{"id":8051,"date":"2004-01-26T23:47:05","date_gmt":"2004-01-26T23:47:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/from_commonweal.html"},"modified":"2004-01-26T23:47:05","modified_gmt":"2004-01-26T23:47:05","slug":"from_commonweal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/from_commonweal.html","title":{"rendered":"From Commonweal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Excellent profile of Cardinal George<\/a><\/p>\n

\nCriticism generates little public response from the cardinal. In the age of Oprah, when public personalities are expected to offer up their anguish and struggles for public scrutiny, George remains largely reticent. He has, for example, referred only obliquely to his battle with polio. Afflicted with a disease eradicated from the American scene generations ago, he is part of an unlucky cohort\u2014he was born in 1937\u2014that faced years of terror from the crippling infection. It is an experience largely forgotten, except for those in a quiet generation who faced the fear of public swimming pools and other phobias inspired by the mysterious disease. <\/p>\n

As it happens, both George\u2019s strong opponent, Huck, and one of his steadfast supporters, Jean Bethke Elshtain of the University of Chicago, also had polio. The two provide different explanations for the cardinal\u2019s reticence. For Huck, who had the disease as a child, it explains George\u2019s aloofness. For Elshtain, who, like George, continues to struggle daily with the effects of the disease, the cardinal\u2019s demeanor is admirable. She told me he is graced with \u201ca prayerful determination to not focus solely on his own problems and to face the world.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And then, from John Garvey A piece on the uses of tradition, particularly in relationship to homosexuality and the church<\/a><\/p>\n

(by the way, Garvey is Orthodox, I believe)<\/p>\n

These are especially difficult areas because sex is always fraught, given its connection with reproduction and the family. In point of fact, though, we no longer believe that monks who have nocturnal emissions are victims of demonic succubae, nor are they morally culpable; yet this was a common belief once. We know, as our forefathers did not, that this is simple physiology. The most ardent defenders of John Paul II\u2019s conservative but appreciative approach to the body have moved far beyond the idea\u2014once quite common, even among some authoritative church fathers\u2014that to take pleasure in sex is wrong, and that marriage is, to use Jacques Maritain\u2019s ironic phrase, a form of \u201choly imperfection.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Excellent profile of Cardinal George Criticism generates little public response from the cardinal. In the age of Oprah, when public personalities are expected to offer up their anguish and struggles for public scrutiny, George remains largely reticent. He has, for example, referred only obliquely to his battle with polio. Afflicted with a disease eradicated from…<\/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-8051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nFrom Commonweal - 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\/from_commonweal.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"From Commonweal - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Excellent profile of Cardinal George Criticism generates little public response from the cardinal. 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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\/8051","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=8051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8051\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}