{"id":798,"date":"2008-09-25T20:35:48","date_gmt":"2008-09-25T20:35:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2008\/09\/unraveling-the-knitting-1.html"},"modified":"2008-09-25T20:35:48","modified_gmt":"2008-09-25T20:35:48","slug":"unraveling-the-knitting-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/09\/unraveling-the-knitting-1.html","title":{"rendered":"Unraveling the knitting"},"content":{"rendered":"

The discussion below is interesting – thanks for all of your responses. Again, I didn’t mean to cause offense. I can’t think of a place I’ve lived which, if it were criticized, I’d be “offended.” People live places, like certain things about them, are driven crazy by others, settle, flee and try to figure out why places are the way they are.
\nSo?
\nAnyway, the point I find myself working through is the issue I raised at the end of the post. It is that of paradox – the element in life that gives it tension and dynamism, the element that won’t let us settle, that nudges out of complacency.
\nAnd here, the paradox is of the community (small or large) that sees itself as “close-knit” and stable, which is truly an anchor and important – how can that close-knitness become counter-productive or even destructive?
\nI can think of a few ways.
\nA school, let’s say, is deeply rooted in a community. Three generations have attended this school and many still live in the neighborhood, some of the teachers are graduates and have or have had children attend the school.
\nIt sounds ideal – to me it does, having taught only in schools that were constantly in transition, in which staff came and went like the seasons, in which no one seems to have any connection to anyone else or a strong sense of mission.
\nBut wait. What if, in this close-knit community, one of these teachers, so closely bound by blood and classroom presence, proves him or herself incompetent or even worse? What if there is more than one teacher who is just getting by? What if the ties among the families and the school staff make staff hesitant to tell the truth about a student’s behavior or performance?
\nAnd what of a close-knit parish, one with long, traditional ties to a neighborhood, with families who have attended for years, with pillars who have sustained the faith community?
\nWhat happens when a priest comes into that community and suggests…change? Even after a suitable settling-in period, even if the changes are directed at helping the parish experience, say, a liturgy more expressive of the Church’s ideals?
\nTalk to a priest who has attempted to come into a close-knit parish, bound together by years of attendance and intermarriage and tradition and sense of place and do anything <\/em>that meets with disapproval. Ask them how it went.
\nAnd what of the parish community, perhaps with a school, settled and closely bound to that spot of land that has been here forever?
\nIs there a chance that this parish runs a risk of letting a sociological understanding of faith creep in, loses a sense of the importance and necessity and command of evangelization and seeking the lost and welcoming the stranger?
\nHow many close-knit parishes and schools have been transformed, in a matter of two or three decades, into closed parishes and schools?
\nThe other end clearly shares in this dynamic – of not so much a dark side as a risk, a flip side. It can happen in any situation, any structure, large – or small.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The discussion below is interesting – thanks for all of your responses. Again, I didn’t mean to cause offense. I can’t think of a place I’ve lived which, if it were criticized, I’d be “offended.” People live places, like certain things about them, are driven crazy by others, settle, flee and try to figure out…<\/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-798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nUnraveling the knitting - 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\/2008\/09\/unraveling-the-knitting-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Unraveling the knitting - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The discussion below is interesting – thanks for all of your responses. Again, I didn’t mean to cause offense. 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Again, I didn’t mean to cause offense. 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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\/798","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=798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}