{"id":6020,"date":"2005-12-29T01:30:58","date_gmt":"2005-12-29T01:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/back-to-huffpo.html"},"modified":"2005-12-29T01:30:58","modified_gmt":"2005-12-29T01:30:58","slug":"back-to-huffpo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/back-to-huffpo.html","title":{"rendered":"Back to HuffPo"},"content":{"rendered":"

As noted below,there’s an insane post at the Huffington Post that twists the words of Benedict’s Urbi et Orbi<\/em> message to give the impression that he’s condemning intellectual achievement, an interpretation that’s gleefully seized on by commentors there, confirming their communal wisdom about the evils of the medieval, backwards, oppressive church. It’s bizarre, frankly, and in  a way, a minority view, but…not totally. There is, indeed, a kind of anti-Catholicism among the left that sees the institution as essentially obscurantist, because you know, there was Galileo, and there’s AIDS, or so sez Bill Maher, Al Franken and HuffPo.<\/p>\n

One has to wonder, though.<\/p>\n

At all of of those Catholic universities<\/em> around the world…what are they teaching (shut up, smart aleck from the Cardinal Newman Society…yeah, you<\/strong>. Stick with me on this one)…<\/em>are there no departments of science or mathematics in those institutions? Do the students sit around with an abacus and a spyglass, vainly tilted at the heavens? <\/p>\n

At all of those Catholic hospitals<\/em> around the world…what’s going on? Are all of those surgeries just facades, behind which priests shake holy water and nuns finger beads? Well, if so, perhaps we’d better rethink this whole "medicine" thing after all!<\/p>\n

And what about this thing – this Pontifical Academy of Science<\/a>, "Pontifical" having to do with, you know, the POPE. Look at the papers it’s published: "Accordian-like vibrations of long chain molecules" "New developments in neurobiological research." "Infrared and Raman spectra of 1,2-dichloroethane and its deuterium compound in the gaseous, liquid and solid states."<\/p>\n

Anti-scientific clerical oppressors!<\/p>\n

What about these conferences, sponsored by the Vatican over the past decade or so:<\/p>\n

On cosmology<\/a><\/p>\n

On the human genome<\/a><\/p>\n

On biotechnology and crops, and one on depression as mental illness<\/a><\/p>\n

On water and the environment<\/a><\/p>\n

On end-of-life issues and palliative care<\/a><\/p>\n

On "Science and the future of humanity"<\/a><\/p>\n

On immigration<\/a><\/p>\n

On "Mind, Brain and Education" and on Stem Cell Research – do go to this one and check out the papers and scholars involved.<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>On "Pastoral Care for the Liberation of Street Women"<\/a><\/p>\n

On "The Family and the Integration of the Disabled"<\/a><\/p>\n

And on, and on and on…we haven’t even touched on the conferences and working groups on philosophy, history, the arts and yes, theology.<\/p>\n

(insert obligatory Vatican Observatory reference here)<\/a><\/p>\n

Show me a global institution more<\/em> dedicated to learning, to integrating intellectual work and  real world problems. Show me. I dare you.<\/p>\n

Beyond the ignorance of reality, the mindset so doggedly opposed to religion and ethical considerations is mind-boggling. But, you know, you get what you pay for. You want science unfettered by the inconvenient questions and challenges of an ethically-grounded world view?<\/p>\n

Okay. There you go! Good luck with that!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As noted below,there’s an insane post at the Huffington Post that twists the words of Benedict’s Urbi et Orbi message to give the impression that he’s condemning intellectual achievement, an interpretation that’s gleefully seized on by commentors there, confirming their communal wisdom about the evils of the medieval, backwards, oppressive church. It’s bizarre, frankly, and…<\/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-6020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nBack to HuffPo - 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\/back-to-huffpo.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Back to HuffPo - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As noted below,there’s an insane post at the Huffington Post that twists the words of Benedict’s Urbi et Orbi message to give the impression that he’s condemning intellectual achievement, an interpretation that’s gleefully seized on by commentors there, confirming their communal wisdom about the evils of the medieval, backwards, oppressive church. It’s bizarre, frankly, and…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/back-to-huffpo.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-12-29T01:30:58+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":"Back to HuffPo - 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\/back-to-huffpo.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Back to HuffPo - Via Media","og_description":"As noted below,there’s an insane post at the Huffington Post that twists the words of Benedict’s Urbi et Orbi message to give the impression that he’s condemning intellectual achievement, an interpretation that’s gleefully seized on by commentors there, confirming their communal wisdom about the evils of the medieval, backwards, oppressive church. 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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\/6020","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=6020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6020\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}