{"id":6405,"date":"2006-08-21T08:56:40","date_gmt":"2006-08-21T08:56:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/lights-lights.html"},"modified":"2006-08-21T08:56:40","modified_gmt":"2006-08-21T08:56:40","slug":"lights-lights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/lights-lights.html","title":{"rendered":"Lights! Lights!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Okay, now, in one of the churches around here, the traditionally ethnic German parish which is magnificent condition and only been minimally &quot;renovated,&quot; there are lights. <\/p>\n<p>What I mean by that is that the high altar and both side altars &#8211; totally Gothic in every way &#8211; are outlined and filled in, as it were, by lightbulbs. <\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" height=\"320\" src=\"https:\/\/img247.imageshack.us\/img247\/3223\/0105photoov2.jpg\" width=\"440\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/familytreemaker.genealogy.com\/users\/w\/h\/e\/John-M-Wheat\/PHOTO\/0105photo.html\">Original photo, of this First Communion from 1950, here.<\/a> No, you can&#8217;t see any lightbulbs, but you can understand where they are &#8211; outlining the general shape, then up and down the small pillars and outlining the other small arches, etc.<\/p>\n<p>These lights aren&#8217;t on during most of Mass &#8211; they&#8217;re turned on when the priest begins distributing Communion. The first time we went there, it was absolutely startling and almost funny, teetering dangerously on the edge of kitsch. But it has its advantages, and is now even vaguely comforting,&nbsp; especially with small children, who are taught to sit quietly and watch, in great expectation, for the lights. Problem is when said children are too young to control their excitement at the LIGHTS! which then defeats the purpose of the exercise.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, I was inspired to post this because of a photo I ran across in the indisepensible <a href=\"http:\/\/freeforumzone.leonardo.it\/viewmessaggi.aspx?f=65482&amp;idd=446&amp;p=30\">Papa Ratzinger Forum<\/a>, related to an article they published about Fr. Ratzinger&#8217;s first parish assignment. Photo after the jump, so we can all control our excitement before we see it:<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" height=\"571\" src=\"https:\/\/i3.ebayimg.com\/01\/i\/08\/16\/0b\/31_10.JPG\" width=\"384\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>LIGHTS! LIGHTS!<\/p>\n<p>So&#8230;is this a <em>German<\/em> thing? <\/p>\n<p>Phew!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Okay, now, in one of the churches around here, the traditionally ethnic German parish which is magnificent condition and only been minimally &quot;renovated,&quot; there are lights. What I mean by that is that the high altar and both side altars &#8211; totally Gothic in every way &#8211; are outlined and filled in, as it were,&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-6405","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>Lights! Lights! - 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\/08\/lights-lights.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lights! Lights! - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Okay, now, in one of the churches around here, the traditionally ethnic German parish which is magnificent condition and only been minimally &quot;renovated,&quot; there are lights. What I mean by that is that the high altar and both side altars &#8211; totally Gothic in every way &#8211; are outlined and filled in, as it were,&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/lights-lights.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-08-21T08:56:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/img247.imageshack.us\/img247\/3223\/0105photoov2.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Lights! 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What I mean by that is that the high altar and both side altars &#8211; totally Gothic in every way &#8211; are outlined and filled in, as it were,&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/lights-lights.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-08-21T08:56:40+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/img247.imageshack.us\/img247\/3223\/0105photoov2.jpg"}],"author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/lights-lights.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/lights-lights.html","name":"Lights! 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Lights!"}]},{"@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\/6405","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=6405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6405\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}