The sobering final phrases of the Hail Mary prayer have recently taken on a unique relevancy: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”

A month ago, the conservative Catholic writer challenged readers of the American Papist website to join him in praying one Hail Mary a day on behalf of the iconoclastic atheist Christopher Hitchens, who has been stricken with esophageal cancer, a disease which leaves few survivors.

“I am going to begin praying … for the salvation of his eternal soul,” wrote Peters, “that God will be with him ‘at the hour of his death,’ that God will help his unbelief in this life, and that those he has led away from God will come back to His infinite love and mercy. I am in no way praying for him to die, I am praying for him to live eternally.”

Peters is not alone and Hitchens knows it. While some believers hope that he suffers and dies, post haste, the author of “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything” told CNN that he has been surprised that others — who are “much more numerous, I must say, and nicer” — are praying for his healing, both body and soul.

This has been one of the strangest side effects of Hitchens’ journey across the “stark frontier that marks off the land of malady.” This is a zone in which almost everyone is politely encouraging, the jokes are feeble, sex talk is nonexistent and the “cuisine is the worst of any destination I have ever visited,” wrote Hitchens, in a blunt Vanity Fair essay. The native tongue in “Tumorville” is built around terms such as “metastasized,” phases such as “tissue is the issue” and quotes from the writings of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross.

Most of the inhabitants also do quite a bit of praying — for themselves, for their loved ones and even for suffering people they have never met.

Hitchens told evangelical broadcaster Hugh Hewitt that he remains convinced these prayers “don’t do any good, but they don’t necessarily do any harm. It’s touching to be thought of in that way.”

The bottom line, explained Peters, is that his faith asks him to “pray for everyone, even those who hate us. … Hitch just happens to be a famous public enemy of the faith, so more people know what is happening in this life, so more people are talking about why it’s good to pray for him.”

While it is “absolutely horrible” that anyone would pray for Hitchens to suffer and die, he added, many believers may find it hard to do more than pray for “God’s will to be done.” That is the “safe prayer” that is always appropriate.

Meanwhile, a quick Internet scan reveals that some believers are, predictably enough, praying for Hitchens to be converted to Christianity for the sake of his own soul. Others are specifically praying that the scribe who — with Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins — is called one of the “four horsemen” of the New Atheism will not only convert, but also become an apologist for faith. That happened decades ago with an atheist named C.S. Lewis, after all.

“Ultimately, I simply will pray that Hitch has a good and holy death,” said Peters. “I really do not care if he has a public conversion. I care that he, somehow, has a private conversion and that he will be reconciled to God.”

As much as believers love these kinds of “foxhole conversion” stories, Hitchens is convinced he will not surrender. However, should rumors spread that he has “hedged his bets,” the writer has made several public statements warning his admirers that if such cry to the Almighty were to take place, they should ignore it.

“If that comes it will be when I’m very ill, when I am half demented, either by drugs or by pain and I won’t have control over what I say,” he told CNN. “I can’t say that the entity that by then would be me wouldn’t do such a pathetic thing. But I can tell you that — not while I am lucid. No, I could be quite sure of that.”

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The windows are frosted or tinted in muted tones of sky blue, lavender, amber or pink. If there are stained-glass images, they are ultramodern in style, to match any art objects that make sense in this kind of space. The floors are covered with carpet, which explains why there are speakers hanging in the rafters.

The final product resembles a sunny gymnasium that just happens to contain an abstract crucifix, the Stations of the Cross and one or two images of the Virgin Mary.

“The whole look was both modern and very bland,” said Matthew Alderman, a graduate of the University of Notre Dame’s classical design program who works as a consultant on sacred art and architecture.

“It was a kind of beige Catholicism that was ugly, but not aggressively ugly … and these churches looked like they were in a chain that had franchises everywhere. It was that whole Our Lady of Pizza Hut look that started in the1950s and then took over in the ’60s and ’70s.”

The problem is that many Catholics believe that this look that represented an urgent response to contemporary culture — especially after Vatican II — has now gone painfully out of date.

