and working to make the world a better place for ourselves and others.
\nHe even offers a helpful checklist for how we can make the world a better place. We should fight poverty, genocide, bigotry, racism, discrimination \u201con the basis of gender or sexual orientation,\u201d and we should stop spending \u201cmillions on wars [the U.S.] cannot win to empower regimes that cannot survive.\u201d
\nProfessor Bart claims his philosophy is that espoused in the Book of Ecclesiastes. It wouldn\u2019t do any good to try to convince him he\u2019s wrong.
\nHe seems genuinely unaware that his philosophy is actually based on materialism and consumerism and defines happiness according to a bourgeoisie lifestyle unimaginable for most of the world\u2019s inhabitants: \u201cWe should make money and spend money. . . . We should enjoy food and drink. We should eat out and order unhealthy desserts, and we should cook steaks on the grill and drink Bordeaux. . . We should travel . . . \u201d
\nHis speech continues in this mid-life wish-listing vein for many more lines. These are the last words of God\u2019s Problem<\/i>.\u00a0
\nOne wants to be sympathetic to such a sincere cry of the heart. But one can\u2019t help wondering: Is this all there is to life\u2014pursuing a liberal social agenda while eating, drinking, and making merry?
\nWhat happens when we suffer, when people do us wrong, when we face persecution or attack for what we believe in, or for no reason at all? What happens when we age and realize that this is all we\u2019ve done with our lives? How would Ehrman\u2019s neo-Epicurean platitudes pull us through?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A nice NYTimes piece on a program providing teachers for inner-city Catholic schools.<\/a><\/p>\n

In 1970, more than half the teachers and administrators at Catholic elementary and secondary schools were unpaid clergy members. As of 2008, Ms. Helm said, clergy members account for about 5 percent of teachers. At the same time that nonwhite and often non-Catholic pupils are increasingly seeking out Catholic schools, the number of such schools in cities has been shrinking in the face of rising costs and insufficient revenue.
\nSt. Patrick\u2019s, where Mr. Encarnacion teaches, offers an archetypal example. The school, which runs from prekindergarten through eighth grade, is actually a merger of three schools. Roughly two-thirds of its 440 students are black Protestants. Of 26 full-time teachers and administrators, one is a member of the clergy.
\nAll of which helps explain how Mr. Encarnacion wound up on the third floor, teaching classes in both religion and science, toggling from the prophets to water pollution on any given day and throwing in vocabulary words and spelling quizzes in the process. He moves around his classroom in perpetual, purposeful motion, and the straining hands and quivering fingers of pupils waiting to answer his questions attest to his success.
\nMr. Encarnacion came to the Seton Hall program more experienced than many other participants. After graduating from the university in 2005, he both taught and managed in a chain of learning centers, until he grew miserable at spending his time meeting income targets and laying off staff members rather than working his magic with children.
\nUnder the Epics program, he receives a 50 percent discount on tuition at Seton Hall while he earns a required master\u2019s degree in education. Although he chose not to use it, he also was eligible for subsidized housing at a rectory in Jersey City. He is paid at the normal rate for teachers in the Newark Archdiocese, which starts in the low $30,000s.
\nThe inspiration and template for Epics \u2014 and for the similar programs at Catholic institutions like Boston College<\/font><\/a> and the University of San Francisco \u2014 is the Alliance for Catholic Education, based at Notre Dame. It began in 1994 with a political science professor, the Rev. Timothy R. Scully, who festooned the campus with fliers provocatively asking: \u201cTired of getting homework? Then give some. Be a teacher.\u201d
\nSome 200 students were curious enough to show up for an initial meeting. By now, the Notre Dame program draws applicants from 140 universities, some as far away as Ireland and Australia, and sends about 90 new teachers a year to Catholic schools, according to John Staud, director of pastoral formation and administration at Notre Dame. Seventy percent of the alliance program\u2019s teachers remain in Catholic education after concluding their required two-year stint.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This will be a catch-all post, added to throughout the day… First, I’m going to pretty much insist that you go vist Jen Ambrose’s blog for her photos and videos of the Holy Week services she’s attended in China. It’s so moving – especially the brief video of a congregation singing Stabat Mater, but in…<\/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-497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nBlogging around - 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\/blogging-around.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Blogging around - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This will be a catch-all post, added to throughout the day… First, I’m going to pretty much insist that you go vist Jen Ambrose’s blog for her photos and videos of the Holy Week services she’s attended in China. 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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\/497","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=497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}