Take St. John Chrysostom, for example, who complained about the irreverence he saw in the churches of Constantinople. Back in the old days, he said, people knew what it meant to solemnly observe the holy mysteries. Alas, some believers seemed to be going through the motions — in the 4th century.

The archbishop urged his flock: “When I say, ‘Peace be unto you,’ and you say, ‘And with your spirit,’ say it not with the voice only, but also with the mind; not in mouth only, but in understanding also.”

Some of those words will sound familiar for Catholics who have tuned into the fierce debates surrounding the historic changes that arrive in their sanctuaries on Sunday, Nov. 27, the first day of Advent. This is when, after eight years of work by a global commission of bishops, American Catholics will begin using a new English translation of the Novus Ordo Mass that, four decades ago, was approved by the Second Vatican Council.

Critics say this new translation is too rigid and predict mass confusion in the pews. Supporters insist that its complex and poetic cadences more accurately reflect the Latin source text and will bring American Catholics into harmony with Catholics worldwide who use similar translations in their own languages.

No one disputes the sweeping nature of the changes, said Anthony Esolen, who teaches English at Providence College. So far, he has written 90,000 words of commentary on the Latin text and this new translation for the Magnificat Roman Missal Companion.

The bottom line: Rome ordered a new English translation of “every prayer said at every Mass for every day of the year and every purpose for which a Mass may be said,” he said. Worshipers should prepare for many phrases that will sound both new and old.

“These prayers are theological and scriptural poems,” he explained. “Everything in the Latin is built on scriptural language and images. … Once you see all of these verbatim words of scripture, the argument of how to do the translation is essentially over. All of these clear references to scripture needed to be in the new translation. You don’t have much of a choice.”

Once of the most obvious changes comes at the beginning, when the priest faces his congregation and says, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” In shorter versions of this invocation, the priest will either say, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” or “The Lord be with you.”

After 40 years of responding with “And also with you,” American Catholics will now reply using the ancient phrase, “And with your spirit” — which is “et cum spiritu tuo” in Latin.

This new translation goes downhill from there, according to Bishop Donald Trautman of Erie, Pa., former chair of the U.S. bishops’ liturgy commission.

“When the bishops at the Second Vatican Council made the historic decision that the liturgy of the church should be in the vernacular, there was no mention of sacred language or vocabulary,” he argued, in a much-quoted analysis for the progressive magazine U.S. Catholic.

“The council’s intent was pastoral — to have the liturgy of the church prayed in living languages. Translated liturgical texts should be reverent, noble, inspiring and uplifting, but that does not mean archaic, remote or incomprehensible. While the translated texts of the new Missal must be accurate and faithful to the Latin original, they must also be intelligible, proclaimable and grammatically correct. Regrettably the new translation fails in this regard.”

The Vatican’s instructions to the translators, said Esolen, did stress that “pompous and superfluous language must be avoided.” However, this doesn’t mean that the poetic touches found in the Latin — such as “venerable hands of the Lord,” “immaculate victim,” “consubstantial,” “it is truly right and just,” “the Powers of heaven” and many others — will repel modern worshipers.

Pious language, he added, can have a holy purpose. After all, it’s possible that if Catholics are never asked to turn to God and “use words like ‘beg,’ ‘implore’ or even ‘pray,’ there’s a good chance they will forget how to ‘beg,’ ‘implore’ and even to ‘pray.’ “

On Oct. 21, the trustees of Shorter University in Rome, Ga., approved a covenant requiring faculty and staff to support the “mission of Shorter University as a Christ-centered institution affiliated with the Georgia Baptist Convention.” Then they asked employees to “reject as acceptable all sexual activity not in agreement with the Bible, including, but not limited to, premarital sex, adultery and homosexuality.”

A fortnight latter, Baptists learned about a “fall update” email from leaders at Mercer University in Macon, Ga., announcing a policy extending health care and other benefits to the “domestic partners” of faculty and staff, regardless of sexual orientation.