Few things age less gracefully than modernity. However, few parishes can afford to “take a wrecking ball” to their sanctuaries. This is also highly emotional territory, since any attempt to change how people worship, whether they are modernists or traditionalists, will collide with their most cherished beliefs.

Thus, after years of studying intense debates on these issues, Alderman recently drafted a manifesto offering easy, affordable ways for make these sanctuaries “less ugly and more Catholic.” He posted it at “The Shrine of the Holy Whapping,” an online forum created by several Notre Dame graduates to host lighthearted discussions of serious Catholic subjects.

While some of his proposals are specific — such as removing carpeting to improve church acoustics — the designer said the key is for parish leaders to find a way to “bring a sense of tradition and beauty to their chancels and naves without having to break the bank.” His basic principles included these:

* Do everything possible to return the visual focus to the main altar and the tabernacle that contains the reserved sacraments, the bread and wine that has been consecrated during the Mass. This can be accomplished with a few contrasting coats of paint, stencil designs in strategic places, the rearranging of altar furniture, a touch of new stonework or even the hanging of colored drapes. In many cases a platform can be added under the altar to make it more visible or a designer can darken the lights and colors around the pews, while increasing the light focused on the altar and tabernacle.

* Reject any strategy that tries to hide decades of modernity behind a blitz of statues and flowers in an attempt to create “a traditional Catholic theme park,” he said. Too often, the result is “strip-mall classicism” that assumes that anything that looks old is automatically good.

“You don’t want something that looks like its fake and plastic,” said Alderman. “The worst case scenario is that you have bad taste stacked on top of bad taste, with some of the worst excesses of the old layered on top of all those mistakes that were driven by modernity. … This kind of schizophrenia is not a good thing in a church.”

* It’s important to “work with what you have, and don’t work against it” while focusing on a few logical changes that actually promote worship and prayer, he said. A chapel dedicated to Mary can appeal to those who are devoted to saying the Rosary. Candles and flower arrangements can focus attention on a statue of the parish’s patron saint.

In the end, argued Alderman, “You may not be able to turn your 1950s A-frame church into Chartres, but if you try to find art that harmonizes with its perhaps now rather quaint attempts at futurism, while at the same time seeking to reconnect it with tradition, the result may have a pleasing consistency. …

“While it may lack the grandeur of Rome or Florence, it can still become a beautiful, unified expression of the faith.”

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In that influential 1960 address, Kennedy boldly proclaimed: “I do not speak for my church on public matters, and the church does not speak for me.

“Whatever issue may come before me as president — on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject — I will make my decision in accordance … with what my conscience tells me to be the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates. And no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise.”

And so it came to pass that — politically speaking — JFK begat the Kennedy dynasty, which begat Mario Cuomo, who begat Geraldine Ferraro, who begat Joseph Biden, who begat Rudy Giuliani, who begat John Kerry, who begat Arnold Schwarzenegger, who begat Nancy Pelosi and so forth and so on.

Looking back, it’s clear that Kennedy’s high-risk visit to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association changed Catholic political life. That’s why one of America’s most outspoken Catholic leaders recently seized an opportunity to deliver a very different message to another Protestant audience in Houston.

Kennedy’s speech was “sincere, compelling, articulate — and wrong,” claimed Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput, at a Houston Baptist University forum on faith and public life. “His Houston remarks profoundly undermined the place not just of Catholics, but of all religious believers, in America’s public life and political conversation. Today, half a century later, we’re paying for the damage.”

The key, argued the archbishop, is that Kennedy did more than endorse the separation of church and state. He did more than plead for religious tolerance in the public square, after generations of tensions between Catholics and Protestants.

Ultimately, that Kennedy did was pledge to separate his faith from his personal conscience, thus building a high wall down the center of his own heart, mind and soul. How is it possible for Christians to do this, Chaput asked, when dealing with profoundly moral issues such as health care, immigration, abortion, poverty, education, religious liberty, family life, sexual identity and matters of war and peace?

“Real Christian faith is always personal,” he said, “but it’s never private.”

Political and religious leaders have been debating the meaning of Kennedy’s words ever since he spoke them. This was especially true during the 2008 presidential race when critics dissected the beliefs of several candidates who openly discussed their religious beliefs — such as Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin and, of course, the future president, Barack Obama.

