{"id":7160,"date":"2004-06-12T08:24:56","date_gmt":"2004-06-12T08:24:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/word_from_rome_14.html"},"modified":"2004-06-12T08:24:56","modified_gmt":"2004-06-12T08:24:56","slug":"word_from_rome_14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/word_from_rome_14.html","title":{"rendered":"Word from Rome"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalcatholicreporter.org\/word\/\">John Allen reports on the pope&#8217;s visit to Switzerland, the Bush-Pope meeting, and some other matters.<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Switzerland is a microcosm of the \u201cecclesiastical winter\u201d besetting much of Europe. The country has a rich Catholic past, centered especially on famous monastic foundations such as the Abbey of St. Gall and Einsiedeln. Despite the impact of the Protestant Reformation, officially speaking, some 44 percent of the 7.7 million Swiss remain Catholic.<\/p>\n<p>Yet rates of church attendance hover around 16 percent, and they fall off more in urban areas. Anti-clerical prejudices run deep, and under the impact of secularization, there is a widespread indifference to institutional religion. Vocations to the priesthood are scarce, and the Catholic church has virtually no influence on public life. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Allen reports on the pope&#8217;s visit to Switzerland, the Bush-Pope meeting, and some other matters. Switzerland is a microcosm of the \u201cecclesiastical winter\u201d besetting much of Europe. The country has a rich Catholic past, centered especially on famous monastic foundations such as the Abbey of St. Gall and Einsiedeln. Despite the impact of the&hellip;<\/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-7160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Word from Rome - 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\/word_from_rome_14.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Word from Rome - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"John Allen reports on the pope&#8217;s visit to Switzerland, the Bush-Pope meeting, and some other matters. Switzerland is a microcosm of the \u201cecclesiastical winter\u201d besetting much of Europe. The country has a rich Catholic past, centered especially on famous monastic foundations such as the Abbey of St. Gall and Einsiedeln. Despite the impact of the&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/word_from_rome_14.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2004-06-12T08:24:56+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":"Word from Rome - 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\/word_from_rome_14.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Word from Rome - Via Media","og_description":"John Allen reports on the pope&#8217;s visit to Switzerland, the Bush-Pope meeting, and some other matters. Switzerland is a microcosm of the \u201cecclesiastical winter\u201d besetting much of Europe. The country has a rich Catholic past, centered especially on famous monastic foundations such as the Abbey of St. Gall and Einsiedeln. Despite the impact of the&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/word_from_rome_14.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2004-06-12T08:24:56+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/word_from_rome_14.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/word_from_rome_14.html","name":"Word from Rome - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2004-06-12T08:24:56+00:00","dateModified":"2004-06-12T08:24:56+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/word_from_rome_14.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/word_from_rome_14.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/06\/word_from_rome_14.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Word from Rome"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. 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\/7160","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=7160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}