{"id":5533,"date":"2006-09-28T13:46:46","date_gmt":"2006-09-28T13:46:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/people-of-the-book.html"},"modified":"2006-09-28T13:46:46","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T13:46:46","slug":"people-of-the-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/people-of-the-book.html","title":{"rendered":"People of the Book"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

The Pope and Henry Kissinger, today.<\/p>\n

Benedict also met with the new German ambassador to the Vatican today:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Believing that each person is created in the image of God, the Catholic Church hopes all people will come to know the Gospel, but its primary approach to other religions and cultures must be one of tolerance and openness, Pope Benedict XVI said.<\/p>\n

During a Sept. 28 meeting at his summer villa in Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome, Pope Benedict welcomed Hans-Henning Horstmann as Germany’s new ambassador to the Vatican.<\/p>\n

Faith, the pope told him, increases people’s commitment to the common good, which is marked by defending the life and dignity of all people, including those of other faiths and cultures.<\/p>\n

"The church does not impose itself," the pope said. "It does not force anyone to accept the Gospel message because faith in Jesus Christ, whom the church proclaims, can only happen in freedom. For this reason, encounters with others must be marked by tolerance and cultural openness."<\/p>\n

However, Pope Benedict said, tolerance, respect and openness "must never be confused with indifference, which is the opposite of the deep Christian interest in human beings and their good."<\/p>\n

"True tolerance presupposes respect for the other, for the human being, who was created by God and whose existence was willed by God," the pope said.<\/p>\n

The Christian faith motivates Catholics to defend the "dignity, integrity and freedom" of each person, Pope Benedict said, and to work with all people of good will in defending others.<\/p>\n

The good of humanity is what leads the church to defend traditional marriage and family life, he said, and to oppose abortion, including cases in which a baby may be severely handicapped, because every human life "has value for God."<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Pope and Henry Kissinger, today. Benedict also met with the new German ambassador to the Vatican today: Believing that each person is created in the image of God, the Catholic Church hopes all people will come to know the Gospel, but its primary approach to other religions and cultures must be one of tolerance…<\/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-5533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nPeople of the Book - 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\/09\/people-of-the-book.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"People of the Book - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Pope and Henry Kissinger, today. Benedict also met with the new German ambassador to the Vatican today: Believing that each person is created in the image of God, the Catholic Church hopes all people will come to know the Gospel, but its primary approach to other religions and cultures must be one of tolerance…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/people-of-the-book.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-09-28T13:46:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/d.yimg.com\/us.yimg.com\/p\/rids\/20060928\/i\/r847146771.jpg?x=297&y=345&sig=vZbgJkhh3i1ENlxyzSXJFg--\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"People of the Book - 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\/09\/people-of-the-book.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"People of the Book - Via Media","og_description":"The Pope and Henry Kissinger, today. Benedict also met with the new German ambassador to the Vatican today: Believing that each person is created in the image of God, the Catholic Church hopes all people will come to know the Gospel, but its primary approach to other religions and cultures must be one of tolerance…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/people-of-the-book.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-09-28T13:46:46+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/d.yimg.com\/us.yimg.com\/p\/rids\/20060928\/i\/r847146771.jpg?x=297&y=345&sig=vZbgJkhh3i1ENlxyzSXJFg--"}],"author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/people-of-the-book.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/people-of-the-book.html","name":"People of the Book - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/people-of-the-book.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/people-of-the-book.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/d.yimg.com\/us.yimg.com\/p\/rids\/20060928\/i\/r847146771.jpg?x=297&y=345&sig=vZbgJkhh3i1ENlxyzSXJFg--","datePublished":"2006-09-28T13:46:46+00:00","dateModified":"2006-09-28T13:46:46+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/people-of-the-book.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/people-of-the-book.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/people-of-the-book.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/d.yimg.com\/us.yimg.com\/p\/rids\/20060928\/i\/r847146771.jpg?x=297&y=345&sig=vZbgJkhh3i1ENlxyzSXJFg--","contentUrl":"http:\/\/d.yimg.com\/us.yimg.com\/p\/rids\/20060928\/i\/r847146771.jpg?x=297&y=345&sig=vZbgJkhh3i1ENlxyzSXJFg--"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/people-of-the-book.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"People of the Book"}]},{"@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\/5533","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=5533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5533\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}