During a Fordham University forum on “The Kennedy Moment,” political theorist William Galston of the Brookings Institution said that the key to the 1960 address was the candidate’s bold insistence that his private spiritual views should not even be discussed because they “do not influence his views on public matters.”

Kennedy also endorsed a “separation between democracy and God,” noted Galston, former senior domestic policy adviser for President Bill Clinton. In fact, he used the word “God” only once, in a reference to the presidential oath of office.

This speech “could have been given by a nonbeliever. Indeed — deep breath — I rather suspect it was,” said Galston. “At the very least, there is no indication that JFK regarded the church as having any rightful authority over his public conduct.”

For Chaput, it’s impossible to concede that the teachings of the Catholic faith should have nothing to do with the public lives, vocations and actions of individuals who continue to call themselves faithful Catholics.

Nevertheless, 50 years after Kennedy’s speech in Houston “we have more Catholics in national public office than ever before. But I wonder if we’ve ever had fewer of them who can coherently explain how their faith informs their work or who even feel obligated to try,” said the archbishop.

“At least one of the reasons for it is this: Too many Catholics confuse their personal opinions with a real Christian conscience. Too many live their faith as if it were a private idiosyncrasy, the kind that they’ll never allow to become a public nuisance. And too many just don’t really believe. Maybe it’s different in Protestant circles. But I hope you’ll forgive me if I say, ‘I doubt it.’ “

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“Actually, it was my priest,” said Winner, who teaches Christian spirituality at Duke Divinity School. “I have learned that people in my life often tell me what I need to do during Lent. … It’s kind of like hearing from angels.”

Although the voice wasn’t miraculous, Winner thought it would take a miracle to follow her spiritual guide’s advice. The challenge was deceptively simple: Could she give up reading during Lent?

At the time, Winner was working as book review editor for Beliefnet.com and studying for her doctorate at Columbia University. She was a writer, editor and student and, naturally, was surrounded by books day after day.

How in the name of God was she supposed to stop reading?

Nevertheless, she decided to try.

“This was not your normal 40 days of work,” said Winner, author of “Girl Meets God: A Memoir” and other works of contemporary spirituality. “What I was doing was attacking my own work obsessions. This forced me to examine the place of work in my life. It made me examine other parts of my life, as well.”

Fasting traditions during Lent — the 40-day penitential season before Easter — have evolved through the ages, especially in Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and liturgical Protestant churches that emphasize the church calendar. Winner is active in the Episcopal Church.

For centuries, Catholics ate only one real meal a day, with no meat or fish. Today, Catholics are supposed to observe a strict fast and abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday at the start of Lent and Good Friday at the end. In many parishes, the faithful are still urged to avoid meat on Fridays during Lent. Orthodox Christians strive to fast from meat and dairy products during all of Lent and Holy Week.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans in a variety of churches follow an informal tradition in which they choose to fast from “one thing” — such as chocolate or soft drinks — during Lent. This practice may be linked to a passage in the sixth century monastic Rule of St. Benedict, which states:

“During these days, therefore, let us add something to the usual amount of our service, special prayers, abstinence from food and drink, that each one offer to God … something above his prescribed measure. Namely, let him withdraw from his body somewhat of food, drink, sleep, speech, merriment, and with the gladness of spiritual desire await holy Easter.”

Winner noted that this practice of “giving up one thing” was supposed to build on the traditional Lenten disciplines linked to food, prayer and almsgiving — not replace them. The goal was to shine a spotlight into some unexamined corner of one’s life.

It didn’t take her long, for example, for Winner to realize that she couldn’t stop reading — period. She needed, for example, to reread one book to prepare for an exam. She had to do some reading in order to do her day job, but she asked if she could be relieved from some assignments that she would have accepted, if not for this unique Lenten discipline.

The surprise, said Winner, was how this fast touched her life after the working day. That’s when she could almost hear her favorite volumes of history and fiction calling her name (especially the detective novels).

“What this showed me was that I was using reading as an escape. I was reading books as a way to get away from some things,” she said, and then laughed. “Fiction is probably a better way to cope with some issues in your life than heroin. But if books are what you’re using, then you need to find that out.”

