Nevertheless, a full-page advertisement in the New York Times during the 1992 Democratic National Convention raised eyebrows because a few prominent Democrats endorsed “A New American Compact: Caring about Women, Caring for the Unborn.”

One name in particular jumped out in this list — Kennedy.

“The advocates of abortion on demand falsely assume two things: that women must suffer if the lives of unborn children are legally protected; and that women can only attain equality by having the legal option of destroying their innocent offspring in the womb,” proclaimed ad’s lengthy and detailed text.

“We propose a new understanding, one that does not pit mother against child. To establish justice and to promote the general welfare, America does not need the abortion license. What America needs are policies that responsibly protect and advance the interest of mothers AND their children, both before AND after birth.”

Near the end, the statement added: “We can choose to reaffirm our respect for human life. We can choose to extend once again the mantle of protection to all members of the human family, including the unborn.”

It really wasn’t a surprise that Eunice Kennedy Shriver — who died on Aug. 11, after a series of strokes — was among those who signed the document, along with her husband Sargent Shriver, the 1972 Democratic nominee for vice president.

Yes, she was the sister of President John F. Kennedy, Sen. Robert Kennedy, and Sen. Edward Kennedy and part of a family dynasty that changed how Americans view progressive politics and Catholicism.

But Eunice Shriver also attended convent schools, considered becoming a nun and remained a daily-Mass Catholic throughout her life, while teaching the Rosary prayers to her five children and 19 grandchildren. She was a public supporter of Democrats for Life, Feminists for Life and the Susan B. Anthony List, which supports pro-life women who seek public office.

“She was pious, I think, a very, very pious woman,” said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., stating the obvious during a six-hour public wake and Mass for his aunt at Our Lady of Victory Church on Cape Cod.

An official tribute went further while connecting her faith with the issue that dominated her public life.

“Inspired by her love of God, her devotion to her family, and her relentless belief in the dignity and worth of every human life, she worked without ceasing,” said the family’s public statement. “She was a living prayer. … She set out to change the world and to change us, and she did that and more. She founded the movement that became Special Olympics, the largest movement for acceptance and inclusion for people with intellectual disabilities in the history of the world. Her work transformed the lives of hundreds of millions of people across the globe, and they in turn are her living legacy.”

The mainstream obituaries and media tributes that followed her death also connected Shriver’s work with the poignant life of her older sister Rosemary Kennedy, who was mentally disabled. In a historic 1962 article for the Saturday Evening Post, Eunice yanked one of Camelot’s most tragic secrets into the open — under the stark headline, “Hope for Retarded Children.” In the decades that followed, she worked tirelessly to pull Rosemary into the family circle.

Nevertheless, elite journalists failed to connect the dots between Shriver’s fierce activism on behalf of children facing disabilities and her commitment to defending the lives of the unborn, including babies with Down syndrome and other genetic flaws.

For Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the sanctity of life was a Catholic issue, a political issue and an intensely personal issue.

“She was preeminently pro-life, against abortion and there to protect and underscore the dignity of every person. This, of course, manifested itself in her love for children with disabilities,” noted Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston, in a reflection posted online.

“While Eunice’s works were remarkable, I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that her Catholic faith and education was a very important part of what motivated her and helped her to interpret reality. … It was certainly the soil out of which grew her passion and dedication to the less fortunate and those who are challenged by disabilities and mental retardation.”

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Pope Gregory XVI proclaimed that “no one in the future dare to vex anyone, despoil him of his possessions, reduce to servitude, or lend aid and favor to those who give themselves up to these practices, or exercise that inhuman traffic by which the Blacks, as if they were not men but rather animals, having been brought into servitude, in no matter what way, are, without any distinction, in contempt of the rights of justice and humanity, bought, sold and devoted sometimes to the hardest labor.”

Nevertheless, the first bishop of Charleston, S.C., attempted to soften the blow. Quoting scripture and Catholic doctrine, Bishop John England wrote a series of letters arguing that the pope didn’t mean to attack those — including Catholics — who already owned slaves.

