{"id":6725,"date":"2006-07-22T00:29:10","date_gmt":"2006-07-22T00:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/the-sodano-code.html"},"modified":"2006-07-22T00:29:10","modified_gmt":"2006-07-22T00:29:10","slug":"the-sodano-code","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/the-sodano-code.html","title":{"rendered":"The Sodano Code"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the Weekly Standard, Jody Bottum tries to crack it:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Of course, in one sense, Sodano was merely indulging the kind of ritual statement–everybody’s wrong, but Israel most of all–that the Vatican has been issuing for decades. It didn’t mean much in 1973, and it doesn’t mean much now. <\/p>\n

In another sense, however, Sodano’s remarks on Vatican Radio–and similar statements by other Catholic figures, from the custodians of the holy places in Israel to the editorialists in the Vatican newspaper, L’Osserv atore Romano<\/em>–are most disturbing precisely because of their datedness. The situation in the Middle East is no longer simply a battle between Israelis and Palestinians. With the increasing <\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

role of the Iranians, and the refusal of the Arab League to involve itself, the fight doesn’t even really center around the Arabs. <\/p>\n

It is, rather, a war between the Islamists and the West–a proxy fight, in which the totalitarian governments of Syria and Iran have aimed the weapon of terrorism at modern democracies. And, for the Catholic Church, the answer cannot remain the old, ritual statements about the Middle East, dusted off one more time. John Paul II had a vision for confronting totalitarianism–a way of refusing government by the lie and naming things for what they are. It is time for the Vatican to apply that vision to the Middle East. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Weekly Standard, Jody Bottum tries to crack it: Of course, in one sense, Sodano was merely indulging the kind of ritual statement–everybody’s wrong, but Israel most of all–that the Vatican has been issuing for decades. It didn’t mean much in 1973, and it doesn’t mean much now. In another sense, however, Sodano’s remarks…<\/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-6725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Sodano Code - 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\/07\/the-sodano-code.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Sodano Code - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the Weekly Standard, Jody Bottum tries to crack it: Of course, in one sense, Sodano was merely indulging the kind of ritual statement–everybody’s wrong, but Israel most of all–that the Vatican has been issuing for decades. 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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\/6725","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=6725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6725\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}