{"id":7303,"date":"2004-05-11T08:08:46","date_gmt":"2004-05-11T08:08:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/no_wafer_if_you_waffle.html"},"modified":"2004-05-11T08:08:46","modified_gmt":"2004-05-11T08:08:46","slug":"no_wafer_if_you_waffle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/no_wafer_if_you_waffle.html","title":{"rendered":"No wafer if you waffle?"},"content":{"rendered":"

from Bishop Wenski of Orlando in today’s Sentinel, <\/a> although I could have done without the bumper sticker lingo. In fact, when I first saw the headline, I went into a minor rage against what I thought was disrespectful headline-writing. But no – he uses the phrase himself, which is unfortunate, I think, for it undercuts the seriousness of his message and the cogency with which he offers it.<\/p>\n

Bishops as teachers of the faith have no special competencies in the world of business or politics — and in those worlds we have no regulatory or legal powers. But precisely as teachers of the Catholic faith we do have competence to tell businessmen or politicians or anyone else for that matter what is required to be a Catholic. It is totally within our competence to say that one cannot be complicit in the injustice of denying the right to life of an unborn child or an invalid elder and still consider oneself a good Catholic.<\/p>\n

To be a Catholic is to strive after holiness. This is a daunting task for us all — impossible without the saving grace that embraces us through our turning to the Lord and walking in his company. The Lord is patient with us — after all, we all are still just “practicing.” He warns his disciples not to be too ready to pull out the tares lest we damage the wheat. For this reason, when rebukes are necessary, pastors generally strive to give them in private.<\/p>\n

….If the whole point of being a Catholic is to grow in holiness — admittedly by practicing a whole lot and making some errors along the way — then it would be, as John Paul II reminds us, “a contradiction to settle for a life of mediocrity, marked by a minimalist ethic and a sentimental religiosity.” You cannot have your “waffle” and your “wafer,” too. Those pro-abortion politicians who insist on calling themselves Catholics without seeing the contradiction between what they say they believe and their anti-life stance have to do a lot more “practicing.” They need to get it right before they approach the Eucharistic table.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from Bishop Wenski of Orlando in today’s Sentinel, although I could have done without the bumper sticker lingo. In fact, when I first saw the headline, I went into a minor rage against what I thought was disrespectful headline-writing. But no – he uses the phrase himself, which is unfortunate, I think, for it undercuts…<\/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-7303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nNo wafer if you waffle? - 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\/05\/no_wafer_if_you_waffle.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"No wafer if you waffle? - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"from Bishop Wenski of Orlando in today’s Sentinel, although I could have done without the bumper sticker lingo. 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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\/7303","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=7303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7303\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}