“Bishop England was not a bad man. He was not personally in favor of slavery, nor was he a racist,” noted Father John Raphael of New Orleans, at a rally organized as an alternative to the University of Notre Dame’s graduation rites.

“In fact, Bishop England exercised a cherished and personal ministry to black Catholics,” he added. “But in the face of strong, anti-Catholic sentiment and prejudice, he simply wanted to show his fellow antebellum Southerners that Catholics could be just as American as everybody else and that tolerance of their cherished institution — slavery — was not in any way opposed by the Catholic church.”

It was wrong for Catholics of that era to seek any compromise on slavery, stressed Raphael, who serves as principal of St. Augustine High School, one of Louisiana’s most prominent African-American institutions. It is just as wrong, today, for Catholic leaders to compromise on abortion. At least the slaves were allowed to live, to be baptized and to receive the sacraments, he said.

The symbolism was obvious, since the priest is a prominent African-American graduate of Notre Dame.

The symbolism was more than obvious, since he was speaking at a rally protesting Notre Dame’s decision to grant President Barack Obama an honorary doctor of laws degree, clashing with a U.S. Catholic bishops policy that states: “Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.”

The Mass and rally on Notre Dame’s south quad followed hours of prayers in the university’s Alumni Hall and famous Marian grotto. These solemn, peaceful events received little media attention, even though they drew several hundred or several thousand participants, depending on who did the counting, as well as 25 Notre Dame faculty members, 26 graduating seniors and Bishop John D’Arcy of the Catholic Diocese of Ft. Wayne-South Bend. A louder standoff between police and 100 off-campus activists — led by anti-abortion leader Randall Terry — received most of the news coverage.

During the actual commencement address, a few protesters yelled, “Stop killing our children.” Most of the graduates booed the protesters, then chanted, “Yes we can,” Obama’s campaign slogan, and “We are ND” as they were removed.

Notre Dame President John Jenkins stressed that Obama accepted Notre Dame’s invitation knowing that “we are fully supportive of church teaching on the sanctity of human life and we oppose his policies on abortion and embryonic stem cell research.”

“President Obama is not someone who stops talking to those who differ with him,” stressed Father Jenkins. Then he added, “Mr. President, this is a principle we share.”

Meanwhile, many of the speakers at the “Notre Dame Rally for Life” openly criticized Obama’s policies, but consistently focused their harshest words on the actions of the current Notre Dame administration.

“Faith without works is dead, words without actions are meaningless,” said Father Raphael. “If, as we have been told, a dialogue is actually taking place … between the presidents of Notre Dame and the United States, between the university and the nation, then, for the university at least, that dialogue must be shaped by truth and charity, and protecting the sanctity of all human life, as the church understands life, must be its goal. …

“Actively building a culture of life at Notre Dame must become central to the university’s witness and mission to the nation and to the world.”

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But the bishops had to vote on Ex Corde Ecclesiae (“From the Heart of the Church”). After all, they had been arguing about this papal document throughout the 1990s, trying to square the doctrinal vision of Pope John Paul II with their American reality. Rome said their first response was too weak, when it came to insisting that Catholic schools remain openly Catholic. Finally, the bishops approved a tougher document on a 223-to-31 vote.

Soon after that 1999 showdown, someone “with a good reason for wanting to know” emailed a simple question to Russell Shaw of the United States Catholic Conference. Who voted against the statement?

“There was no way to know. In fact, the Vatican doesn’t know — for sure — who those 31 bishops where,” said Shaw, discussing one of the many mysteries in his book, “Nothing to Hide: Secrecy, Communication and Communion in the Catholic Church.

“The secret ballots were destroyed,” he noted. “These days the voting process is even more secret, since the bishops just push a button and they’ve voted. Even if you wanted to know how your bishop voted, or you wanted the Vatican to know how your bishop voted, there’s no way to do that.”

