{"id":7547,"date":"2004-04-05T21:28:30","date_gmt":"2004-04-05T21:28:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/stuff_thats_around.html"},"modified":"2004-04-05T21:28:30","modified_gmt":"2004-04-05T21:28:30","slug":"stuff_thats_around","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/stuff_thats_around.html","title":{"rendered":"Stuff that’s around"},"content":{"rendered":"

Get Religion on the Cel Phone at Communion and other matters<\/a><\/p>\n

The Revealer on the religious element in conflict (to put it mildly) in Iraq, South Park’s<\/em> “The Passion of the Jew,” and a continuing conversation on the influence of St. Blog’s<\/a><\/p>\n

You know, I don’t know if anyone who’s actually a real Catholic blogger has ever made claims of having any individual or collective influence. I’m a writer, so I naturally want to influence people, and I really do see my blog, in part, as a place to try, not only to talk about the news, but to enable all readers of any persuasion to talk about the news – trying, in a way, to bridge the gap that The Revealer post describes. I think blogs are important and form a bit of intellectual community for some of us, so it’s important. But I don’t hear massive claims being made for it a la<\/em> Andrew Sullivan and Instapundit’s Power of the Blogosphere banners. <\/p>\n

What I think the broader question is – and perhaps The Revealer can ask this (and hey! We can too!) – is:<\/p>\n

Do any<\/strong> organs of Catholic media have any particular, broad impact? I say no. I say it’s all niche, and all ideologically fissured. So, in that sense it’s not unreasonable to say that the cumulutive impact of Catholic blogs is, indeed, just as great, as say the readership of most<\/strong> self-identified Catholic periodicials, particularly those of a strong editorial bent. Thousands of people read Catholc blogs every day. Thousands – and really, no more, read America<\/strong>, Commonweal<\/strong>, and the like, as well. I’d say in terms of faithful readership, especially when you look at it cumulatively, we’re about even.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Get Religion on the Cel Phone at Communion and other matters The Revealer on the religious element in conflict (to put it mildly) in Iraq, South Park’s “The Passion of the Jew,” and a continuing conversation on the influence of St. Blog’s You know, I don’t know if anyone who’s actually a real Catholic blogger…<\/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-7547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nStuff that's around - 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\/stuff_thats_around.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Stuff that's around - 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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\/7547","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=7547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7547\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}