{"id":6006,"date":"2006-09-08T13:14:35","date_gmt":"2006-09-08T13:14:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/all-things-catholic-1.html"},"modified":"2006-09-08T13:14:35","modified_gmt":"2006-09-08T13:14:35","slug":"all-things-catholic-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/all-things-catholic-1.html","title":{"rendered":"All Things Catholic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalcatholicreporter.org\/word\/\">John Allen&#8217;s weekly column has been posted<\/a> with a good, detailed examination of the peace gathering at Assisi &#8211; not the gathering itself, but the Pope&#8217;s words on such gatherings, past and present:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Andrea Riccardi, the founder of Sant&#8217;Egidio, was asked at a Sept. 5 press conference if Benedict was &quot;suffocating the spirit of Assisi while preserving its letter.&quot; In reply, Riccardi said he&#8217;s been around the block on the issue of inter-religious dialogue for more than twenty years.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I think I understand the logic of messages and texts from the church on the subject,&quot; Riccardi said. &quot;When I defend what the pope said, it&#8217;s not merely because I&#8217;m obliged to defend it. Relativism was a concern not just of Benedict but also of John Paul II.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Riccardi pointed out that Ratzinger had attended the 2002 event. On that day, participants were transported from Rome to Assisi on the rarely-used papal train (dubbed by the Italian press the &quot;peace train.&quot;) Riccardi said he spoke with Ratzinger on the train back to Rome, and that Ratzinger said the summit &quot;had gone very well, he was very happy with it.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I would rather say that Ratzinger the theologian is reformulating the spirit of Assisi,&quot; Riccardi said of Benedict&#8217;s message for the Sant&#8217;Egidio event, and his general approach to exchanges with other religions.<\/p>\n<p>Benedict still wants conversation with other religions, but also greater safeguards against the dangers of religious relativism, Ricardi suggested.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;The pope knows we have to dialogue,&quot; Riccardi said, pointing especially to Benedict&#8217;s desire for exchanges with Muslims.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Allen goes on to look at then-Cardinal Ratzinger&#8217;s writings on inter-religious and multi-religious prayer. Interesting, and a close look you&#8217;ll not find elsewhere.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">An Opus Dei bishop on tour&#8230;the USCCB role in the MPAA?&#8230;the Capuchins&#8217; election&#8230;and more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Allen&#8217;s weekly column has been posted with a good, detailed examination of the peace gathering at Assisi &#8211; not the gathering itself, but the Pope&#8217;s words on such gatherings, past and present: Andrea Riccardi, the founder of Sant&#8217;Egidio, was asked at a Sept. 5 press conference if Benedict was &quot;suffocating the spirit of Assisi&hellip;<\/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-6006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>All Things Catholic - 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\/all-things-catholic-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"All Things Catholic - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"John Allen&#8217;s weekly column has been posted with a good, detailed examination of the peace gathering at Assisi &#8211; not the gathering itself, but the Pope&#8217;s words on such gatherings, past and present: Andrea Riccardi, the founder of Sant&#8217;Egidio, was asked at a Sept. 5 press conference if Benedict was &quot;suffocating the spirit of Assisi&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/all-things-catholic-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-09-08T13:14:35+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"All Things Catholic - 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\/all-things-catholic-1.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"All Things Catholic - Via Media","og_description":"John Allen&#8217;s weekly column has been posted with a good, detailed examination of the peace gathering at Assisi &#8211; not the gathering itself, but the Pope&#8217;s words on such gatherings, past and present: Andrea Riccardi, the founder of Sant&#8217;Egidio, was asked at a Sept. 5 press conference if Benedict was &quot;suffocating the spirit of Assisi&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/all-things-catholic-1.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-09-08T13:14:35+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/all-things-catholic-1.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/all-things-catholic-1.html","name":"All Things Catholic - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-09-08T13:14:35+00:00","dateModified":"2006-09-08T13:14:35+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/all-things-catholic-1.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/all-things-catholic-1.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/all-things-catholic-1.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"All Things Catholic"}]},{"@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\/6006","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=6006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6006\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}