In the years since, Winner has repeated this bookish fast several times, while searching for other disciplines that would have a similar impact. This year she is trying to fast from “saying ‘yes’ all the time,” which is harder than it sounds.

“The thing is, Lent isn’t a therapeutic self-improvement project,” she said. “We’re supposed to take a hard look at our sins and then repent. But how do we get to repentance if we have never truly paused to examine our lives? …

“Most of us are morally and spiritually sleepwalking. We need to wake up and see where we are and what we’re doing.”

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“When it is a matter of the moral norms prohibiting intrinsic evil, there are no privileges or exceptions. … Before the demands of morality we are all absolutely equal,” wrote the pope, in his 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor (“The Splendor of Truth”).

“In the end, only a morality which acknowledges certain norms as valid always and for everyone, with no exception, can guarantee the ethical foundation of social coexistence, both on the national and international levels.”

It would be stating the matter mildly to say that young Catholic adults in America disagree with John Paul II on this issue, according to a new survey commissioned by the Knights of Columbus.

An overwhelming 82 percent of Catholic Millennials — the generation between 18-29 years of age — agreed with this statement: “Morals are relative; there is no definite right and wrong for everybody.” In comparison, 64 percent of other Millennials affirmed that statement, when questioned by researchers with the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion.

Older “American Catholics” were also more willing to embrace moral relativism than were other Americans, at the rate of 63 percent compared with 56 percent. However, a slim majority of “Practicing Catholics” in the survey — 54 percent — were willing to affirm the statement, “Morals are fixed and based on unchanging standards.”

“Practicing Catholics” were defined as “those who attend religious services at least once a month,” explained Barbara L. Carvalho, director of the Marist Poll. This group included “Catholics who attend services more than once a week, once a week, or once or twice a month excluding weddings and funerals,” she said.

As stark as those numbers are, it’s important to understand that these broad Catholic categories include different kinds of believers who have different beliefs and lifestyles, said Andrew Walter, vice president for media research and development for the Knights of Columbus. For church leaders, the “Practicing Catholics” category will offer more insights into what is happening in pews.

“You have to ask, ‘Who is truly connected to their faith? Who is doing something with it?’ When you talk about these ‘Practicing Catholics,’ you are not talking about the Christmas and Easter crowd,” he said. “These people have an ongoing link to a Catholic parish and they are doing something with it.”

While the poll contains evidence that what Pope Benedict XVI has called a “dictatorship of relativism” may be growing stronger, the numbers also show that young Catholic adults share a yearning for some kind of moral order — even if they reject the existence of moral absolutes. It’s possible to “drill down” into the research, said Walter, and see that when young Catholics are forced to wrestle with individual issues “they are willing to make judgment calls and say that some things are right and some things are wrong.”

For example, 91 percent of Catholic Millennials affirmed that adultery is morally wrong, 66 percent said abortion is immoral and 63 percent rejected assisted suicide. When asked to identify virtues that are “not valued enough in American society,” 82 percent selected “commitment to marriage,” making that the top choice.

But there was a flip side to this moral coin. Only 20 percent of these young Catholic adults agreed with their church’s teachings that premarital sex is morally wrong and, thus, sinful. Only 35 percent affirmed doctrines that forbid sexual relationships between homosexuals.

While Catholic Millennials are interested in spiritual growth, only 43 percent said that American society doesn’t place enough value on “religious observance,” putting that choice in last place. In another answer sure to raise clergy eyebrows, 61 percent affirmed that it’s “okay for someone of your religion to also practice other religions” at the same time.

“They want to say they are relativists, but it’s also clear that they are not relativists on all issues,” stressed Walter. “They have a strong spiritual sense that they say is important in their lives. What they don’t have is a place for institutional religion in their lives. … The problem is that you have some people who have a church and others who really have no church at all.”

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“She was preeminently pro-life, against abortion and there to protect and underscore the dignity of every person,” noted O’Malley, praising the founder of the Special Olympics.

When Sen. Edward Kennedy died soon after that, the cardinal strongly defended his own decision to preside at his funeral — despite the senator’s public stands against church church’s teachings on abortion and sexuality.

