{"id":875,"date":"2008-11-08T23:38:58","date_gmt":"2008-11-08T23:38:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2008\/11\/chill-and-pray.html"},"modified":"2008-11-08T23:38:58","modified_gmt":"2008-11-08T23:38:58","slug":"chill-and-pray","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/11\/chill-and-pray.html","title":{"rendered":"Chill. And Pray."},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s a bit of shock and even disgust being tossed around the Catholic Interwebs today because the USCCB has removed the “Catholic abortion-rights Pols and Communion” issue\u00a0from the official agenda for the public sessions next week.<\/a>
\nAnd…do you really think the whole issue of Catholics, voting, politicians and life issues is going to be not discussed next week? With scores of bishops issuing very strong pre-election statements, others somewhat vaguer ones and still others nothing, and various commenters remarking in the days since the election: “Oh, well the BIG losers in this election are OBVIOUSLY the bishops who (heavy sigh) <\/em>tried to do an end-run around Faithful Citizenship <\/em>and use abortion as a political wedge in the Body of Christ…”
\nYou really think it’s going to be passed over?
\nReally? <\/em>
\nThere are two days of public meetings and two days of private, executive sessions.\u00a0 The issue has obviously exploded beyond the relatively narrow agenda item originally planned for public discussion. I have no problem (as if it matters) with bishops taking this to private discussions in which they can speak freely to each other without the rest of us watching. As enjoyable as that might be for the rest of us.
\nAs we celebrate the feast of the Dedication of St. John Lateran, the church of the Bishop of Rome, it seems a good idea to pray for our bishops. It’s particularly apropos on this day because St. John Lateran represents a great deal – and part of\u00a0symbolism it bears after a millenium and a half regards the complicated and perpetually vexing relationship between Catholicism and civic life, the original church being built by Constantine and the palace, as the residence of the popes for almost a millenium being a center of both politics and religion in Rome – for good and for ill, for the benefit of the Body of Christ and sometimes to its great detriment.
\nHave you prayed for your bishop lately?
\nHave you dropped him a note telling him that you’ve prayed for him? If he issued a pre-election statement that you particularly appreciated..have you let him know?
\nHave you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a bit of shock and even disgust being tossed around the Catholic Interwebs today because the USCCB has removed the “Catholic abortion-rights Pols and Communion” issue\u00a0from the official agenda for the public sessions next week. And…do you really think the whole issue of Catholics, voting, politicians and life issues is going to be not…<\/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-875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nChill. And Pray. - 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\/2008\/11\/chill-and-pray.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Chill. And Pray. - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There’s a bit of shock and even disgust being tossed around the Catholic Interwebs today because the USCCB has removed the “Catholic abortion-rights Pols and Communion” issue\u00a0from the official agenda for the public sessions next week. 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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\/875","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=875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}