{"id":6018,"date":"2005-12-30T09:50:22","date_gmt":"2005-12-30T09:50:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/the-first-nine-months.html"},"modified":"2005-12-30T09:50:22","modified_gmt":"2005-12-30T09:50:22","slug":"the-first-nine-months","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/the-first-nine-months.html","title":{"rendered":"The first nine months"},"content":{"rendered":"

In The Tablet, Robert Mickens looks at the B16 papacy so far, and into 2006:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

But now as the world gets set to ring in 2006, many people are wondering if the new calendar year will be the point at which Benedict XVI resolves to stop being the caretaker of the John Paul II legacy and sets about putting his own mark on the papacy. One thing is for certain: he will have the opportunity to do so in the coming months when he issues his first encyclical, creates a dozen or more new cardinals, and makes two or three journeys around Europe. <\/p>\n

And there is still the expectation that the Pope will eventually begin making changes to the Vatican bureaucracy. As far as an overall programme for his pontificate, Pope Benedict has only said that it is \u201cnot to do [his] own will\u201d and \u201cnot to emanate many documents\u201d. But in what may be his most important speech so far (on 22 December to Roman Curia officials) he outlined what most closely approaches his agenda: to motivate the Church to develop the \u201cdialogue between reason and faith \u2026 with great open-mindedness\u201d, based on the Second Vatican Council. <\/p>\n

Pope Benedict XVI will have been Bishop of Rome for nearly nine months when his first encyclical letter is finally issued some time in January. Though many people have become mercilessly impatient with the wait, they should remember that even though the first three popes of the past century (Leo XIII, St Pius X and Benedict XV) issued their introductory encyclicals within two months of assuming the papacy, Pope Paul VI only published his 14 months after his election. The five months it took Pope John Paul II to produce his first encyclical in 1979 is, only relatively, fresher in memory. While these popes used their first encyclicals to outline the programme of their pontificates, Vatican officials who have seen Pope Benedict\u2019s letter say he does not do so. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In The Tablet, Robert Mickens looks at the B16 papacy so far, and into 2006: But now as the world gets set to ring in 2006, many people are wondering if the new calendar year will be the point at which Benedict XVI resolves to stop being the caretaker of the John Paul II legacy…<\/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-6018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe first nine months - 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\/2005\/12\/the-first-nine-months.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The first nine months - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In The Tablet, Robert Mickens looks at the B16 papacy so far, and into 2006: But now as the world gets set to ring in 2006, many people are wondering if the new calendar year will be the point at which Benedict XVI resolves to stop being the caretaker of the John Paul II legacy…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/the-first-nine-months.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-12-30T09:50:22+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":"The first nine months - 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\/2005\/12\/the-first-nine-months.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The first nine months - Via Media","og_description":"In The Tablet, Robert Mickens looks at the B16 papacy so far, and into 2006: But now as the world gets set to ring in 2006, many people are wondering if the new calendar year will be the point at which Benedict XVI resolves to stop being the caretaker of the John Paul II legacy…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/the-first-nine-months.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2005-12-30T09:50:22+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/the-first-nine-months.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/the-first-nine-months.html","name":"The first nine months - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2005-12-30T09:50:22+00:00","dateModified":"2005-12-30T09:50:22+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/the-first-nine-months.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/the-first-nine-months.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/the-first-nine-months.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The first nine months"}]},{"@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\/6018","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=6018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6018\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}