{"id":6919,"date":"2006-06-26T22:50:17","date_gmt":"2006-06-26T22:50:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/a-catholic-mystery-writer.html"},"modified":"2006-06-26T22:50:17","modified_gmt":"2006-06-26T22:50:17","slug":"a-catholic-mystery-writer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/a-catholic-mystery-writer.html","title":{"rendered":"A Catholic Mystery Writer"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Touchstone, Austin Ruse contemplates the mysteries of John Allen<\/a><\/p>\n

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Allen has achieved something remarkable, though, and that is genuine dialogue among sometimes competing voices in the church. He has written often about the lamentable factions among the faithful, each with its own publications, conferences, sympathetic bishops, and so on. His observation is that these groups tend not to talk to each other, but to shout past each other.<\/p>\n

But Allen has built a space where progressives and conservatives do speak directly to each other, at least through him. And he has achieved this by being remarkably fair to the side with which his sympathies do not lie\u2014that is, to conservatives, who have grown to trust him. All the while the progressives may grumble, but they figure Allen is still one of them, and they are probably right.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A good, fair piece. I think Ruse also gets something else right, something I’ve been trying to articulate in this space of late, in re Catholic abortion rights supporting politicians:<\/p>\n

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Allen attempted to improve the progressive argument through a carefully crafted hypothetical question he repeatedly asked priests, theologians, and bishops: If a Catholic politician agreed with church teaching on abortion, backed up that belief with personal efforts to promote childbirth over abortion, but voted against measures to criminalize abortion out of a sincere belief that such measures would force abortion underground or cause even more abortions, would this position be acceptable within Catholic moral principles?<\/p>\n

The problems with this hypothetical question are numerous, but perhaps the most obvious is that it was asked during discussions of a candidate who did not remotely resemble the hypothetical candidate described. Neither did the platform of his political party.<\/strong> The question was irrelevant to the matters at hand, but it speaks volumes about the progressive project to make pro-choice politicians morally acceptable.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Touchstone, Austin Ruse contemplates the mysteries of John Allen Allen has achieved something remarkable, though, and that is genuine dialogue among sometimes competing voices in the church. He has written often about the lamentable factions among the faithful, each with its own publications, conferences, sympathetic bishops, and so on. 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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\/6919","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=6919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6919\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}