The Georgia Baptist Convention cut its historic ties to Mercer in 2005. Now, the school’s strategic shift brings it “into line with other leading private universities … including Emory, Duke, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, Tulane, Furman, Rollins, Elon and Stetson,” noted Mercer President Bill Underwood, in a statement quoted at EthicsDaily.com, a progressive Baptist website. “It is also consistent with our established policy of not discriminating against employees based on sexual orientation.”

While this divide may shock outsiders, these decisions are “totally logical” in light of trends in Baptist life and higher education, stressed Lutheran scholar Robert Benne of Roanoke (Va.) College, author of “Quality with Soul: How Six Premier Colleges and Universities Keep Faith with Their Religious Traditions.”

“These schools are headed in opposite directions because their leaders want them to become radically different kinds of institutions,” he said. Shorter wants to “become a ‘Christian’ university in terms of its approach to education and campus life. … Mercer is trying to become what its leaders see as an elite institution, the kind of place where if you tried to talk about ‘Christian education’ the faculty would raise all holy hell.”

In some ways, these Baptist conflicts resemble those among educators in other religious groups, he said. For example, many American Catholic colleges and universities have become highly secularized, while their leaders insist that they remain rooted in “Catholic” values or some specific educational tradition, such as the legacy of the Jesuits. Meanwhile, a few other Catholic schools publicly stress their loyalty to the Vatican.

With that in mind, it’s significant that Mercer’s Internet homepage states: “Founded by early 19th century Baptists, Mercer — while no longer formally affiliated with the Baptist denomination — remains committed to an educational environment that embraces intellectual and religious freedom while affirming values that arise from a Judeo-Christian understanding of the world.”

Benne noted that few well-known schools can accurately be labeled “fundamentalist,” as would be the case with the independent Bob Jones University in South Carolina. Meanwhile, most conflicts in Southern Baptist academia involve debates about accepting some explicitly “Christian” approach to education, often referred to as the “integration of faith and learning.”

Thus, it’s symbolic that Mercer leaders openly say they want to go the other direction, following in the footsteps of universities such as Vanderbilt and Duke, and historically Baptist institutions such as Furman and Wake Forest. The Mercer student handbook, for example, contains no moral code covering student conduct on premarital sex, adultery and homosexuality.

At this point, Shorter accepts non-Christian students. However, Benne said Shorter’s new doctrinal and lifestyle code for faculty and staff suggests that it will soon ask its students to sign a similar covenant of faith and moral conduct. If so, covenants of this kind are common on Christian campuses, including famous liberal arts schools such as Wheaton College, Calvin College, Biola University and numerous other members of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (the global network in which I teach).

Many of these schools retain ties to the denominations that founded them, but they are reach out to recruit other evangelicals or traditional Christians as students, faculty and staff. Some of these schools now openly appeal to Catholics, as well.

The problem for many Baptist academics, stressed Benne, is that they place such a strong emphasis on “soul freedom” and the “priesthood of every believer” that they struggle to find ways to separate themselves from the “lukewarm people who are not really committed to the their school’s vision.”

The result is a perfect Baptist Catch 22.

“How do you defend specific doctrines and convictions,” he said, “without daring to list these specifics, which means you have committed the sin of having a creed?”

“Sin” is a harder word to use, today.

The Catholic archbishop of Santa Fe, N.M., recently raised eyebrows with a mere letter reminding his flock that cohabitation is a grave sin that Catholics must take to confession or there will be eternal consequences. Archbishop Michael J. Sheehan’s priests read his sobering words from their pulpits on April 3, the fourth Sunday of Lent — the penitential season before Easter.

Those who cohabit, stressed Sheehan, are “objectively living in a state of mortal sin and may not receive Holy Communion. They are in great spiritual danger. At the best … they are ignorant of God’s plan for man and woman. At the worst, they are contemptuous of God’s commandments and His sacraments. …

“Often their plea is that they ‘cannot afford a church wedding’ i.e. the external trappings, or that ‘what difference does a piece of paper make?’ — as if a sacramental covenant is nothing more than a piece of paper! Such statements show religious ignorance, or a lack of faith and awareness of the evil of sin.”

