{"id":5296,"date":"2006-10-13T10:13:00","date_gmt":"2006-10-13T10:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/inside-state.html"},"modified":"2006-10-13T10:13:00","modified_gmt":"2006-10-13T10:13:00","slug":"inside-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/inside-state.html","title":{"rendered":"Inside State"},"content":{"rendered":"

Edward Pentin at NCR(egister) on Cardinal Bertone and the Secretariat of State:<\/a><\/p>\n

Edward Pentin at NCR(egister) on Cardinal Bertone and the Secretariat of State: <\/p>\n

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Cardinal Bertone, a jurist rather than a Vatican diplomat, is reportedly relying extensively on the expertise of his diplomatically trained assistants in framing diplomatic policy and is not expected to take a hands-on role with respect to day-to-day management of Vatican foreign policy.<\/p>\n

Instead, the cardinal is delegating much of that oversight to others, including his secretary, Msgr. Nicholas Thevenin. A French priest who worked with the cardinal in Genoa , Msgr. Thevenin is known a \u201csharp and able\u201d diplomat who, unlike his superior, speaks fluent English. He previously served as a Vatican diplomat in Venezuela and Cuba and was reported to have come away with few illusions about the negative aspects of the socialist regimes of Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. <\/p>\n

In recent months, a number of diplomats say that they have detected a pronounced shift away from formal diplomacy under Benedict XVI, with more Vatican attention directed instead to interreligious dialogue and ecclesial and structural reform issues. <\/p>\n

But Cardinal Bertone\u2019s Sept. 29 speech signaled that the Holy See has no intention of abandoning its traditional involvement with the affairs of states. And last month\u2019s controversy over the Pope\u2019s University of Regensburg address was a reminder of the importance of that area, in the view of some members of the Vatican \u2019s diplomatic corps. \u201cIt\u2019s one thing for religious to deal with religious,\u201d says one diplomat speaking on condition of anonymity, \u201cbut the consequences of the crisis over Islam shows that the Holy See\u2019s relationships with states is of vital importance and sensitivity.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Note: For a "limited time" (they don’t say how long) NCR(egister) is making all of its articles available online.<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/blockquote>\n
<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Edward Pentin at NCR(egister) on Cardinal Bertone and the Secretariat of State: Edward Pentin at NCR(egister) on Cardinal Bertone and the Secretariat of State: Cardinal Bertone, a jurist rather than a Vatican diplomat, is reportedly relying extensively on the expertise of his diplomatically trained assistants in framing diplomatic policy and is not expected to take…<\/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-5296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nInside State - 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\/10\/inside-state.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Inside State - 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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\/5296","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=5296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5296\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}