{"id":11040,"date":"2009-02-02T23:14:44","date_gmt":"2009-02-02T23:14:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/site\/2017\/2\/1985\/stephen_prothero_for_the_vatican_a_teachable_moment\/"},"modified":"2009-02-02T23:14:44","modified_gmt":"2009-02-02T23:14:44","slug":"stephen_prothero_for_the_vatican_a_teachable_moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=11040","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Prothero: For the Vatican, a teachable moment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am not a Catholic, and I agree with the church on only roughly half of its positions on such matters as war, abortion, euthanasia and capital punishment. So in some respects I have no standing here. But I have long valued the capacity of this 2,000-year-old institution to speak with moral authority on the social and political questions of our time \u201d\u201d and to do so with a voice from the ancient of days. But this moral authority was badly eroded by the sexual abuse scandal of the past decade, and it is taking another hit by Benedict&#8217;s actions in this matter&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>I would think we would be well beyond the point where Vatican spokesmen would need to inform us that the Holocaust did, in fact, happen.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, we are not.<\/p>\n<p>My only hope is that this unfortunate incident cracks open Benedict&#8217;s study a bit to the world, and to the ecumenical spirit of John Paul II.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.usatoday.com\/oped\/2009\/02\/for-the-vatican.html#more\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am not a Catholic, and I agree with the church on only roughly half of its positions on such matters as war, abortion, euthanasia and capital punishment. So in some respects I have no standing here. But I have<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=11040\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,50,42,172,200,133,161,429,154,155,636,364,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-watch","category-international-news-commentary","category-religion-news-commentary","category-ecclesiology","category-europe","category-history","category-inter-faith-relations","category-judaism","category-other-churches","category-other-faiths","category-pope-benedict-xvi","category-roman-catholic","category-theology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11040\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}