Professionals have learned to read between the lines of debates held in the open sessions that the U.S. bishops choose to schedule. Outside those doors, insiders talk and spread rumors. Some bishops spin the press and others, usually those sending messages to Rome, hold press conferences, publish editorials or preach sermons. But many of the crucial facts remain cloaked in secrecy.

Of course, noted Shaw, few leaders of powerful institutions enjoy discussing their crucial decisions — let alone corporate or personal sins — in public. When Catholic insiders complain about “clericalism” they are confronting a problem that affects all hierarchies, from government to academia, from the Pentagon to Wall Street.

“It’s a kind of elitism, a way of thinking and behaving that assigns to the managerial class a superior status,” he said. “They are chiefs and everyone else is an Indian. They set the agenda. They always make the final decisions. They get to tell everyone else what to do.”

Of course, there’s truth in the old image that puts the pope at the top of an ecclesiastical pyramid, with ranks of clergy cascading down to the pews. Catholicism is not a democracy and there are times when leaders must keep secrets. That’s “a truth,” said Shaw, but it is “not the only truth,” since the whole church is meant to be knit together in a Communion built on a “radical equality of dignity and rights.”

Part of what is happening, he explained, is that some bishops are protecting a “facade of unity” that hides their doctrinal disagreements with the Vatican. While Shaw believes the bishops are more united with Rome now than they where were about 25 years ago, some bishops may be pushing for more and more closed “executive” sessions as a subconscious way to protect themselves.

Take, for example, the brutal waves of scandal caused by the sexual abuse of children and teens by clergy. For several decades, argued Shaw, the bishops have been afraid to openly discuss “the causes of the dreadful mess — nasty things like homosexuality among priests, theological rationalizing on the subject of sex and the entrenched self-protectiveness of the old clericalist culture.”

That’s the kind of scandal that creates global headlines. But, for most Catholics, more commonplace forms of secrecy shape their lives at the local level, said Shaw.

Consider another story reported in Shaw’s book, about a woman who quietly confronted a priest after a Mass in which he omitted the creed. When he failed to acknowledge the error, she said, “Father, you teach your people to be disobedient when you disobey the Church.”

The offended priest was silent. Then he leaned forward and whispered, “You know what honey? You’re full of it.” The priest walked away, giving the woman and her husband what appeared to be “the single-digit salute.”

Truth is, said Shaw, “clericalism is often alive and well at the local level. That’s the kind of secrecy and dishonesty that really cuts the heart of many local parishes, destroying any hope for real Communion there.”

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These churches are visions of horizontal utilitarianism, their flat, plain walls broken by patches of metal and glass while rows of chairs face ultramodern altars. The faithful are more likely to see balloons drift to the rafters than clouds of incense veil images of Jesus, Mary and the saints.

Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Dallas is certainly not a “Mass factory,” as both critics and fans of this poor but lively parish in a battered barrio would agree. Its Italian windows have been lovingly restored, Romanesque walls repaired and statuary augmented by treasures abandoned by others. Roses are popular, often in waves of 700 or more.

“Beauty is terribly important, especially for people who have so little beauty in their lives,” said Father Paul Weinberger, 44, a beefy, energetic Anglo who arrived 10 years ago after a Spanish-language immersion program.

“People need something that lifts them up, that lets them glimpse something higher. So I want worship here to be extravagant. I want their church to be like a garden in this workaday world. … I can’t guarantee that they’ll listen to me, but if their eyes wander around this church they’re going to drawn to things that point them toward the mysteries of the faith.”

But it was a change in the 1999 midnight Mass that helped create a buzz in Dallas and on the Internet.

Weinberger estimates that 70 percent of his flock speaks Spanish and the rest English. The challenge was to find a way for worshippers to gather in the same pews, at the same time, sharing a common language.

