{"id":7155,"date":"2004-06-12T09:59:51","date_gmt":"2004-06-12T09:59:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/from_around_these_parts.html"},"modified":"2004-06-12T09:59:51","modified_gmt":"2004-06-12T09:59:51","slug":"from_around_these_parts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/from_around_these_parts.html","title":{"rendered":"From around these parts"},"content":{"rendered":"

A piece by Fr. Michael Heintz, who is the rector of St. Matthew Cathedral in South Bend<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Augustine\u2019s \u201cCity of God\u201d (a hefty tome that nonetheless repays the reader\u2019s efforts) offered a much less sanguine view of the possibilities of a \u201cChristian Empire.\u201d One of Augustine\u2019s clear purposes in writing was to convince believers that an alliance between the church and any political system, party or figure is dubious at best: A \u201cChristian Empire\u201d by its very nature lacks the capacity for critical self-reflection. In remaining good citizens of the empire, believers are called to exercise a healthy suspicion of all political movements and movers, recognizing the fallen nature not only of individual but also of common life.<\/p>\n

Catholics then should be equally circumspect about all politicians, parties and movements, scrutinizing them carefully in light of the Gospel and the received tradition of the church.<\/p>\n

That is, they should be particularly suspicious of politicians who can so blithely divorce vita from doctrina \u2013 their \u201cpersonal views\u201d from their public persona.<\/p>\n

This is true whether we are speaking of Catholics who espouse or acquiesce to abortion rights for the sake of political expediency or of neo-conservatives who, while sharing an opposition to abortion, have surreptitiously co-opted not a few Catholics into their \u201cpublic square,\u201d while through contorted argument dismissing the serious demands of Catholic teaching on the economy, capital punishment or the \u201cius ad bellum\u201d (the morality of modern warfare).<\/p>\n

…Catholics must scrutinize cautiously (rather than absorb numbly) the \u201csigns of the times\u201d and allow their faith to clarify and sharpen public debate. The best contribution Catholics can make in society is to be thoroughly and unabashedly Catholic. For there are some principles that cannot be sacrificed and teachings that cannot be compromised without weakening the very witness of Catholics in a democratic society and, thereby, the vitality of the republic itself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A piece by Fr. Michael Heintz, who is the rector of St. Matthew Cathedral in South Bend. Augustine\u2019s \u201cCity of God\u201d (a hefty tome that nonetheless repays the reader\u2019s efforts) offered a much less sanguine view of the possibilities of a \u201cChristian Empire.\u201d One of Augustine\u2019s clear purposes in writing was to convince believers that…<\/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-7155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nFrom around these parts - 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\/from_around_these_parts.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"From around these parts - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A piece by Fr. 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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\/7155","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=7155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7155\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}