In addition to forbidding known cohabiters from receiving Communion, Sheehan urged priests to avoid public scandal by refusing to commission them to serve Communion. After all, he said, “one commits the sin of sacrilege by administering a Sacrament in the state of mortal sin.”

Also, priests should prevent those who cohabitate from serving as godparents for baptisms and confirmations, since the documents for these rites say it’s “critical for the sponsor to be a practicing Catholic.” How, Sheehan added, “can anyone be seriously called a practicing Catholic who is not able to receive the sacraments because they are living in sin?”

This latest Communion controversy is not taking place in a vacuum. American bishops continue to debate whether or not to deny Holy Communion to Catholic politicians who reject church teachings on hot-button issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage.

At the same time, Catholic leaders are making special efforts — especially during Lent — to draw Catholics back to confession or, as it is now known, the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation. After all, a 2008 study at Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate found that 45 percent of American Catholics say they never go to confession and 12 percent say they go once a year. A generation or two after many Catholics lined up for confession on a weekly or monthly basis, a mere 2 percent say they participate in this sacrament once a month or more.

This is the context for Sheehan’s letter, which raised additional issues central to the day-to-day lives of thousands of priests, parents and parish leaders. How should priests handle cohabitating couples that seek premarital counseling? Can these couples attend “Pre-Cana” programs for the engaged? How do priests convince these Catholics to seek forgiveness when they don’t believe they are sinning?

Good luck with that, said commentator Heidi Schlumpf of the National Catholic Reporter. She gave Sheehan’s letter a quick thumbs down, calling it a mere attempt to fire up traditionalists.

“I’m struck how un-persuasive this letter is,” she wrote, online. “But then I wonder if that is its purpose. It seems Sheehan has no real interest in persuading or teaching, but rather only punishing those who disagree with him. Oh, and making those who already agree with him happy for ‘laying down the law.’ “

Father John Zuhlsdorf, author of the popular “What Does the Prayer Really Say?” weblog, stressed that the Santa Fe statement was blunt, but that silence and timidity would be even worse. The key, he said, is that Archbishop Sheehan dared to defend church teachings to the Catholics who are under this care.

“In this age of ‘I’m OK, you’re OK,’ a bishop risks being called mean and uncompassionate if he does anything other than remain silent or wring his hands,” said Zuhlsdorf, a former Lutheran who is completing his doctorate at the Patristic Institute “Augustinianum” in Rome.

“So how do you defend doctrines that many people think are offensive without committing what many people believe is the ultimate sin, which is offending people? … Yet this is what bishops are supposed to do — defend the teachings of the church. All of them. The whole package.”

These gatherings are confidential, with no one discussing who is or who isn’t among the 50 to 60 gathered in the pews. Students come to listen and to pray as they seek discernment about whether to pursue religious vocations — as nuns.

“They keep this private for an interesting reason,” said Father Seraphim Beshoner, a history professor. “If word gets out that someone is trying to discern if she has a vocation, then our guys are afraid to date her. I mean, how can you compete with Christ and his church?”

Meanwhile, the campus offers a similar program for young men considering the priesthood. In its 25 years of existence, this Priestly Formation Program has produced about 400 priests for various orders and dioceses and, at the moment, another 40 or more students are taking part.

Many of America’s 244 Catholic colleges and universities offer similar programs, of course, in part because of rising concerns about the thinning and graying ranks of priests, brothers, sisters and nuns. The number of priests in America has declined from 59,000 in the 1960s to 40,600 last year. There has been an even sharper decline in the number of sisters and nuns, from 180,000 in the ’60s to approximately 59,000 today — with 90 percent of them 60 years old or older.

One factor that shapes Franciscan University life is the presence of three male and four female religious orders that maintain houses near the campus and its 2,040 undergraduates, noted Father Richard Davis, leader of the campus friary and former regional vocations director for the Third Order Regular Franciscans. Many other orders regularly send younger members to visit the campus or study there.

“Our students are very sensitive to this,” said Davis. “New styles of habits and robes keep appearing here all the time. The students see that and it makes them curious. … This campus produces a large number of priests, but I believe even more of our young women become sisters and nuns.”

