{"id":589,"date":"2008-04-22T08:46:13","date_gmt":"2008-04-22T08:46:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2008\/04\/welcome-readers.html"},"modified":"2008-04-22T08:46:13","modified_gmt":"2008-04-22T08:46:13","slug":"welcome-readers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/04\/welcome-readers.html","title":{"rendered":"Welcome, readers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Especially new readers.\u00a0 With the Pope safely back in Rome and that <\/em>over and done with, regular blogging will resume – which means, not very often.
\nIt’s another busy day around here – yet more painters – so I’ll point you to Christopher Blosser’s great roundup of papal coverage and analysis\u00a0links<\/a>\u00a0and in particular his comments on Catholic News Service’s interesting choice of “theology students” to feature in a response piece<\/a>
\n\u00a0Update:\u00a0 <\/span>Over at the Mirror of Justice blog, there have been several posts concerning what Benedict said about academic freedom and in his speech at the UN. Well worth pondering. <\/a>
\nFrom Fr. Robert Araujo, SJ’s most recent post:<\/p>\n

\n

The Holy Father spoke at some length on an issue that is receiving increasing attention in international legal discussions, i.e., the responsibility to protect. This responsibility has two dimensions. The more obvious one involves the rights of nations to protect their own populations from \u201cgrave and sustained violations of human rights\u201d and from the consequences of natural and man-made humanitarian crises. However, if a State is incapable or unwilling to meet this responsibility, then the international community has an obligation to intervene. But this latter duty is not without limit for the proper sovereignty of peoples and their governments must be respected. The preferred means of addressing these needs is through diplomatic channels; however, other means, presumably including the use of necessary and proportionate force, may be considered if negotiations and diplomatic efforts fail.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

It would have been surprising if the Holy Father did not address the role of the natural law that has been crucial to the growth of international legal norms. Pope Benedict began this portion of his discourse by reminding the audience of the contribution of the Dominican, Francis de Vitoria, to the foundation of international law. (I am sure that the question of time necessitated the deletion of the equally important contributions of the Jesuit, Francis Su\u00e1rez!) It is within their noteworthy treatises on legal theory that both developed the idea of the \u201cresponsibility to protect\u201d that is the product of natural reason that exists among all peoples. At the foundation of this \u201cnatural reason\u201d is the principle that everyone bears the image of the Creator, the reality of which is at the core of human rights and the recognition of the dignity of the human person. The Holy Father lost no time in connecting this point with the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that will be celebrated later this year. Benedict emphasized that the Universal Declaration was the product of different cultural and religious traditions that were nonetheless capable of recognizing certain fundamental principles about human nature and the corresponding rights and responsibilities that were discovered through the application of natural reason, the bedrock of the natural law.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Especially new readers.\u00a0 With the Pope safely back in Rome and that over and done with, regular blogging will resume – which means, not very often. It’s another busy day around here – yet more painters – so I’ll point you to Christopher Blosser’s great roundup of papal coverage and analysis\u00a0links\u00a0and in particular his comments…<\/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-589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nWelcome, readers - 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\/welcome-readers.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Welcome, readers - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Especially new readers.\u00a0 With the Pope safely back in Rome and that over and done with, regular blogging will resume – which means, not very often. 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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\/589","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=589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}