{"id":7679,"date":"2004-03-18T10:30:23","date_gmt":"2004-03-18T10:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/the_endless_conversation.html"},"modified":"2004-03-18T10:30:23","modified_gmt":"2004-03-18T10:30:23","slug":"the_endless_conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/the_endless_conversation.html","title":{"rendered":"The endless conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Revealer wonders about something that pops up regularly around here:<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Better questions for religion writers are: Does the mostly conservative St. Blog’s Parish present a bigger challenge to Church hierarchy than lay people’s democracy movement? How come progressive Catholics tend to meet in Church basements while conservative Catholics gather in the blogosphere? What will happen if — when — these lay-people movements converge?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t have an answer to the question of why the “conservative\/orthodox” perspective dominates in Catholic blogs. I have no idea. But I do think that the answer to the general question, in many parts of the country, when “progressive” Catholics meet in church basements – or halls – it’s because they have power. <\/p>\n

DRE’s and diocesan staff who would bring in Joan Chittister or Richard McBrien in a heartbeat to speak to their people would fight to death against Scott Hahn or Patrick Madrid making a presentation. I’ve seen it again and again. I was at a gathering of diocesan youth ministers who practically (pardon me) came to group climax over the mention of the name of Joseph Girzone, but who immediately changed their tune at the mention of someone else…don’t remember who…but who they immediately labeled as a “Steubenville type” who must be avoided.<\/p>\n

It’s changing, and the situation varies from diocese to diocese. But in many places, it’s still 1978.<\/p>\n

I think one of things that has to be rememered too, is that Catholic blogs exploded in the wake of the January\/February 2002 revelations about the clergy sex abuse scandal. People on all sides were shocked and appalled and there was absolutely nowhere else where venting and analysis could occur outside the paradigms of either the secular or Catholic press, both of which are very limiting in their own ways. But why most of the conversation, again, emanated from the conservative\/orthodox viewpoint…I dunno.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Revealer wonders about something that pops up regularly around here: Better questions for religion writers are: Does the mostly conservative St. Blog’s Parish present a bigger challenge to Church hierarchy than lay people’s democracy movement? How come progressive Catholics tend to meet in Church basements while conservative Catholics gather in the blogosphere? What will…<\/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-7679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe endless conversation - 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\/the_endless_conversation.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The endless conversation - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Revealer wonders about something that pops up regularly around here: Better questions for religion writers are: Does the mostly conservative St. Blog’s Parish present a bigger challenge to Church hierarchy than lay people’s democracy movement? 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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\/7679","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=7679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7679\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}