“We must show those who do not share our belief about life that we care about them,” O’Malley argued. “We will stop the practice of abortion by changing the law, and we will be successful in changing the law if we change people’s hearts. We will not change hearts by turning away from people in their time of need and when they are experiencing grief and loss.”

The cardinal didn’t deliver these highly personal messages from the pulpit of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. Instead, he posted them on “Cardinal Sean’s Blog” at BostonCatholic.org — his own multimedia journal.

O’Malley isn’t alone. A few other bishops and priests have made the jump into cyberspace. However, there will be many more bloggers wearing Roman collars if Pope Benedict XVI has his way. In a message addressed straight to priests — bypassing the offices of many cautious bishops — the pope has urged them to start spreading and defending the faith online.

“The world of digital communication, with its almost limitless expressive capacity, makes us appreciate all the more Saint Paul’s exclamation: ‘Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel,’ ” said the pope, in a message released on Jan. 24, the feast of St. Francis de Sales, the patron saint of journalists.

“The spread of multimedia communications and its rich ‘menu of options’ might make us think it sufficient simply to be present on the Web, or to see it only as a space to be filled,” argued Benedict, whose online presence has risen with the birth of Pope2You.net and the Vatican YouTube channel.

“Yet priests can rightly be expected to be present in the world of digital communications as faithful witnesses to the Gospel, exercising their proper role as leaders of communities which increasingly express themselves with the different ‘voices’ provided by the digital marketplace. Priests are thus challenged to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources (images, videos, animated features, blogs, websites) which, alongside traditional means, can open up broad new vistas for dialogue, evangelization and catechesis.”

For tech-savvy Catholics, it’s stunning news that the 82-year-old Benedict used the word “blog” in the first place, noted Rocco Palmo, the Philadelphia-based scribe whose “Whispers in the Loggia” weblog is a global hot spot for Vatican news and gossip. The tone of this papal message, he added, is relentlessly positive — a striking departure from the Vatican’s many downbeat messages about media in the past.

The bottom line, noted Palmo, via email, is that “against the backdrop of the widespread American experience of mass closings of parishes, declines in attendance, etc., we’re learning that one thing that helps folks want to keep staying close is when … the church realizes that one hour on Sunday just isn’t enough, that people are looking for something to help keep them connected and inspired through the week. So I think Benedict is calling priests to see that they have a crucial role in that, and to see this not as some sort of hobby or personal indulgence, but a vitally important extension of their ministry. Anything that bears fruit to that end lifts all boats.”

Catholic leaders will, however, need to be careful when working in this chaotic, even deceptive, online world.

After all, some early reports about Benedict’s message about digital media mentioned that Vatican officials marked the occasion by opening an official Twitter feed — @vatican_va — complete with the Vatican coat of arms.

It was a fake. Catholic News Service soon established that the Vatican has not taken up tweeting — yet.

“The whole episode has prompted some Vatican media people to remark, ‘It wasn’t us — but it should have been us,’ ” noted John Thavis, the CNS bureau chief in Rome. “So don’t be surprised to see a real Vatican Twitter feed in the future.”

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But there’s another tune the pianist keeps playing that is completely different. “Forty Days” opens with the haunting, chant-like lines that define the most famous piece in his first sacred oratorio, “The Light in the Wilderness.”

“Forty days alone in the desert, days and nights of constant prayer, seeking in the wailing wind an answer to despair,” sings the chorus, in verses inspired by biblical accounts of the temptations of Jesus. “Forty days of questioning: Why was he there, in the lonely desert? Forty days of fasting and prayer, searching for his destined role. …”

Through the decades, Brubeck has struggled to talk about the private journey that has defined his faith. In the program booklet for that 1968 cantata, he explained that he was “reared as a Presbyterian by a Christian Scientist mother who attended a Methodist Church.” He also stressed that three Jewish teachers shaped his life — philosopher Irving Goleman, composer Darius Milhaud and Jesus.

“With ‘The Light in the Wilderness’ we were really trying to get at … the heart of the New Testament,” said Brubeck, decades after the oratorio — with lyrics by his wife Iola — reshaped his work as a composer. “We decided that we would try to provide contemporary settings to help people hear what Jesus was saying.”