The priest’s solution raised eyebrows. He embraced the modern Catholic rite — the Novus Ordo — but elected to use the Vatican’s Latin text, accompanied by preaching in Spanish and English. This rite then filled the 10:45 a.m. slot in the parish’s Sunday schedule, mixed in with two Spanish Masses and three in English.

Now Weinberger is being transferred — against his will — and supporters believe his love of Latin is one reason for the decision. They fear sweeping changes in this revived parish.

This is nonsense, said Deacon Bronson Havard, spokesperson for Bishop Charles V. Grahmann. It’s perfectly normal for a priest to be rotated to another parish after 10 years and the next pastor will make the decision about Latin at Blessed Sacrament.

However, Havard stressed that the Dallas diocese does require priests to seek permission to use Latin rites — ancient or modern. This is an issue of loyalty. Only a directive from Rome can override the local bishop’s authority on matters such as this, he said.

As for Weinberger’s conviction that a Latin Mass is a symbol of unity, Havard said: “Using the Latin may mean something to him, but it means nothing to the people in the pews — especially not to the Mexican immigrants who come into this area. We’ve had many complaints about that.”

This is news to Weinberger. Diocesan policy requires that pastors receive copies of all complaints, he noted, and none have reached his desk.

This whole Dallas dispute sounds sadly familiar, said Helen Hull Hitchcock, editor of Adoremus, a conservative journal about liturgy.

“We hear reports from Catholics across the nation who are accused of doing all kinds of horrible things, like kneeling at places in the Mass where people have been kneeling for centuries,” she said. “Then people tell them that if they clash with their bishop … they’re being disloyal to the pope.

“It’s all very annoying. Some people are mad that these priests and parishes still exist.”

This is precisely what worries Weinberger.

The days of the Advent season are passing as he prepares for a final midnight Christmas Mass at Blessed Sacrament. Poinsettias, stacked 15 to 20 feet high, will frame the altar. Pews will be packed for the Latin Mass.

“What father does not want to see his whole family gathered around the same table? That has always been my goal,” he said. “I want to see our whole parish there, from the first-generation immigrants who only speak Spanish to the native Dallasites who only speak English.

“I don’t want the language to divide us. I want it to unite us.”

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Media coverage was guaranteed, since many list the Nigerian prelate as a top contender to succeed Pope John Paul II. Who knew he would dare to mention sex and marriage?

“The family is under siege,” said Arinze. “It is opposed by an anti-life mentality as seen in contraception, abortion, infanticide and euthanasia. It is scorned and banalized by pornography, desecrated by fornication and adultery, mocked by homosexuality, sabotaged by irregular unions and cut in two by divorce.”

A theology professor walked out, as did some outraged students. Seventy faculty members signed a letter of protest. But traditional Catholics began asking a burning question: Why was it shocking for a cardinal to defend Catholic doctrines on a Catholic campus?

These fires are still smoldering as students return to America’s 223 Catholic colleges and universities. The Arinze controversy also reinforced some controversial statistics suggesting that four years on most Catholic campuses may actually harm young Catholic souls.

“What we are seeing is a battle between orthodox Christian beliefs and the moral relativism that is becoming more powerful in many religious groups,” said Patrick Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society, a fiercely pro-Vatican educational network.

“Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, you name it.

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But Andrew Sullivan knew where to find comfort after the Vatican’s recent reminder that gay unions are in no way “similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family.” He poured out his frustration at www.andrewsullivan.com and his online community responded.

“Times are terrible,” wrote a Catholic priest. “The church says gay people are not permitted to get married, ordained or adopt children. All prohibitions. Not one statement of moral guidance or recognition. Negation only. I don’t know what to say or think myself. …

“I take refuge in conscience (which the tradition treats with utmost respect) and in my belief that the church is larger and older and wiser than one segment, no matter how powerful and officially sanctioned its self-defined role. The church cannot be contained or proscribed as the narrow experience of what the magisterium teaches. It is all of us.”

