{"id":7142,"date":"2004-06-16T09:29:14","date_gmt":"2004-06-16T09:29:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/okay_one_thing_1.html"},"modified":"2004-06-16T09:29:14","modified_gmt":"2004-06-16T09:29:14","slug":"okay_one_thing_1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/okay_one_thing_1.html","title":{"rendered":"Okay, one thing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s Michael Novak on the Bishops, politicians and Communion<\/a>, which performs the useful task of highlighting the theological issues for the clueless journos who persist in thinking it’s all about bishops “using communion for political purposes.”<\/p>\n

In other words, even though such pro-abortion Catholic legislators are OUT OF COMMUNION with the Church in the abortion project, they really do like appearing to remain IN COMMUNION with the rest of the Church at the most sacred Table of the Lord. Some have even persuaded themselves that abortion is a perfectly acceptable option for Catholics to support. The silence and indirection of the bishops during the past 20 years convinces them that this is so. Although in recent years the bishops have been tightening their focus on abortion, they have tended to list abortion with just war, capital punishment, higher welfare spending for the poor, and many other issues. Just one among many issues for prudential judgment.<\/p>\n

….The reason for the existence of the Catholic Church is to be faithful to the teachings of Christ, and to administer seriously the sacraments that bring everyday union with Him, much as the Eucharist is like daily bread.<\/p>\n

To misuse these sacraments of union \u2014 to make them signs of disunion \u2014 is to destroy that fidelity, or at a minimum to do it grave injury.<\/p>\n

If the bishops allow those political leaders who help make abortion a major institution of American law, politics, and culture to make a show of being faithful to the teaching and sacraments of Jesus Christ, they have emptied the Catholic Church of moral seriousness.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s Michael Novak on the Bishops, politicians and Communion, which performs the useful task of highlighting the theological issues for the clueless journos who persist in thinking it’s all about bishops “using communion for political purposes.” In other words, even though such pro-abortion Catholic legislators are OUT OF COMMUNION with the Church in the abortion…<\/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-7142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nOkay, one thing - 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\/okay_one_thing_1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Okay, one thing - 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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\/7142","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=7142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}