{"id":7925,"date":"2004-02-16T23:38:46","date_gmt":"2004-02-16T23:38:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/bigger_than_star_wars.html"},"modified":"2004-02-16T23:38:46","modified_gmt":"2004-02-16T23:38:46","slug":"bigger_than_star_wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/bigger_than_star_wars.html","title":{"rendered":"Bigger than Star Wars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Is what they&#8217;re saying. The first prequel, that is. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/articles\/A46518-2004Feb16.html\">A WaPo article about the prospects for the Passion<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nJoseph P. Vitale, a young District lawyer who is Catholic, bought out the largest screen at the AMC movie complex at Mazza Gallerie in Northwest Washington for the first night&#8217;s screening because he and his friends thought seeing the movie &#8220;would be a great way to start off Lent.&#8221; Vitale then sent invitations to friends, acquaintances and Catholic youth groups at local universities, offering them the opportunity to buy tickets in advance at his cost. Within hours of sending the e-mailed invitations, Vitale said he received more than 350 affirmative responses, and within days his e-mail in-basket held requests for a total of 800 tickets. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Forgive my parochialism, but I&#8217;m interested whenever I see an RC mentioned in these articles. It&#8217;s rare. Hopefully less so as the week wears on.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is what they&#8217;re saying. The first prequel, that is. A WaPo article about the prospects for the Passion Joseph P. Vitale, a young District lawyer who is Catholic, bought out the largest screen at the AMC movie complex at Mazza Gallerie in Northwest Washington for the first night&#8217;s screening because he and his friends thought&hellip;<\/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-7925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Bigger than Star Wars - 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\/02\/bigger_than_star_wars.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bigger than Star Wars - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Is what they&#8217;re saying. The first prequel, that is. A WaPo article about the prospects for the Passion Joseph P. Vitale, a young District lawyer who is Catholic, bought out the largest screen at the AMC movie complex at Mazza Gallerie in Northwest Washington for the first night&#8217;s screening because he and his friends thought&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/bigger_than_star_wars.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2004-02-16T23:38:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Bigger than Star Wars - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/bigger_than_star_wars.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Bigger than Star Wars - Via Media","og_description":"Is what they&#8217;re saying. The first prequel, that is. A WaPo article about the prospects for the Passion Joseph P. Vitale, a young District lawyer who is Catholic, bought out the largest screen at the AMC movie complex at Mazza Gallerie in Northwest Washington for the first night&#8217;s screening because he and his friends thought&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/bigger_than_star_wars.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2004-02-16T23:38:46+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/bigger_than_star_wars.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/bigger_than_star_wars.html","name":"Bigger than Star Wars - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2004-02-16T23:38:46+00:00","dateModified":"2004-02-16T23:38:46+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/bigger_than_star_wars.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/bigger_than_star_wars.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/bigger_than_star_wars.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Bigger than Star Wars"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. 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\/7925","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=7925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7925\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}