Sullivan shared that anonymous epistle with the 400,000 or so readers who visit his “weblog” each month. There are between 1.5 and 3 million “blogs” and the former New Republic editor is known as a trailblazer in this ever-expanding “blogosphere.”

Blogs are helping shape mainstream news, as the ousted editors of the New York Times now know. But blogs are also touching untold numbers of private lives. This is especially true in the realm of religion, where public policy and private piety are mixing in new ways.

Headlines seem distant in the daily press. They are personal in the blogs. One day it’s Catholic doctrine and its impact on legislators and judges. The next day it’s the Episcopal Church and the consecration of its first openly gay bishop.

Sullivan is used to slinging ink in this marketplace. But this week he used his blog to say that events are pushing him toward a “pretty major life-decision.”

“It tears me apart to see no prospect of the Catholic Church ending its war on gay people and their dignity in my lifetime,” he wrote. “I think it’s getting worse; and the next pope from the developing world could make the current one seem humane. Leaving the sacraments would be a huge blow to the soul; but the pope just called the love I have for my boyfriend ‘evil.’ “

Sullivan posted painful letters from gay Catholics who said the Vatican had pushed them over the line. One pondered cutting off “my membership and support of the Roman Catholic Church” and moving on to “what in my upbringing would be called ‘the next best thing’: the Episcopal Church.”

But the “blogosphere” has other sanctuaries. Father Paul Mankowski of the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome called Sullivan and his acolytes “conditional” Catholics who yearn for a different church.

“They persist in their membership, but with the understanding that the Church will be a different Church in the future,” he said, in the blog at Catholic World News (www.cwnews.com). “And if the Church will reverse her teaching in future, the Church must be wrong now. And if a man believes the Church is wrong now, he can’t possibly mean the same thing I mean when he professes her to be one, holy, catholic and apostolic.”

And Catholic blogger Amy Welborn (www.amywelborn.com) wondered whether Sullivan fears surrendering the familiar rituals of daily Catholic life, even though his beliefs have changed. Yet reason suggests that there “comes a point when an individual who doesn’t believe that faith rests on objective truth comes up hard against the institution that maintains that it does, and at that point, something’s got to give.”

Then again, she said, he may stay. What’s the “marquee value” of being a gay Episcopalian?

Reached by email, Sullivan said he feels tied to Catholicism by baptism, family, the sacraments and a “lifetime of prayer and reflection.” He still goes to Mass. He asked his readers to pray for him and was stunned at the consolation that flowed through these digital ties that bind.

“I don’t think I could belong to any other Church but the one I believe to be the true one,” he said. “I respect completely other faiths and denominations; but this one is in my bones and in my soul.”

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Every night stand-up comics crank out more nasty one-liners.

So it’s sad, but not shocking, that a Catholic priest told the Boston Globe about a partygoer who dressed up as a pedophile priest at Halloween.

It’s open season. Even though priests know they shouldn’t take it personally, it’s hard not to, said Father Donald Cozzens, a veteran Catholic educator who led a graduate seminary in Ohio.

“It’s hard to imagine how this can end any time soon,” he said. “It’s incomprehensible to me that some people continue to believe that we have to be careful about talking about this crisis. There are people who are still afraid that honesty will do more damage than silence.”

Back in 2000, Cozzens published a book called “The Changing Face of the Priesthood” that openly discussed trends — such as the thriving gay subculture in some seminaries — that reached mainstream news reports during 2002. Now he has written a sequel entitled “Sacred Silence: Denial and the Crisis in the Church.”

Once again, it is tempting to focus on the sexual details in this ongoing scandal, which actually began in mid-1980s. But Cozzens said recent headlines must be read in a larger context.

News reports are “unmasking a systemic or structural crisis that threatens the lines of power that have gone unchallenged for centuries,” he said. “This in itself is enough to make some prelates and clergy afraid, very afraid. Another is the Catholic anger rising from conservatives, moderates and progressives alike against the duplicitous arrogance of some prominent archbishops and other church authorities.”

