{"id":7571,"date":"2004-04-02T07:37:00","date_gmt":"2004-04-02T07:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/maybe_not_such_a_good_idea.html"},"modified":"2004-04-02T07:37:00","modified_gmt":"2004-04-02T07:37:00","slug":"maybe_not_such_a_good_idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/maybe_not_such_a_good_idea.html","title":{"rendered":"Maybe not such a good idea"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lots of abusive, prank messages left on O’Brien’s hotline<\/a><\/p>\n

Among the voice mails was a vulgarity-laced threat to punch the former leader of the Phoenix Diocese. Another suggested that the best community service O’Brien could perform would be to commit suicide. Of 340 calls, more than 60 were pranks, and many of them were abusive or threatening, said Mary Jo West, diocese public information officer.<\/p>\n

Although she expected negative responses, “I had no idea we would get as many as we received,” West said. “When I heard some of them, I had a feeling of terrible, terrible sadness.”<\/p>\n

Among the prank calls were three from radio station KUPD-FM, one asking for help with a “dinged windshield.” Several asked for assistance at 19th and Glendale avenues, site of the bishop’s June 2003 hit-and-run accident that left Jim L. Reed, 43, dead. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lots of abusive, prank messages left on O’Brien’s hotline Among the voice mails was a vulgarity-laced threat to punch the former leader of the Phoenix Diocese. Another suggested that the best community service O’Brien could perform would be to commit suicide. Of 340 calls, more than 60 were pranks, and many of them were abusive…<\/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-7571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nMaybe not such a good idea - 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\/maybe_not_such_a_good_idea.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Maybe not such a good idea - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Lots of abusive, prank messages left on O’Brien’s hotline Among the voice mails was a vulgarity-laced threat to punch the former leader of the Phoenix Diocese. 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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\/7571","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=7571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7571\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}