While the atmosphere is highly charged — Franciscan is known for its standing-room-only Masses, even on weekdays — students face the same tough questions that shape the decisions of young Catholics elsewhere, said the friar. Based on his experiences over four decades, these include:

* How to respond if family members say they will — in one memorable phrase — be “wasting their lives.” In an era of increasingly smaller Catholic families, many parents worry about “losing” a child and future grandchildren. In February, the U.S. Catholic bishops released a survey noting that 51 percent of women who recently took final vows said their parents or other family members actively opposed this choice.

* After decades of sexual scandals and abuse, Davis said some students literally ask: “Will I be safe? … If I visit a monastery or a convent, will someone hit on me?”

* Students often want to know which orders are “faithful to the Magisterium” — meaning the Vatican and core Catholic doctrines — and which are not. The majority of students today, he said, are seeking orders that emphasize a life of prayer and service to the poor, in America and abroad.

* Many students bluntly ask: “Do I have what it takes?” This question may center on celibacy, poverty, a rigorous prayer life or some other personal issue. The key, said Davis, is that “you don’t take religious vows to run away from marriage and family, or from hard questions about your own weaknesses or talents. You have to face these issues.”

* Another question — “Will I be alone?” — is especially poignant in an age of fading religious orders. Some students in this highly social generation fear that choosing the religious life will mean a shortage of friends and companions.

“They don’t want to join a community in which the life they will live looks pretty much like the life they would have lived if they had never joined a religious community in the first place,” said Father Seraphim, dressed in his plain black Franciscan habit.

“However, they also want to join a community that has other young people in it. They don’t want to be the ones left to turn out the lights someday when their order dies.”

The believer would be reminded: “Be truly sorry for your sins. The essential act of penance, on the part of the penitent, is contrition, a clear and decisive rejection of the sin committed, together with a resolution not to commit it again, out of the love one has for God and which is reborn with repentance.”

These paper guides also offer lists of questions to prick the conscience, such as, “Have I denied my faith?”, “Have I neglected prayer?” or “Was I impatient, angry, envious, proud, jealous, revengeful, lazy?” If it had been a long time since a previous confession, the penitent would be reminded, “If you need help … simply ask the priest and he will help you by ‘walking’ you through the steps.”

That was then.

In recent weeks waves of Catholics, along with curious members of other flocks, have downloaded a new “Confession” app for iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch devices that combines private journaling, spiritual readings and traditional pre-confession leaflets into one password-protected digital package. Why carry scribbled notes into confession when for $1.99 one can work through the rite while being bathed in the cool blue glow that is the symbol of the social-networking age?

Scribes in newsrooms around the world sprang into action.

“Bless me father for I have sinned. It has been 300 tweets since my last confession,” noted CNN.

In London, The Times opened its story by claiming: “Roman Catholic bishops have approved a new iPhone and iPad app that allows users to make confession with a virtual ‘priest’ over the Internet.”

The Economic Times report was even more blunt. The headline noted, “No time to visit church? Confess via iPhone.” Then the opening lines went further still, stating: “Users of iPhone can now perform contrition and other religious rituals without visiting church, thanks to a new online application.”

The problem is that these statements were just plain wrong. There is no such thing as a “virtual” priest or a “virtual” sacrament. How could electronic devices allow believers to “perform … other religious rituals”?

“I am all for anything that gets people to go to confession,” noted Father John Zuhlsdorf, at his popular “What Does the Prayer Really Say?” website. “But let’s be clear about something: The iPhone app is for preparing to go to confession. It is not a substitute for going to confession.”

Nevertheless, the cracked headlines rolled on with the Catholic League expressing outrage about new stinkers, such as, “Can’t Make it to Confession? There’s an App for That,” “New, Church-Approved iPhone Offers Confession On the Go” and “Bless Me iPhone for I Have Sinned.”

It was true that the Confession app had been developed with the direct help of Catholic priests and, yes, its theological content earned an imprimatur from Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades, leader of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Ind.

But after the barrage of inaccurate headlines, Vatican officials finally decided that a response was required.