Underneath the fear and anger are deep concerns about changing times and statistics.

For example, one or two generations ago middle-class or poor Catholic parents were proud when one of their sons and daughters decided to become a priest or a nun. Today’s suburban Catholic reality is radically different. The numbers just don’t add up.

“We have known for some time now that the birth rate for Catholic families in the U.S. is less than two children (1.85), the same rate for families in general,” he noted. “It is likely, then, that many Catholic parents will have but one daughter. Parental support, let alone encouragement, for a daughter considering the religious life is likely to be weak.”

And the same is true for Catholic sons. As the former vicar for clergy in Cleveland, Cozzens knows all of the statistics about the falling number of American priests and the rising number of Catholics in their pews. He also knows that some dioceses are faring better than others and that, at the global level, vocations may actually be up.

Nevertheless, 6 percent of U.S. priests are 35 years old or younger. The age of the average priest is creeping closer to 60 and Cozzens believes the number of priests 90 years of age and older may soon be larger than the number under 35.

Anyone who studies modern Catholics must face other stark realities, said Cozzens. The number of single-parent Catholic homes is rising, with the rest of the culture, and approximately “half of the young men and women making vocational … decisions are doing so in an environment that has been marked by separation, divorce or death.”

Meanwhile, worship patterns are changing. A generation ago, 70 percent of U.S. Catholics attended mass each week. Today, about a third do so.

Is there a link between the size and shape of suburban Catholic families and the drop in the number of candidates for holy orders? Can these trends be reversed?

This leads Cozzens to other tough questions: Will the clergy sexual abuse crisis start a “domino effect” that combines with other trends to cause sweeping changes in the church? If so, what should those changes be? Perhaps married priests?

Two years ago, a Vatican archbishop told Cozzens that his work was raising eyebrows. Vatican insiders were convinced he was attacking mandatory celibacy.

“We cannot avoid that issue,” said Cozzens. “Truth is, we already have a married priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church, just not in the west. We may need to draw on the traditions of the Eastern Rite Catholics and the Orthodox, as well.

“But most of all, we can’t be afraid to talk about what is actually going on.”

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He can see some faces harden after people make eye contact and then see his clerical collar. Some look away in disgust. A few men deliberately switch to a collision course. Pearson said one or two angry pedestrians have spat on him.

“If someone is upset, they may find a way to bump into you or give you a shove,” he said. “Then they say sometime like, ‘Oh excuse me, FATHER. Hey, did you molest anybody today, FATHER.’ …

“I try to just say something simple like, ‘God bless you anyway, my friend.’ “

Pearson is not a Roman Catholic priest, but other Bostonians don’t know that. He is a veteran Anglican renewal leader who is now a canon theologian in a global body called the Charismatic Episcopal Church. Nevertheless, he still wears clerical clothing as he goes about his life and work. He also encourages other clergy in his church — many of whom are former evangelical or Pentecostal pastors — to do the same.

This latest round of Catholic sex-abuse scandals have caused Pearson to reflect on what it means to be visually labeled as a priest.

The tensions in his hometown are unbelievable, he said. Ordinarily, Boston is the kind of place where police may call for priests to help break up fights. Now the mighty Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston is considering filing for bankruptcy due to its mounting legal woes. And in the pews, devout Catholics are experiencing shock and grief. Others have crossed over into fury.

Pearson tries to remember this when hit with an icy stare or a sharp elbow.

“Some people are jerks,” he said. “Right now they’re being a jerk about this. Next week they’ll be a jerk about something else. But you never know when you are dealing with someone who is truly in spiritual pain, someone who has experienced abuse or who has a loved one who was abused.”

Innocent priests are in pain, too. They feel like they have targets pinned on their black jackets. Some priests — in Boston and elsewhere — have reportedly stopped wearing their distinctive clerical garb much of the time.