Last weekend, Brubeck came to Washington, D.C., for a White House reception, a Kennedy Center gala and all the other festivities that accompany being selected as one of the five recipients of America’s highest annual award for lifetime achievement in the performing arts. The celebration took place on Brubeck’s 89th birthday.

The emphasis, of course, was on his life as a jazz superstar.

“It’s understandable that nobody really talked about his work in sacred music,” said orchestra conductor Russell Gloyd, who is also Brubeck’s longtime manager. “The problem with Dave is that he’s been around so long that he’s done almost everything.” The religious side of Brubeck’s repertoire is “something that often gets overlooked, which is sad because this music means so much to him,” said Gloyd.

Not long after the pianist became famous, the husband-and-wife team wrote a large-scale work called “The New Ambassadors.” It contained “They Say I Look Like God,” a bluesy Gospel number written for jazz legend Louis Armstrong that combined a Gregorian chant melody with lyrics based on the book of Genesis.

That led to “The Light in the Wilderness,” which was followed by two more major religious works, “Truth Has Fallen” and “The Gates of Justice,” which drew on passages from the Jewish Torah and speeches by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Then there was a Spanish-tinged Christmas cantata called “La Fiesta de la Posada,” the Easter cantata “Beloved Son” and a series of musical meditations based on “Pange Lingua,” a Eucharistic hymn written by St. Thomas Aquinas.

Finally, the Our Sunday Visitor publishing company asked Brubeck to compose a Mass, which was completed in 1979 and given the title, “To Hope! A Celebration.” The experience was so overwhelming — Brubeck said the complete “Our Father” piece came to him in a dream — that the composer ended up joining the Catholic Church.

The Brubecks are still hard at work. While the other Kennedy Center honorees arrived a day or two early, Gloyd noted that Brubeck was busy squeezing in another performance in a Catholic church — performing “Canticles of Mary,” which blends jazz, Gregorian chants with a new hymn written by the Brubecks.

For centuries, Brubeck once told me, the world’s best composers worked to create music that would appeal to audiences in sanctuary pews as well as in elite concert halls. For him, composing a complete Mass was one of the greatest technical challenges of his career because it had to be challenging and simple at the same time.

“I really wanted it to be something that everyday people could perform,” he said. “Most of the time, the faith that really matters and really affects people is the faith out in the local churches. The Mass was written for those kinds of people — not just for professionals. … What good is religious music if it can’t be performed in churches?”

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Nevertheless, it still makes news when believers vow to act on this conviction.

“Through the centuries, Christianity has taught that civil disobedience is not only permitted, but sometimes required,” proclaimed a coalition of Catholic, Orthodox and evangelical Protestants on Nov. 20, in their 4,700-word “Manhattan Declaration.”

“There is no more eloquent defense of the rights and duties of religious conscience than the one offered by Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. … King’s willingness to go to jail, rather than comply with legal injustice, was exemplary and inspiring.”

Thus, the declaration’s authors vowed to reject “any edict that purports to compel our institutions” to compromise on centuries of doctrine about marriage, human sexuality and the sanctity of human life. The text was written by evangelical activist Charles Colson, church historian Timothy George of the evangelical Beeson Divinity School and the Catholic scholar Robert George of Princeton University.

The Los Angeles Times offered an especially brutal evaluation of the text, claiming that it offered a “specious invocation of King” and that its logic was ultimately “irresponsible and dangerous.”

But the editorial board reserved its strongest words for the Catholics bishops who signed, asking if they considered “how their endorsement of lawbreaking in a higher cause might embolden the antiabortion terrorists they claim to condemn? Did they stop to think that, by reserving the right to resist laws they don’t like, they forfeit the authority to intervene in the enactment of those laws, as they have done in the congressional debate over healthcare reform?”

So far, 19 Catholic bishops and archbishops have signed, including New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia, Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C., and the Catholic shepherds in Detroit, Denver, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Phoenix and Pittsburgh, among other cities.