It is true that “in a world in which many people use computer support for reading and reflection” Catholics may now find that “digital technology can be useful in the preparation for confession,” noted Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office. However, he added, it is “essential to understand that the sacrament of penance requires a personal dialogue between the penitent and the confessor in order for absolution to be given.

“This … cannot be replaced by any computer application such as the iPhone.”

This statement produced more headlines. A CBS headline offering was typical — “Vatican: No, You Can’t Confess to Your iPhone.” Of course, the app’s creators never made that claim in the first place.

The story had come full circle.

Thus, noted Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, this new app “is not a session with a virtual priest who restores your virtue with a penance of three Hail Mary’s and three extra gigabytes of memory. … You still have to go into the real confessional at church to get absolution, and, hopefully, your priest won’t be annoyed that you’re reading your sins off of a little screen and, maybe, peeking at a football game or shopping site once in awhile.”

For the few who didn’t catch it online, the ad features a worried pastor — in a clerical collar — who has empty pews and too many unpaid bills. Thus, he prays for inspiration and God responds with the sound of crunching chips and fizzing soda.

Soon hungry souls — Jewish, Amish and Hare Krishna included — are lining up in church for Doritos and Pepsi MAX in a way that suggests Holy Communion.

The brands are no surprise, since Media Wave Productions of Philadelphia produced “Feed Your Flock” for PepsiCo’s annual “Crash the Super Bowl” contest, in which flocks of folks hope to win $1 million if their creation finishes No. 1 in USA Today’s Ad Meter rankings. The chips-and-soda communion entry didn’t qualify for a Super Bowl airing and has since vanished from YouTube and other sites after waves of protests by Catholics and others.

“It’s hard to imagine such an ad being created only a few decades ago,” noted Shane Rosenthal of the White Horse Inn weblog. “The trivialization of the sacred in this piece is nothing less than astounding. And that’s just it. There isn’t anything sacred anymore. Everything’s a joke.”

This offering, however, wasn’t the only attempt at a Super Bowl ad built on religion or politics or both. Controversies of this kind have increased in recent years, with video activists on the cultural right and left doing their share of poking and protesting.

If professional football has become a form of religion, then it isn’t surprising that America’s Christmas Wars over faith in the public square are now followed by Super Bowl Culture Wars in the marketplace.

This year, “Feed Your Flock” wasn’t even the only “Crash the Super Bowl” entry that used a dash of sacrilege. In “Party Crashers,” another entry now on YouTube, God and Jesus make a scene at a party by eating all the Doritos. They are asked to leave and, with a snap, Jesus miraculously refills the empty snack bag. “Let’s go, Dad,” he says.

Several other ads rejected by the Fox Sports Media Group this year featured religious and political content that was too hot to be allowed into the Super Bowl ad wars with the heavyweights like Bud Light, GoDaddy.com and Snickers.

* In one, two curious football fans turn to the Bible after spotting “John 3:16” written in the black patches under a star player’s eyes. The network said the Fixed Point Foundation video contained too much “religious doctrine.”

* Self-proclaimed “conservative comedian” Richard Belfry also failed in an attempt to air a commercial for his “Jesus Hates Obama” online store that sells T-shirts and other items with his trademark slogan. Belfry said a circle of private investors agreed to purchase a 30-second Super Bowl slot — which usually sell for about $3 million.

* Anti-abortion activist Randall Terry is attempting a novel approach, going so far as to register as a Democratic Party candidate for the White House so that he could insist that networks air his graphic video because of a campaign advertising loophole in existing FCC regulations. Few other opponents of abortion have taken his side.

This is not a new story. Before the 2009 Super Bowl, CatholicVoter.com failed in an attempt to air “Imagine,” an ad featuring a sonogram video of an unborn child matched with text offering thanks that the difficult family circumstances surrounding the young Barack Obama did not prevent his birth. Last year, Focus on the Family was successful with “Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life,” an ad focused on missionary Pam Tebow and her decision to endure a risky pregnancy before giving birth to Tim, the future Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback.

These media conflicts are not connected with the tough Constitutional issues that drive the church-state conflicts that have become so common in recent decades, noted J. Brent Walker, head of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. Nevertheless, these faith-based controversies about Super Bowl advertisements — whether silly, satirical or dead serious — seem to be stirring similar public emotions.

