{"id":999,"date":"2005-10-20T19:41:42","date_gmt":"2005-10-20T19:41:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/naked.html"},"modified":"2005-10-20T19:41:42","modified_gmt":"2005-10-20T19:41:42","slug":"naked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/naked.html","title":{"rendered":"Naked"},"content":{"rendered":"

Into the baths of Lourdes. Reprinted from The Tablet in Godspy<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Out comes a Down’s syndrome boy, face creased with smiles. He gives us all a thumbs-up. Nothing to worry about, fellahs<\/em>, he seems to say.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The Catholic Church is nowhere better represented than here, at this moment. The boundaries between physical and spiritual are collapsed, and the Kingdom breaks out: the disabled mingle with the able-bodied, the nations mix, and we tap into God’s goodness by physical acts which we are confident are not meaningless. Our literal age has little time for this stuff, which shrivels under the cold glare of rationalism. But the sacramental imagination is bigger, deeper and wider.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

All I have done is move down a pew or two, but I am much closer to what this is all about. Our unconscious grasps what our eyes cannot. Who are they, in the chariots in front of us now? Our fears\u2014deformation, paralysis, fragility\u2014but also our glory: the Spirit of God, assuring us of human empathy and supernatural transcendence. Healing is collective; we are in need of others. The fellow in the middle with the purple fingers could go at any time, but what better way than like this, carried by gentle young helpers, into the arms of God?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Into the baths of Lourdes. Reprinted from The Tablet in Godspy: Out comes a Down’s syndrome boy, face creased with smiles. He gives us all a thumbs-up. Nothing to worry about, fellahs, he seems to say. The Catholic Church is nowhere better represented than here, at this moment. The boundaries between physical and spiritual are…<\/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-999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nNaked - 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\/2005\/10\/naked.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Naked - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Into the baths of Lourdes. Reprinted from The Tablet in Godspy: Out comes a Down’s syndrome boy, face creased with smiles. He gives us all a thumbs-up. Nothing to worry about, fellahs, he seems to say. The Catholic Church is nowhere better represented than here, at this moment. The boundaries between physical and spiritual are…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/naked.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-10-20T19:41:42+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":"Naked - 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\/2005\/10\/naked.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Naked - Via Media","og_description":"Into the baths of Lourdes. Reprinted from The Tablet in Godspy: Out comes a Down’s syndrome boy, face creased with smiles. He gives us all a thumbs-up. Nothing to worry about, fellahs, he seems to say. The Catholic Church is nowhere better represented than here, at this moment. The boundaries between physical and spiritual are…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/naked.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2005-10-20T19:41:42+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/naked.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/naked.html","name":"Naked - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2005-10-20T19:41:42+00:00","dateModified":"2005-10-20T19:41:42+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/naked.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/naked.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/naked.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Naked"}]},{"@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\/999","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=999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}