{"id":7537,"date":"2004-04-07T07:10:42","date_gmt":"2004-04-07T07:10:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/kerrys_annulment.html"},"modified":"2004-04-07T07:10:42","modified_gmt":"2004-04-07T07:10:42","slug":"kerrys_annulment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/kerrys_annulment.html","title":{"rendered":"Kerry’s Annulment"},"content":{"rendered":"

I agree with Fr. Rob on this one.<\/a> Not our problem, not our business, not the issue for us – dealing with the matter of Kerry’s public life, statements and policies.<\/p>\n

\nIf some Catholics go after Kerry on the annulment issue, and Kerry really had obtained one, all he will have to do is release a document to demolish the credibility of his critics. Then he can portray himself sympathetically as the victim of Catholic “extremists”. And if Kerry doesn’t produce such a document, he can nonetheless claim that his annulment is a confidential matter, and it’s none of our business, and he’ll be entirely within his rights. And he can use the unseemly aspect of Catholics trying to pry into what the Church herself regards as a confidential matter as another opporuntunity to be portrayed sympathetically. And no one will be able to prove anything one way or another. <\/p>\n

It seems to me that the annulment issue is a non-starter. And if Kerry really is in an invalid marriage to Theresa Heinz, the people primarily being hurt are Kerry and Heinz themselves. <\/p>\n

But Kerry has hurt the innocent unborn as Senator, and will do untold more harm if he becomes president. Kerry’s repudiation of magisterial Catholic teaching on the issue of abortion, and his abject servility to NARAL and NOW, provide the clearest of moral delineations, and the most urgent moral imperative to oppose him. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I agree with Fr. Rob on this one. Not our problem, not our business, not the issue for us – dealing with the matter of Kerry’s public life, statements and policies. If some Catholics go after Kerry on the annulment issue, and Kerry really had obtained one, all he will have to do is release…<\/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-7537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nKerry's Annulment - 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\/kerrys_annulment.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Kerry's Annulment - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I agree with Fr. Rob on this one. 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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\/7537","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=7537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7537\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}