{"id":8293,"date":"2003-12-19T15:31:45","date_gmt":"2003-12-19T15:31:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/word_from_rome_25.html"},"modified":"2003-12-19T15:31:45","modified_gmt":"2003-12-19T15:31:45","slug":"word_from_rome_25","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/word_from_rome_25.html","title":{"rendered":"Word from Rome"},"content":{"rendered":"

Right here.<\/a><\/p>\n

On Martino:<\/p>\n

In fairness, it should be noted that when Martino mentioned Hussein\u2019s \u201cheavy responsibility,\u201d it seemed a reference to the former Iraqi leader\u2019s human rights abuses. I have interviewed Martino on the war several times, and he has never been under any illusions about Hussein\u2019s brutality. His argument has always been that there are other dictators around, and it\u2019s not clear to him why war should be justified to remove this one and not others.<\/p>\n

Whether one finds that logic persuasive, and whether Martino\u2019s comments should have been balanced by a more clear acknowledgment of Hussein\u2019s victims, is a matter for reasonable discussion<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On the Pope’s health:<\/p>\n

On the subject of the pope\u2019s health, I spoke Dec. 17 to someone who had dinner with John Paul two nights earlier. The pope was in good form, this source said, deeply involved in the conversation, offering observations of several sentences in length. This person presented the pope with a collection of poetry, and the pope immediately cited one of the American poet\u2019s major works \u2014 no mean feat, given that English is perhaps the pope\u2019s fifth language. It suggests his memory remains in relatively good shape.<\/p>\n

The dinner guest had written some weeks before to the pope to describe a personal situation. When he arrived, the pope, without prompting, said he had received the letter and would remember the intention in his Mass the next day. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nKenneth Woodward profiles John Allen<\/a>, who is, I note, a former high school teacher. Seems as if we both left high school teaching around the same time. Now he’s in Rome and I’m in….<\/p>\n

Never mind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Right here. On Martino: In fairness, it should be noted that when Martino mentioned Hussein\u2019s \u201cheavy responsibility,\u201d it seemed a reference to the former Iraqi leader\u2019s human rights abuses. I have interviewed Martino on the war several times, and he has never been under any illusions about Hussein\u2019s brutality. His argument has always been that…<\/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-8293","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\/2003\/12\/word_from_rome_25.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=\"Right here. On Martino: In fairness, it should be noted that when Martino mentioned Hussein\u2019s \u201cheavy responsibility,\u201d it seemed a reference to the former Iraqi leader\u2019s human rights abuses. I have interviewed Martino on the war several times, and he has never been under any illusions about Hussein\u2019s brutality. His argument has always been that…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/word_from_rome_25.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2003-12-19T15:31:45+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":"Word from Rome - 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\/2003\/12\/word_from_rome_25.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Word from Rome - Via Media","og_description":"Right here. On Martino: In fairness, it should be noted that when Martino mentioned Hussein\u2019s \u201cheavy responsibility,\u201d it seemed a reference to the former Iraqi leader\u2019s human rights abuses. I have interviewed Martino on the war several times, and he has never been under any illusions about Hussein\u2019s brutality. His argument has always been that…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/word_from_rome_25.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2003-12-19T15:31:45+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/word_from_rome_25.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/word_from_rome_25.html","name":"Word from Rome - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2003-12-19T15:31:45+00:00","dateModified":"2003-12-19T15:31:45+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/word_from_rome_25.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/word_from_rome_25.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/word_from_rome_25.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Word from Rome"}]},{"@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\/8293","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=8293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8293\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}