{"id":6117,"date":"2005-06-27T14:55:52","date_gmt":"2005-06-27T14:55:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/06\/the-whole-truth.html"},"modified":"2005-06-27T14:55:52","modified_gmt":"2005-06-27T14:55:52","slug":"the-whole-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/06\/the-whole-truth.html","title":{"rendered":"The whole truth…"},"content":{"rendered":"

A reader comments:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

This past Saturday night we attended the Mass for the 50th Anniversary of our parish, celebrated by the Archbishop, who introduced the new pastor, who will take over next month. Not mentioned by either the Archbishop or the pastor-designate, probably for obvious reasons, was the priest’s last job, except for a veiled reference to "fine administrative work with a difficult situation".<\/span><\/p>\n

I then read an interesting story on the front page of the Metro Section of this morning’s NYT<\/u> : <\/span>http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/06\/27\/nyregion\/27catholic.html<\/span><\/u><\/a> .<\/span><\/p>\n

The morning after our bishop and our new pastor were extending best wishes to one worshipping community in a rich suburb, these two leaders closed another worshipping community in a poorer part of the County, not all that far away.<\/span><\/p>\n

I in no way envy them their unpleasant job of consolidating aging and shrinking parishes, but right now I feel that their hierarchical self-congratulations were the height of dishonesty.  <\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Related: Coping with parish closings in Toledo<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

This is unrelated to the correspondent’s note, but just in general, about parish closings. So very much of this is demographics, and hardly anyone every tries to bring all the numbers together and make sense of it . Parishes bursting in NoVa and Houston (and countless other places), closing in Toledo, Boston, and so on…Given the capital, I’ve no doubt that you could open scores of new Catholic schools in the Sunbelt and the South, and they’d all be full in a week. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A reader comments: This past Saturday night we attended the Mass for the 50th Anniversary of our parish, celebrated by the Archbishop, who introduced the new pastor, who will take over next month. Not mentioned by either the Archbishop or the pastor-designate, probably for obvious reasons, was the priest’s last job, except for a veiled…<\/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-6117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe whole truth... - 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\/06\/the-whole-truth.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The whole truth... - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A reader comments: This past Saturday night we attended the Mass for the 50th Anniversary of our parish, celebrated by the Archbishop, who introduced the new pastor, who will take over next month. 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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\/6117","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=6117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6117\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}