{"id":7489,"date":"2004-04-15T09:07:30","date_gmt":"2004-04-15T09:07:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/leave_kerry_alone.html"},"modified":"2004-04-15T09:07:30","modified_gmt":"2004-04-15T09:07:30","slug":"leave_kerry_alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/leave_kerry_alone.html","title":{"rendered":"Leave Kerry Alone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.newsday.com\/news\/opinion\/ny-vprya153758129apr15,0,3243417.story?coll=ny-viewpoints-headlines\">Says this Newsday columnist<\/a><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Catholic hierarchy lost most, if not all, of its credibility and clout among Catholics and non-Catholics alike when it refused to admit its central role in the priest sex-abuse scandal. And the anger and distrust are still so profound among many Catholics that they are more likely to support any candidate the hierarchy opposes. This is especially so after the incredible urging by the Vatican recently to the American bishops that they move beyond the sexual-abuse crisis and instead focus on the wider range of issues such as abortion.<\/p>\n<p>So, if the cardinals and bishops are smart, they will walk away from this year&#8217;s presidential election and leave the backroom politics to the cigar smokers. Otherwise, they confirm the belief in the minds of many Catholics that a few feverishly arrogant old men in today&#8217;s hierarchy truly epitomize a dying medieval culture much closer to the dinosaur than to the divine and are hanging on, by their fingernails, to a power and prestige that is all but lost.<\/p>\n<p>If Communion is ever refused to Kerry, it should also be withheld from any of those bishops and archbishops who covered up the sins of their priests against innocent children and from any cardinal who still refuses to utter a word of censure against his criminally complicit brothers in the hierarchy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Says this Newsday columnist The Catholic hierarchy lost most, if not all, of its credibility and clout among Catholics and non-Catholics alike when it refused to admit its central role in the priest sex-abuse scandal. And the anger and distrust are still so profound among many Catholics that they are more likely to support any&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-7489","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>Leave Kerry Alone - 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\/04\/leave_kerry_alone.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Leave Kerry Alone - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Says this Newsday columnist The Catholic hierarchy lost most, if not all, of its credibility and clout among Catholics and non-Catholics alike when it refused to admit its central role in the priest sex-abuse scandal. And the anger and distrust are still so profound among many Catholics that they are more likely to support any&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/leave_kerry_alone.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2004-04-15T09:07:30+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":"Leave Kerry Alone - 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\/04\/leave_kerry_alone.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Leave Kerry Alone - Via Media","og_description":"Says this Newsday columnist The Catholic hierarchy lost most, if not all, of its credibility and clout among Catholics and non-Catholics alike when it refused to admit its central role in the priest sex-abuse scandal. 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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\/7489","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=7489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7489\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}