{"id":587,"date":"2008-04-21T14:24:56","date_gmt":"2008-04-21T14:24:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2008\/04\/thinking-about-the-pope.html"},"modified":"2008-04-21T14:24:56","modified_gmt":"2008-04-21T14:24:56","slug":"thinking-about-the-pope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/04\/thinking-about-the-pope.html","title":{"rendered":"Thinking about the Pope"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s a lot of good reflection out there, and since I have a million things to do, I beg your forgiveness for highlighting only\u00a0one at this moment – feel free to add your own links to the comments.
\nJen at Et, Tu – former atheist, one of the best writers in the Catholic blog world:<\/a><\/p>\n

Though I’d read work by other Christians who laid out logical, reasonable cases for their beliefs, there was something about Pope Benedict’s particular style that reminded me of the people I knew growing up. Many times I thought that if my father and his scientist friends were to become believers and write books about why they believed, this is what it would look like. When I read his encyclicals<\/span><\/a>, excerpt from speeches and books like Journey to Easter<\/span><\/span><\/a> and Jesus of Nazareth<\/span><\/span><\/a>, I didn’t feel so lost in the Christian world anymore. I learned what it means to have faith, and that faith and reason go hand in hand. I learned that the zeal for knowledge and truth that I’d seen in my nonreligious upbringing could not only be found in Christianity, but was in fact one of its defining characteristics.
\nMy new home started to feel as comfortable as my old home.
\nI’ve often quipped to my husband that Pope Benedict would make a good atheist. Not just because of his emphasis logic and reason and insistence on looking at the evidence that supports his faith, since that is a hallmark of many great Christian thinkers, but because of a certain je ne sais quoi<\/span> that I recognize from the world of intellectual atheism. I see in him a particular combination of wonder based on reason, an ability to convey his passion for his beliefs without even appealing to emotion, and a completely fearless pursuit of truth that I’ve always seen in many of my atheist friends and family members whom I admire.
\nAs I sat in my living room yesterday, watching the light of Shepherd One slowly grow brighter as it neared the American airport, I felt overwhelmed with gratitude for our Pope. I’ve heard the term “JPII Catholics” used to describe the generation of people who were inspired by the great Pope John Paul II. I think I’m a “BXVI Catholic.” This Pope has spoken to me in a way I never though a lifelong believer could, and has inspired in me an excitement about my faith that I never though possible. When I saw him step off the plane, it was with deep emotion that I welcomed to my earthly home the man who helped welcome me to my spiritual home.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a lot of good reflection out there, and since I have a million things to do, I beg your forgiveness for highlighting only\u00a0one at this moment – feel free to add your own links to the comments. Jen at Et, Tu – former atheist, one of the best writers in the Catholic blog world:…<\/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-587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThinking about the Pope - 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\/04\/thinking-about-the-pope.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Thinking about the Pope - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There’s a lot of good reflection out there, and since I have a million things to do, I beg your forgiveness for highlighting only\u00a0one at this moment – feel free to add your own links to the comments. 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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\/587","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=587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}