{"id":6952,"date":"2006-06-23T09:27:29","date_gmt":"2006-06-23T09:27:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/could-be-worse.html"},"modified":"2006-06-23T09:27:29","modified_gmt":"2006-06-23T09:27:29","slug":"could-be-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/could-be-worse.html","title":{"rendered":"Could be worse"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whenever I get depressed about the Church in the US (which isn’t too often, actually), I consider the Church in Europe, particularly the Germany-Austria element, as well as the Netherlands, and I see that it could be worse, although plenty depressing in its own right. Gerald at Closed Cafeteria <\/a>covers this beat quite well, and is forever bringing us more and better photos of psychedelic Masses and "youth events" that are worse than anything I’ve heard of on this side of the pond, even circa 1972. <\/p>\n

It makes sense to me that JP2 put his hope in the "New Movements" to revatilize Catholic faith and life in Europe – diocesan and parish life in much of the continent had gone waaaaay off the rails.<\/p>\n

Today Gerald carries a follow-up to a story he posted earlier in the week, <\/a>in which a transitional deacon from the diocese of Linz, Austria had publicly expresseed views that made one wonder exactly why he was seeking lifetime of service in this <\/em>particular church, rather than the Unitarians. Gerald quotes from a story on kath.net:<\/p>\n

\n
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Bishop Ludwig Schwarz said he had spoken with the candidate and had come to the decision to postpone his ordination. His statements of rebellion against Rome and in favor of female ordination were not in conformity with the promise at ordination to be loyal and obedient to the bishop. This close to an ordination, such statements must not stand, he said. Bishop Schwarz emphasized that he had not gotten instruction from Rome, but did inform the Nuntius.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whenever I get depressed about the Church in the US (which isn’t too often, actually), I consider the Church in Europe, particularly the Germany-Austria element, as well as the Netherlands, and I see that it could be worse, although plenty depressing in its own right. Gerald at Closed Cafeteria covers this beat quite well, 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-6952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nCould be worse - 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\/06\/could-be-worse.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Could be worse - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Whenever I get depressed about the Church in the US (which isn’t too often, actually), I consider the Church in Europe, particularly the Germany-Austria element, as well as the Netherlands, and I see that it could be worse, although plenty depressing in its own right. Gerald at Closed Cafeteria covers this beat quite well, and…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/could-be-worse.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-06-23T09:27:29+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":"Could be worse - 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\/2006\/06\/could-be-worse.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Could be worse - Via Media","og_description":"Whenever I get depressed about the Church in the US (which isn’t too often, actually), I consider the Church in Europe, particularly the Germany-Austria element, as well as the Netherlands, and I see that it could be worse, although plenty depressing in its own right. 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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\/6952","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=6952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6952\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}