{"id":8188,"date":"2004-01-12T08:56:35","date_gmt":"2004-01-12T08:56:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/dvc_letter_o_the_day.html"},"modified":"2004-01-12T08:56:35","modified_gmt":"2004-01-12T08:56:35","slug":"dvc_letter_o_the_day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/dvc_letter_o_the_day.html","title":{"rendered":"DVC Letter O’ the Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the most fundamental of human characteristics that is manifested in
\nevery government from Rome to the United States and if you cannot see this
\nthen I am afraid that you will merely be confirming my ignorant
\nassumptions about your level of education and personal character. As Brown
\nexplains in his text, ‘The most enlightened and intellectual participants
\nof any religion affirm that the principals of their faith are
\nestablished as moral guidelines as opposed to literal episodes of history.’<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To which, I am tempted to respond – “Um, whatever.” And “You might want to check your grammar in that first sentence. I’m not sure that what you really said is what you mean.”<\/p>\n

Again, we have the assumption that religious faith involves blindness to historical realities. Hey – religious person – you must not know that other religious have ritual washing or ritual meals! If you could only learn this, you’d be enlightened, like me!<\/eM> <\/p>\n

Since there are shared symbols between religious systems, that means, there is, in the end, nothing distinctive on them, and those religious systems are based on nothing except the vague shared human impulses that produce the symbols. As I said to this correspondent, just because your family and mine both share meals doesn’t mean we have the same parents. <\/p>\n

Of course, this is an issue widely addressed, very effectively by Chesterton in Orthodoxy<\/strong> and The Everlasting Man<\/strong>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the most fundamental of human characteristics that is manifested in every government from Rome to the United States and if you cannot see this then I am afraid that you will merely be confirming my ignorant assumptions about your level of education and personal character. As Brown explains in his text, ‘The most…<\/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-8188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nDVC Letter O' the Day - 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\/dvc_letter_o_the_day.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"DVC Letter O' the Day - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This is the most fundamental of human characteristics that is manifested in every government from Rome to the United States and if you cannot see this then I am afraid that you will merely be confirming my ignorant assumptions about your level of education and personal character. As Brown explains in his text, ‘The most…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/dvc_letter_o_the_day.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2004-01-12T08:56:35+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":"DVC Letter O' the Day - 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\/dvc_letter_o_the_day.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"DVC Letter O' the Day - Via Media","og_description":"This is the most fundamental of human characteristics that is manifested in every government from Rome to the United States and if you cannot see this then I am afraid that you will merely be confirming my ignorant assumptions about your level of education and personal character. As Brown explains in his text, ‘The most…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/dvc_letter_o_the_day.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2004-01-12T08:56:35+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\/01\/dvc_letter_o_the_day.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/dvc_letter_o_the_day.html","name":"DVC Letter O' the Day - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2004-01-12T08:56:35+00:00","dateModified":"2004-01-12T08:56:35+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/dvc_letter_o_the_day.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/dvc_letter_o_the_day.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/dvc_letter_o_the_day.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"DVC Letter O’ the Day"}]},{"@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\/8188","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=8188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8188\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}