{"id":7121,"date":"2004-06-22T09:57:40","date_gmt":"2004-06-22T09:57:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/lots_of_grist.html"},"modified":"2004-06-22T09:57:40","modified_gmt":"2004-06-22T09:57:40","slug":"lots_of_grist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/lots_of_grist.html","title":{"rendered":"Lots’ of grist"},"content":{"rendered":"

for the mill in the issue of Commonweal <\/a> that’s currently online.<\/p>\n

First, a piece by Orthodox writer John Garvey, who always has interesting things to say:<\/a><\/p>\n

Here we are: back at polytheism. All these gods\u2014mine, yours, hers, his, theirs\u2014are the result of a combination of secularism gone to an extreme, combined with individualism and a sentimental form of civic religion. Completely absent is the idea that one of these gods could turn out to be real, and might make demands, and that there could be serious consequences if we do not obey them.<\/p>\n

This \u201cbetween you and your God\u201d language comes up mainly in political contexts, usually in defense of a prochoice position, but the fact that it is so frequently accepted without debate shows that its effects are everywhere. The god invoked here is plainly a reflection of its possessor, and can be counted on to affirm its owner\u2019s every longing or whim. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

….As an Orthodox Christian who does not believe in using Communion as a common means of discipline\u2014though no one has a right to Communion, rights being a stupid category where the sacraments are concerned, and priests really should refuse Communion in some cases\u2014I am not in a position to inform Catholic bishops or laypeople about how they should approach Roman Catholic discipline. But people who say they believe that the life of a conceived child is human and matters, and this is what Catholics and Orthodox believe, should not support political platforms that are callous or indifferent about this; and they really should think twice about receiving the body and blood of one who died for all human beings, including killed fetuses and executed criminals. The bishops are surely not wrong to affirm this. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

for the mill in the issue of Commonweal that’s currently online. First, a piece by Orthodox writer John Garvey, who always has interesting things to say: Here we are: back at polytheism. All these gods\u2014mine, yours, hers, his, theirs\u2014are the result of a combination of secularism gone to an extreme, combined with individualism and a…<\/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-7121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nLots' of grist - 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\/2004\/06\/lots_of_grist.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lots' of grist - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"for the mill in the issue of Commonweal that’s currently online. First, a piece by Orthodox writer John Garvey, who always has interesting things to say: Here we are: back at polytheism. All these gods\u2014mine, yours, hers, his, theirs\u2014are the result of a combination of secularism gone to an extreme, combined with individualism and a…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/lots_of_grist.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2004-06-22T09:57:40+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":"Lots' of grist - 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\/2004\/06\/lots_of_grist.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Lots' of grist - Via Media","og_description":"for the mill in the issue of Commonweal that’s currently online. 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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\/7121","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=7121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}