{"id":5838,"date":"2006-01-04T01:54:44","date_gmt":"2006-01-04T01:54:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/the-visitation-so-far.html"},"modified":"2006-01-04T01:54:44","modified_gmt":"2006-01-04T01:54:44","slug":"the-visitation-so-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/the-visitation-so-far.html","title":{"rendered":"The Visitation so far…"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Allen reports a possible "tightening up" of moral teaching.<\/a><\/p>\n

Well, that would be nice.<\/p>\n

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With approximately a third of the visits to 229 seminaries, colleges, and houses of formation in the United States already complete, and the rest scheduled for the first half of 2006, most bishops who have led visitation teams say they see the process as a matter of \u201cfine-tuning,\u201d rather than remedying systemic problems. Several bishops have likened the visitation to an academic accreditation process, helping institutions to build on strengths and correct weaknesses.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe one result will be to show great trust in our seminaries,\u201d said Bishop Gregory Aymond of Austin, Texas.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy and large, rectors, staff, and professors are doing a very, very good job,\u201d Aymond told NCR<\/em> Dec. 22. \u201cSometimes they\u2019ve been unfairly criticized, as if every problem a priest later has is the fault of the seminary. That\u2019s always been wrong. These are men and women who have given their lives to seminary formation, and they deserve our confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

To date, the visits have left a sour taste in only one spot, the University of St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein, Ill. There, two visitors out of an 11-member team reportedly asked questions about the sexual practices of seminarians that risked invading their consciences, or \u201cinternal forum.\u201d In response, the rector confronted those visitors with the support of the archbishop heading the team, ending the questioning.<\/p>\n

Most interviewed for this report told NCR<\/em> that Mundelein\u2019s case is exceptional, and that most visits have been \u201ccordial\u201d and \u201csupportive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, some bishops privately told NCR<\/em> that the visits may provide cover for seminaries and houses of formation, especially those run by religious orders, which are sometimes unjustly criticized for lax oversight or ambiguity on church teaching.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Quite interesting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Allen reports a possible "tightening up" of moral teaching. Well, that would be nice. With approximately a third of the visits to 229 seminaries, colleges, and houses of formation in the United States already complete, and the rest scheduled for the first half of 2006, most bishops who have led visitation teams say they…<\/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-5838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Visitation so far... - 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\/01\/the-visitation-so-far.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Visitation so far... - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"John Allen reports a possible "tightening up" of moral teaching. 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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\/5838","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=5838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5838\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}