{"id":34646,"date":"2012-09-18T18:00:14","date_gmt":"2012-09-18T18:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/site\/2017\/2\/1985\/john_allen_in_lebanon_pope_mixes_bitter_and_sweet\/"},"modified":"2012-09-18T18:00:14","modified_gmt":"2012-09-18T18:00:14","slug":"john_allen_in_lebanon_pope_mixes_bitter_and_sweet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=34646","title":{"rendered":"(John Allen) In Lebanon, pope mixes bitter and sweet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The pope also demanded that everyone must have the right to freely choose their own religion, and to practice it publicly, &#8220;without endangering one&#8217;s life.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He said the time has come &#8220;to move beyond tolerance to religious freedom.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Further, the pope seemed to link the deprival of religious liberty to Christian flight from the Middle East, warning that the long-standing decline in the region&#8217;s Christian footprint means &#8220;human, cultural, and religious impoverishment.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A Middle East without Christians, or with only a few Christians, would no longer be the Middle East,&#8221; the pope said, calling on political leaders to avoid the advent of a &#8220;monochromatic Middle East&#8221; without religious diversity.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/ncronline.org\/blogs\/all-things-catholic\/lebanon-pope-mixes-bitter-and-sweet\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The pope also demanded that everyone must have the right to freely choose their own religion, and to practice it publicly, &#8220;without endangering one&#8217;s life.&#8221; He said the time has come &#8220;to move beyond tolerance to religious freedom.&#8221; Further, the<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=34646\">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":[39,50,42,563,203,154,636,108,364],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-watch","category-international-news-commentary","category-religion-news-commentary","category-lebanon","category-middle-east","category-other-churches","category-pope-benedict-xvi","category-religion-culture","category-roman-catholic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34646","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=34646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34646\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}