Some pithy, perceptive comments from below and elsewhere:<\/p>\n
“Our associate pastor at Nativity in St Paul gave a fantastic homily on Pro-Life Sunday. I\u2019m always surprised and disappointed when priests don\u2019t take the opportunity to speak on this subject with so many in pain.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Isn’t that the key? So many think of this matter as political or “divisive” and avoid the topic for that reason. If we are disciples, though, none of that matters, for the core of the issue is that in an abortion culture, people hurt, and are even in agony. Jesus says, “Come to me” – come to me as you struggle with a decision, come to me as you live through a difficult pregnancy, come to me in your shame, come to me in your grief and guilt.
\nDo we allow him to say it through us?<\/p>\nI was away from my home parish this weekend, and, because I was somewhere where \u201csay the black, do the red\u201d is kind of taken for granted without it being a \u201cbig thing\u201d, my usual inner critic was completely silent.
\nWow, what a difference. It allowed the space for the first reading and Gospel to just speak for themselves and hit home, hard.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nAnother key, revealed. The genius of the Latin Rite liturgy, it has always seemed to me, is in the balance and space it allows. We are gathered, we are in Communion, we worship as one, but at the same time, our uniqueness is respected, we are not to be manipulated (ideally), and space is given in which to be still and listen. That is not just achieved in moments of silence. It is achieved when the ministers at the altar (and in the choir loft..) respect the liturgy and resist the temptation to impose their own personalities upon it and the other temptation to manipulate the congregation so that a certain goal – external participation, a “feeling” of community – is achieved.
\nAnd from someplace else, in regard to yesterday’s music menu. Just too good to pass up.<\/p>\nI, too, was told that “All Are Welcome.” I was later given “The Summons”. In fact, someone from GIA threw a tinkling piano at me and said, “You’ve been served!”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some pithy, perceptive comments from below and elsewhere: “Our associate pastor at Nativity in St Paul gave a fantastic homily on Pro-Life Sunday. I\u2019m always surprised and disappointed when priests don\u2019t take the opportunity to speak on this subject with so many in pain.” Isn’t that the key? So many think of this matter as…<\/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-987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n
From the comments - 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\/2009\/01\/from-the-comments-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"From the comments - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Some pithy, perceptive comments from below and elsewhere: “Our associate pastor at Nativity in St Paul gave a fantastic homily on Pro-Life Sunday. I\u2019m always surprised and disappointed when priests don\u2019t take the opportunity to speak on this subject with so many in pain.” Isn’t that the key? 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I\u2019m always surprised and disappointed when priests don\u2019t take the opportunity to speak on this subject with so many in pain.” Isn’t that the key? So many think of this matter as…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2009\/01\/from-the-comments-1.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2009-01-19T15:11:28+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2009\/01\/from-the-comments-1.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2009\/01\/from-the-comments-1.html","name":"From the comments - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-01-19T15:11:28+00:00","dateModified":"2009-01-19T15:11:28+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2009\/01\/from-the-comments-1.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2009\/01\/from-the-comments-1.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2009\/01\/from-the-comments-1.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"From the comments"}]},{"@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\/987","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=987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/987\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}