Pearson is convinced this is a tragic loss, both for the priests and the communities they serve. A clerical collar is more than a symbol, he said. It is a sign that God is present in the gritty and numbing realities of daily life.

“There are still many people who need to see someone is available and ‘on duty’ for them,” wrote Pearson, in a Charismatic Episcopal Church newsletter. “While the general mood … has changed, there are still people who come up to me for a word of comfort or for prayer.

“I’ll risk the abuse of some in order to be available to people in need.”

The Protestant pastor Pearson knew as a child always blended into a crowd, with his standardized “brown suit, white shirt and brown tie with blue blobs on it.” This pastor was dressed for work, but only the members of his flock knew who he was.

Wearing a clerical collar is different, for better and for worse.

Some people are offended and some are encouraged. But everyone knows a priest is in their midst, said Pearson. It is sad that some Catholic priests are even considering leaving their clerical clothing at home. They are hiding from the needy.

A few months ago, Pearson said he visited a “very Italian Catholic parish” in Boston’s north end. In the foyer, a troubled man rushed up and asked when was the next time for confessions. Pearson looked around and did not see a priest in the empty sanctuary. So he borrowed a confession booth.

Afterwards, the parish priest approached — wearing a simple blue sports shirt — and thanked Pearson for hearing the man’s confession.

“That troubled soul didn’t know to approach this other priest, because he couldn’t see that he was a priest,” said Pearson. “But I was wearing a uniform that said, ‘I am a priest. Approach me. That is what I am here for. Approach me.’ That is what wearing that clerical collar is all about.”

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This 1862 rite for the “Degradation of a bishop” is not for the liturgically faint of heart. In it, a bishop who had committed disgraceful acts was stripped of the symbols of his office — mitre, crosier and ring. The prelate leading the rite would say: “Rightly do we pull off thy ring, the sign of fidelity, since thou has made bold to rape God’s own bride, the Church.”

Try to imagine that on Nightline.

When reclaiming the book of the Gospels, the prelate would exclaim: “Give us back the Gospel! Since thou has spurned the grace of God and made thyself unworthy of the office of preaching, we rightly deprive you of this office.”

Finally, someone would take a knife or “a shard of glass” and lightly scrape the thumbs, fingers and forehead of the disgraced bishop, or someone standing in for him. The goal was to remove to “the extent of our powers” the anointing of his holy office.

“It’s like playing a film of an ordination rite, only backwards,” noted a conservative Jesuit scholar who, in an act of ecclesiastical self-preservation, always uses a nom de plume. He published his translation of this obscure text in Catholic World Report’s anonymous “Diogenes” column.

“To use our modern jargon, this rite would have been a ‘teaching moment.’ The point would have been to act out what it means to be a bishop and what it means for a bishop to fall.”

No one would dare use such a rite today. These days, bishops slip away quietly. Some hold press conferences, which offer a more modern approach to shame.

So far, a dozen Catholic bishops — in America and around the world — have resigned during the current wave of sexual-abuse scandals. Bishops have resigned for health reasons, legal reasons, psychological reasons and, sometimes, to move to a less public form of ministry. What is missing is any sense that these resignations have spiritual significance.

What Catholics need right now is a strong dose of liturgical catharsis, according to this Jesuit “Diogenes.”

“There are souls at stake. There are spiritual consequences to what is going on,” the priest said. “What many faithful Catholics have been saying is that too many bishops have failed to keep the promises that they made to God and to his church. It’s not a just matter of making bad management decisions. It’s a matter of defending the faith.”

The bishops are the key. During their Dallas media blitz they approved a “zero tolerance” policy for priests and deacons guilty of sexual abuse of minors. This was a crucial step, since about 2 percent of U.S. priests have been accused of sexual misconduct. But a stunning Dallas Morning News investigation has shown that 60 percent or more of U.S. bishops have been accused of failing to stop sexual abuse or covering up past crimes. On this, the new “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People” is silent.