At mid-week, the project (ManhattanDeclaration.org) had attracted about 230,000 endorsements, including those of famous evangelicals such as Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, National Association of Evangelicals President Leith Anderson, Evangelicals for Social Action Director Ron Sider and Bishop Henry Jackson, Jr., a Pentecostal leader in the Washington, D.C., area. Orthodox leaders who have signed include Metropolitan Jonah Paffhausen of the Orthodox Church in America and Wichita (Kan.) Bishop Basil Essey of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese.

Responding to claims that the declaration is merely a partisan attack on President Barack Obama, Colson noted that it states that in the Roe v. Wade era, “elected officials and appointees of both major political parties have been complicit in giving legal sanction to the ‘Culture of Death.’ ”

On sexuality, the document stresses that some people are “disposed towards homosexual and polyamorous conduct and relationships, just as there are those who are disposed towards other forms of immoral conduct. … We, no less than they, are sinners who have fallen short of God’s intention for our lives. We, no less than they, are in constant need of God’s patience, love and forgiveness.”

While nothing in the Manhattan Declaration is truly new, arguments about its call for civil disobedience will help draw sharper lines between traditional believers and the powers that be in an increasingly diverse and secular America, said Dr. H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., senior editor of the Christian Bioethics journal at Oxford University. He is professor emeritus at the Baylor College of Medicine and a philosophy professor at Rice University.

“This document is the product of a political coalition, but it’s not political in the same sense that the tax code is political,” said Engelhardt, who is advising several Eastern Orthodox leaders who are studying the text. “This is political in the sense that these Christians are working together on certain issues that have moral and public implications.”

The reality is that its authors believe there are “certain God-ordained truths” that continue to have authority and weight in American life, he said. The big question: Are they right or wrong?

“You could make a case,” concluded Engelhardt, “that anyone who recites the Nicene Creed, or anyone who believes that God has established any requirements for how we are supposed to live our lives can now be called a Fundamentalist in the context of this secular culture. … That is what this debate is actually about.”

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This has been a consistent pattern in recent surveys and it can be seen in most pews, from conservative evangelicals to liberal mainline Protestants, said Greg Smith, senior researcher at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. This pattern is especially clear among American Catholics.

“The people who attend worship services more often are going to be opposed to abortion and those who rarely or never attend are going to support legalized abortion,” he said. “You go once a week? It’s going to be about two-thirds against. Rarely if ever? It’s about two-thirds in favor. …

“That division is still there. But the big news is that both of these groups have been moving in the same direction for the past year or so. We’re seeing support for abortion rights weakening across the board.”

A new Pew Forum survey found that the percentage of Americans saying they believe abortion should be “legal in all/most cases” fell from 54 to 47 percent during a single year. Meanwhile, the percentage of people who said they believe abortion should be “illegal in all/most cases” rose from 40 to 44 percent. The “undecided” camp grew from 6 to 9 percent of those polled.

“The nation remains pretty evenly divided,” said Smith. “However, what we can see is that support for legalized abortion is weakening in many groups and it’s stalled in others. … How much people practice their faith is a crucial factor in this.”

Support for abortion rights remains high among American Jews, but the latest Pew survey showed a drop from 86 percent in favor a year ago to 76 percent now. Support among Americans with no religious affiliation at all fell from 71 percent in favor of legalized abortion to 68 percent.

One of the most dramatic shifts came among members of white mainline Protestants — liberal churches that have consistently supported abortion rights. The numbers were especially dramatic when church attendance was factored into the equation, noted Smith.

Support for abortion rights among mainliners who attended church once a week fell from 54 to 42 percent, while support among those who said they attended less often than that fell from 68 to 60 percent.

To no one’s surprise, opposition to abortion rights among evangelical Protestants remains high, but the numbers have risen even higher in the past year. Church attendance is a major factor, with 79 percent of white evangelicals who worship once a week saying abortion should be “illegal in all/most cases.” A year ago, 73 percent took that stance. Among white evangelicals who go to church less often, opposition to abortion rose a dramatic 12 percent — from 47 to 58 percent.

The contrast between regular and occasional worshippers was also dramatic among white Catholics. Opposition to abortion rights rose from 57 to 67 percent among Catholics who reported going to Mass once a week. Among those who said they attended Mass less often, support for legalized abortion declined slightly during the past year, from 65 to 62 percent.