“If we lived in a culture in which no one cared much about religion,” he said, “then people wouldn’t get so passionate about these things. But that wouldn’t be America, would it?”

****

It seems that we are going to see more mainstream coverage of those debates about religious liberty, military chaplains and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” So let’s back up and note a few basic fact, some of which were handled quite well in that CNN.com report that I praised the other day in the post called, “Chaplain questions older than DADT.”

As that title implied, I wanted to note that church-state questions about military chaplains are not new.

The military powers that be have been arguing for a long time about doctrinal and legal issues linked to public prayers, God talk, preaching, evangelism/proselytism and a variety of subjects. Tensions between the traditionalist camp and what the oldline-Universalist-progressive camp are not new. It’s much harder for an evangelical, charismatic of Anglo-Catholic Episcopal priest to lead a wide variety of vague rites that mesh with various other traditions than for a liberal Episcopal priest to do that same. It’s easier for a Reform rabbi to function in a state-funded religious environment than it is for a Southern Baptist, a Missouri-Synod Lutheran or an Eastern Orthodox priest (to name a few examples).

These hot-button issues almost always revolve around public expressions of doctrine, as opposed to silent, private beliefs.

When looking at DADT, however, the current state of things clearly affects the left as well as the right. As mentioned in the GetReligion comments pages, clergy in religious groups that favor DADT repeal have had their hands tied in public ministries to gays and lesbians in the military.

However, the must crucial question is not whether many doctrinal traditionalists will have to leave the military if DADT is repealed. The real question is whether many will leave rather than face punishment for public or even one-on-one expressions of their religious beliefs. Thus, it was important that the CNN.com story included this crucial slice of the Pentagon DADT report:

Despite the fact they would not pull their endorsements for chaplains, “A significant portion of the respondents did suggest that a change in policies resulting in chaplains’ free exercise of religion or free speech rights being curtailed would lead them to withdraw their endorsement,” the report said.

Or, as Metropolitan Jonah of the Orthodox Church in America put it in a letter to the chaplains board:

“If our chaplains were in any way … prohibited from denouncing such behavior as sinful and self-destructive, it would create an impediment to their service in the military. If such an attitude were regarded as ‘prejudice’ or the denunciation of homosexuality as ‘hate language,’ or the like, we would be forced to pull out our chaplains from military service.”

So there is much more to this story than what happens if DADT is repealed. The question is how DADT repeal (or the continuation of the policy) will affect the ministry of military chaplains — liberal and conservative — and the rights of the soldiers that they serve — liberal and conservative.

This brings us to the new story on these issues in the Washington Post, which adds some useful information on the point of view of liberal clergy, such as:

The Rev. Dennis Camp, a retired Army colonel, said it pained him when gay soldiers came to him to complain of the burden they felt from keeping their sexuality a secret. They could not display pictures of their loved ones or talk freely about their personal lives, he recalled. But he could not encourage them to be honest about their orientation, he said.

“They were forced by the situation, the system, to be dishonest, and that took its toll on them. And me,” said Camp, a United Methodist minister who retired in 1996 after 27 years of service. “It was horrible. Right from the beginning I was saying, ‘This is bad. This is wrong. It really has no place in our military community.’ “

Yet in the paragraphs immediately before these lines, the Post framed the debate in the following manner:

The authors of the report noted that only three out of the 145 chaplains who participated in focus groups suggested that they would quit or retire if the law was changed. Many chaplains expressed opposition to repeal, while many others said they would not object, according to the report.

“In the course of our review, we heard some chaplains condemn in the strongest possible terms homosexuality as a sin and an abomination, and inform us that they would refuse to in any way support, comfort, or assist someone they knew to be homosexual,” the report stated. “In equally strong terms, other chaplains, including those who also believe homosexuality is a sin, informed us that ‘we are all sinners,’ and that it is a chaplain’s duty to care for all Service members.”

