{"id":7506,"date":"2004-04-12T23:08:24","date_gmt":"2004-04-12T23:08:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/the_heart_of_the_matter.html"},"modified":"2004-04-12T23:08:24","modified_gmt":"2004-04-12T23:08:24","slug":"the_heart_of_the_matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/the_heart_of_the_matter.html","title":{"rendered":"The Heart of the Matter"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was thinking tonight, as I was playing computer solitaire in Joseph’s room, waiting for him to go to sleep, about Graham Greene and John Kerry.<\/p>\n

I was thinking about Greene’s relationship to the Church – one would never call him pious, but the odd thing is how clearly he seemed to get what the core of holiness is. He may not have lived it, but he wrote about it, powerfully. <\/p>\n

I’m not really clear what Greene’s exact intellectual and spiritual stance towards the Church was during all those decades after which he’d left his wife and had affairs with\/lived with various other women. I imagine his stance ranged from vaguely interested to indifferent, and I recall reading that near the end of his life he referred to himself as something like a “Catholic atheist.” I’ve never had a sense of any great torment or struggle, just acceptance of who he was and where he stood in relation to the Church. And there was a priest around at the end, the model for the priest in Monsieur Quixote<\/em>. <\/p>\n

So there’s no nobility or sainthood there, but there is honesty. There’s a recognition that here is the Church, and here I am, and while I may live outside of the Church and sin and cast a jaundiced eye its way – there it is and there I am. No matter what I think of it, I’m under no illusion that all the Church needs is to be remade in my image or even “accept me as I am” in all of my choices. God’s mercy is wide and deep and always waiting and found in the oddest ways and by the most flawed people, but mercy it is, mercy in light of my sins. Which are sins.<\/p>\n

That’s what I was thinking about. And that I can never win computer solitaire.<\/p>\n

Greene’s Vatican Dossier<\/a>, from the Atlantic Monthly.<\/p>\n

A newspaper account of Greene’s funeral.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was thinking tonight, as I was playing computer solitaire in Joseph’s room, waiting for him to go to sleep, about Graham Greene and John Kerry. I was thinking about Greene’s relationship to the Church – one would never call him pious, but the odd thing is how clearly he seemed to get what the…<\/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-7506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Heart of the Matter - 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\/the_heart_of_the_matter.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Heart of the Matter - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I was thinking tonight, as I was playing computer solitaire in Joseph’s room, waiting for him to go to sleep, about Graham Greene and John Kerry. I was thinking about Greene’s relationship to the Church – one would never call him pious, but the odd thing is how clearly he seemed to get what the…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/the_heart_of_the_matter.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2004-04-12T23:08:24+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":"The Heart of the Matter - 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\/the_heart_of_the_matter.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Heart of the Matter - Via Media","og_description":"I was thinking tonight, as I was playing computer solitaire in Joseph’s room, waiting for him to go to sleep, about Graham Greene and John Kerry. I was thinking about Greene’s relationship to the Church – one would never call him pious, but the odd thing is how clearly he seemed to get what the…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/the_heart_of_the_matter.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2004-04-12T23:08:24+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\/04\/the_heart_of_the_matter.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/the_heart_of_the_matter.html","name":"The Heart of the Matter - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2004-04-12T23:08:24+00:00","dateModified":"2004-04-12T23:08:24+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/the_heart_of_the_matter.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/the_heart_of_the_matter.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/the_heart_of_the_matter.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Heart of the Matter"}]},{"@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\/7506","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=7506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7506\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}