These numbers are logical because Catholics who are active in the church are exposed more often to sermons, prayers and ministries that incarnate church teachings on the sanctity of human life, said Deirdre McQuade of the pro-life office at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

“Those who are less invested in the sacraments — attending church, receiving the Eucharist and going to confession — may have less access to the truth about life, and fewer resources to believe and accept it,” she said.

In the end, stressed Smith, this survey underlines two realities. First, there is little evidence that America’s debates about abortion are fading. Second, it’s clear that religious faith and practice remains one of the most crucial dividing lines on this issue.

“It’s important to realize that millions of Americans see themselves as caught in the middle” on abortion issues, he said. “Take those mainline Protestants, for example. Even though it seems that their support for legalized abortion is weakening, they probably see themselves as moving from one position in the middle to another position in the middle. They may be changing what they believe, but not very much.”

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Democrats are mad at Republicans who are mad about President Barack Obama’s health-care plans. Democrats are mad at other Democrats who are raising questions about hot-button issues in the legislation, especially questions about tax dollars and abortions. Republicans are mad about lots of other things and they have YouTube videos to prove it.

Right now, America’s political elites are getting angry about the fact that so many people are angry. It’s almost a Zen thing.

All of this anger is supposed to be a bad thing, a sign that the nation is coming unglued. But that may or may not be true, depending on what these angry citizens are mad about and what they choose to do with their anger, noted Leon J. Podles, a Catholic conservative known for his slashing critiques of the church hierarchy’s weak responses to decades of clergy sexual abuse of children.

“If the politics of anger can’t lead to constructive actions, then all that anger is meaningless and, ultimately, doesn’t do anyone any good,” stressed Podles. “Still, I would argue that anger is more positive than apathy, especially when citizens are angry about issues that are worth being angry about.

“Anger is certainly better than people sitting back on their sofas and saying, ‘Ho hum, millions of unborn babies are dying.’ It’s better than people saying, ‘Ho hum, people are dying because they don’t have health care, but so what?’ These are issues that should make rational people get angry.”

Writing in the ecumenical journal Touchstone, Podles argued that it’s especially important for Christians and other religious believers to understand that anger is not always a sin or an emotion that must be avoided. In fact, that there are circumstances in which it is a sin not to feel anger. The ultimate question, he said, is whether anger leads to rational, constructive, virtuous actions.

Who would argue, for example, that it was wrong for the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., to feel righteous anger about the impact of racism and economic injustice on the lives of millions of black Americans? Who would argue that it was wrong for Nelson Mandela to draw strength from the anger he felt during his 27 years in prison under South Africa’s apartheid regime?

It’s crucial in both of these cases, stressed Podles, that these men did not allow their anger to turn into hatred of their oppressors. Instead, it led to courageous and strategic acts to accomplish worthy goals.

“Anger must be more than mere emotion,” he stressed. “Anger must also be proportionate to the evil that provokes that anger. Take road rage, for example. That kind of anger is completely irrational and it accomplishes nothing.”

Then there are cases in which powerful people fail to feel anger about issues that are directly under their control, issues that their actions could affect in direct and positive ways. In his book “Sacrilege: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church,” Podles attempts to understand why so many bishops failed to be outraged by the sins committed by some of their priests and, thus, failed to channel that anger into actions to stop the crimes.

“If the bishops had not coddled these priests, if they had not hidden them and then put them back into parishes full of children and parents who were kept in the dark, they could have prevented evil acts against thousands of victims,” he said. “There were bishops who could have acted and they should have acted. But they didn’t act. … For some reason they never got angry and, as a result, they never acted to protect the laity, especially the children.”

There are times that call for unity, diplomacy, conciliation and peacemaking in the church and in public life, said Podles. But there are also times when leaders must feel outraged about corruption and injustice. There are times when anger must be allowed to fuel actions that defend virtue.

“There are evils in this world that we can do something about and we should get angry about them,” he said. “In any battle, it’s hard to act in an effective manner without a kind of appropriate anger that energizes your actions. Without that anger, innocent people will suffer and evil will win the day.”

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