The bishops also avoided debate to clarify how this charter will affect the overwhelming number of cases — some say it’s as high as 96 percent — that involve the homosexual abuse of adolescent males. An attempt to discuss the impact of doctrinal dissent in seminaries was greeted with silence. Both of these explosive issues had been emphasized in an April document signed by U.S. cardinals after they met with Pope John Paul II.

The bishops approved a “zero tolerance” policy that will have an immediate impact on their priests. The question is whether a “zero tolerance” policy will be created for bishops.

This appears unlikely. If there are going to be any rites for the “Degradation of a bishop,” they will almost certainly have to be held in secular courts.

“Would it be a ‘zero tolerance’ offense if a bishop lied to a judge or a grand jury? Yes, I think it would be,” said Robert Royal, president of the Faith and Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. “Yes, I think we could see some bishops in jail.”

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This mid-1980s forum was attended by all diocesan clergy and embraced by the local bishop, Wilson recalled, even though the speaker warned that the Vatican was reining in his ministry to gays. One urgent question from that talk: Did gay Catholics have only three true options - chastity, sin or suicide?

“The issue of gay teen-agers did come up,” said Wilson, now a priest in Brooklyn. “He said he would like to discuss how priests can minister to boys in this situation, but that this was not a subject that could be addressed rationally in the church. He said people got too emotional when discussing this kind of subject.”

The speaker was Father Paul R. Shanley.

At the time, the Boston “street priest” was a trailblazer in ministry to sexual minorities. Now he stands accused of being a serial child molester and an apologist for man-boy love.

The Shanley story is emerging in waves of legal documents and headlines from Boston to Dallas to San Diego. But, like so many other plot lines in the sex-abuse crisis, it is also unfolding on the Internet. These days, it’s hard to ignore the role of email list operators, chat-room masters, “web log” commentators and ordinary Catholics — with and without collars — who can click “forward” with a mouse.

Wilson, for example, included his reflections on that long-ago Dallas lecture and a host of other issues in a formal letter to the organization Priests For Life. But the conservative priest also emailed it to a few friends, who sent it to some Internet lists, where it reached activists who posted it on the World Wide Web. And so it goes.

Eventually, Wilson’s essay surfaced in a media forum at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., where it was quoted along with coverage from The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Commonweal and mainstream sources. This is merely one example of a torrent of digital commentary that is now a normal part of Catholic life behind the scenes.

Designated news media free-for-alls — such as this week’s U.S. Catholic Bishops meeting in Dallas - will continue to produce policy statements that inspire close scrutiny and responses from Rome. Everyone pays attention when a crisis hits the global networks and newspapers.

But is the Vatican paying attention to the digital chorus?

During an Easter season trip to Rome, journalist and scholar George Weigel said he felt as if he had stepped into a “time warp” as he met Vatican officials who were only then facing revelations and emotions that had rocked American Catholics three to four months earlier.

“People were not sure how much of this was real and how much of it was hype. People were unsure as to how much more was coming,” said Weigel, author of “Witness to Hope,” the 992-page authorized biography of Pope John Paul II.

Weigel was amazed. Clearly there was some kind of “information gap” between the U.S. Catholic establishment and Rome, he said. Also, the worldly European press had remained silent, perhaps due to a jaded view of American obsessions about sex. But something else was wrong.

“Suddenly it dawned on me that the Vatican is simply not, to this day, a part of the Internet culture,” said Weigel. “There are a few people who take the trouble to go online every morning or evening. … But in the main, what we have become used to and what frames our emotional responses to these questions, namely real-time information and a constant flow of chat, commentary, argument and so forth, … none of this exists over there.”

Wilson, for one, finds it hard to believe that such an “information gap” still exists.

“I know people in Rome have that attitude: We look backward over 2000 years and forward into eternity,” he said. “But there are Americans over there who understand what is happening. … And this information has been sent to Rome for years, by mail, special delivery, telegram, fax, FedEx, Candy-Gram and however Americans choose to deliver information of vital importance.”

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