{"id":7649,"date":"2004-03-23T16:34:26","date_gmt":"2004-03-23T16:34:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/from_a_reader_17.html"},"modified":"2004-03-23T16:34:26","modified_gmt":"2004-03-23T16:34:26","slug":"from_a_reader_17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/from_a_reader_17.html","title":{"rendered":"From a reader"},"content":{"rendered":"

I mean, the rule to stand during communion is dumb and slightly comical (they instituted it here in my archdiocese with the caveat that your could sit after the first song if you liked. Result: half the community is sitting and the other half is standing, the exact opposite result from the one desired.) And, of course, a pinhead priest or nun saying that personal prayer during Mass is wrong is stupid. But that can be said and then we can move on pretty quickly. For myself, I find it quite as easy to pray standing as kneeling. But really: there’s something profoundly unhealthy about the relentless carping hopeless rage that focuses on this relative triviality and spends 89 comments and counting declaring that there is no hope, the end is nigh, the bishops are all bastards, the Church sucks, everything about the liturgy is contemptible, I hate my parish,everything about the Church is wrong and bad and it will never change and
\nthere is no future to look forward to and on and on and on and on and on.<\/p>\n

What is it about “faithful orthodox Catholics” that makes so many of them talk as though despair and anger are the first and only characteristics of the Truly Christian life?<\/p>\n

People need to get out of cyberspace and get to daily Mass. They also frankly, need to encounter some real suffering. I’m sorry, but the readers who freak out and call this minor irritation an “atrocity” are people
\nwho have lived in the suburbs too long. If Jesus came to me and said, “For your martyrdom, I sentence you to have to stand during communion” I would be relieved to the pitch of disappointment. Sure as hell beats being crucified or slowly submerged upside down in vats of human waste like the Japanese
\nmartyrs. The poor Eastern Church. They have to stand for everything!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I mean, the rule to stand during communion is dumb and slightly comical (they instituted it here in my archdiocese with the caveat that your could sit after the first song if you liked. Result: half the community is sitting and the other half is standing, the exact opposite result from the one desired.) And,…<\/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-7649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nFrom a reader - 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\/03\/from_a_reader_17.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"From a reader - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I mean, the rule to stand during communion is dumb and slightly comical (they instituted it here in my archdiocese with the caveat that your could sit after the first song if you liked. 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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\/7649","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=7649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7649\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}