{"id":8082,"date":"2004-01-23T16:14:02","date_gmt":"2004-01-23T16:14:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/word_from_rome_24.html"},"modified":"2004-01-23T16:14:02","modified_gmt":"2004-01-23T16:14:02","slug":"word_from_rome_24","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/word_from_rome_24.html","title":{"rendered":"Word from Rome"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Allen on many things, including the Passion<\/a>, which includes a fascinating little tidbit about one of the assistant directors, and this conclusion about the quote flack:<\/p>\n

Reporters, myself certainly included, look like na\u00effs who have been spun every which way, or worse yet, like willing partners in someone’s dishonesty. If nothing else, it’s a wake-up call about the dangers of reliance on anonymous sources, a fact of reporting life in the Vatican. Officials here rarely speak on the record, so those of us who cover the Vatican are constantly dealing with unnamed sources. This incident undoubtedly has raised the bar on caution for all of us.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And then this, which, to my mind, is even more important and very true:<\/p>\n

Speaking as a former Catholic high school teacher, however, what I can say is that the film makes a powerful impression, and is sure to arouse intense curiosity in those who see it, especially the young. Viewers will want to talk about what they see; they will want to discuss what happens in the movie, why, and what to make of it. One Vatican official who has seen the film believes there will be conversions because of it. That\u2019s possible, but what I\u2019m sure of is that there will be questions.<\/p>\n

I hope, therefore, that the church in the United States is preparing itself to respond to this curiosity. I hope youth groups and small faith communities and Bible study groups and Catholic schools are preparing ways for people to come together, and not just the usual suspects, but people who ordinarily have little contact with the church but who will feel the need to talk<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So. Do you think the Church is up to it? Diocesan catechetical director and other chancery employees are welcome to respond here, in this space, as to what their offices intend to make of this, as Allen puts it “teachable moment.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Allen on many things, including the Passion, which includes a fascinating little tidbit about one of the assistant directors, and this conclusion about the quote flack: Reporters, myself certainly included, look like na\u00effs who have been spun every which way, or worse yet, like willing partners in someone’s dishonesty. If nothing else, it’s a…<\/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-8082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nWord from Rome - 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\/word_from_rome_24.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Word from Rome - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"John Allen on many things, including the Passion, which includes a fascinating little tidbit about one of the assistant directors, and this conclusion about the quote flack: Reporters, myself certainly included, look like na\u00effs who have been spun every which way, or worse yet, like willing partners in someone’s dishonesty. 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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\/8082","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=8082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8082\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}