{"id":8044,"date":"2004-01-27T13:45:46","date_gmt":"2004-01-27T13:45:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/im_sorry.html"},"modified":"2004-01-27T13:45:46","modified_gmt":"2004-01-27T13:45:46","slug":"im_sorry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/im_sorry.html","title":{"rendered":"I’m sorry"},"content":{"rendered":"

But I must comment further on the apologetics article cited below. <\/p>\n

Heh.<\/p>\n

Anyway, one of the great mysteries of church life to me is how some folks can’t quite grasp the lesson of this past Sunday’s second reading: you know, many parts, one body.<\/p>\n

“Apologetics” is…apologetics. It’s not theology. It’s not spirituality. It’s apologetics<\/strong>, which means it serves a certain purpose not served by other styles of religious discourse.<\/p>\n

Very briefly, apologetics exists to answer questions and to address challenges, not<\/strong> to unpack the depths of theological resonance in various penumbras of doctrinal formulations.<\/p>\n

Apologetics does not exist to replace theological thinking or spiritual reflection, although I do get concerned sometimes that with the current popularity of apologetics, we are sometimes tempted to forget that.<\/p>\n

But the point is simply this: apologetics exists because people ask questions. They want to know how you, a reasonable person could actually hold belief in God to be reasonable. They want to know how you seriously could consider yourself a Christian, although you admit to being a Catholic. Apologetics answers those questions in the context in which they are asked. What is the alternative? Change the subject?<\/p>\n

Update: Thanks to one of Those Apologists for stopping by in the comments!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

But I must comment further on the apologetics article cited below. Heh. Anyway, one of the great mysteries of church life to me is how some folks can’t quite grasp the lesson of this past Sunday’s second reading: you know, many parts, one body. “Apologetics” is…apologetics. It’s not theology. It’s not spirituality. It’s apologetics, which…<\/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-8044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nI'm sorry - 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\/01\/im_sorry.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"I'm sorry - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"But I must comment further on the apologetics article cited below. Heh. 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It’s apologetics, which…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/im_sorry.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2004-01-27T13:45:46+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":"I'm sorry - 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\/01\/im_sorry.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"I'm sorry - Via Media","og_description":"But I must comment further on the apologetics article cited below. Heh. 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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\/8044","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=8044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8044\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}