Once again, repeal is not the ultimate issue for the leaders of traditional religious groups. The issue is hidden in that phrase “care for all Service members.” Does “care” equal acceptance of homosexual activity? For example, I cannot imagine many traditional clergy actually saying that they would “refuse to in any way support, comfort, or assist someone they knew to be homosexual.”

Really? Did the Pentagon offer any direct quotes from chaplains expressing those views, or is that an official bureaucratic interpretation of what women and men said in these interviews? What is the legal content of those words “support,” “comfort” and “assist”?

The Post report does offer the following information from someone who is worried about protecting the rights of clergy who advocate traditional views on sexuality issues.

Many conservatives worry that lifting the policy would muzzle chaplains whose religions require them to preach against homosexuality. The Rev. Douglas E. Lee, a retired Presbyterian Air Force chaplain and brigadier general who now counsels and credentials chaplains, said chaplains generally point out their views on homosexuality before counseling a service member on that issue. He worried that military policies may prohibit even that level of conversation if “don’t ask, don’t tell” is repealed, even though Pentagon officials have not recommended any change to the policy governing chaplains’ behavior.

“There’s a strong possibility that a chaplain wouldn’t be allowed to proclaim what their own faith believes, and not give people the information they need to be a good Christian or a good Muslim or what have you,” he said. “If there’s no protection for the chaplain to be able to speak according to his faith group, that might affect the number of chaplains we recruit or our ability to do our duty for the troops.”

Once again, note the following inserted — but valid — commentary noting that Lee made these comments, “even though Pentagon officials have not recommended any change to the policy governing chaplains’ behavior.”

That’s true, although the Pentagon would find itself involved in court cases challenging those policies. Where are the crucial decisions being made, these days, on these kinds of moral and cultural issues?

Meanwhile, the CNN.com report was much stronger in this regard, since it noted that the current policies that guide the work of military chaplains already contain the very tensions about the public and one-on-one expressions of doctrine that are now being linked to the DADT debate. Again, here is that section of the CNN.com story:

“Existing regulations state that chaplains ‘will not be required to perform a religious role … in worship services, command ceremonies, or other events, if doing so would be in variance with the tenets or practices of their faith.’ At the same time, regulations state that ‘Chaplains care for all Service members, including those who claim no religious faith, facilitate the religious requirements of personnel of all faiths, provide faith-specific ministries, and advise the command.’ “

Once again, someone will need to define the word “care.”

In other words, these doctrinal tensions are not new. The DADT debates are merely the latest chapter in a larger church-state story, once in which voices on the left and right must be reported accurately.

The time: This hypothetical encounter occurs soon after the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that forbids gays, lesbians and bisexuals to openly serve in America’s armed forces.

The scene: An officer requests counseling about tensions with her same-sex partner as they prepare for marriage. The priest says this would be inappropriate, since his church teaches that sex outside of marriage is sin and that the sacrament of marriage is reserved for unions of a man and a woman.

The priest offers to refer her to a chaplain at another base who represents a church that performs same-sex rites. The officer accepts, but is less than pleased at the inconvenience.

What happens next? That question is driving the tense church-state debates that continue behind the scenes of the political drama that surrounds “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

“If the government normalizes homosexual behavior in the armed forces, many (if not most) chaplains will confront a profoundly difficult moral choice: whether they are to obey God or to obey men,” stated a September letter from 60-plus retired chaplains to President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

The repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” they argued, will cripple the ability of many chaplains to provide counseling. “Service members seeking guidance regarding homosexual relationships will place chaplains in an untenable position. If chaplains answer such questions according to the tenets of their faith, stating that homosexual relationships are sinful and harmful, then they run the risk of career-ending accusations of insubordination and discrimination. And if chaplains simply decline to provide counseling at all on that issue, they may still face discipline for discrimination.”

These complaints are “somewhat disingenuous,” according to the Rev. John F. Gundlach, a retired Navy chaplain from the United Church of Christ, the progressive Protestant denomination into which Obama was baptized.

“These chaplains … will continue to have the same rights they’ve always had to preach, teach, counsel, marry and conduct religious matters according to the tenets of their faith. They will also continue to have the responsibility to refer servicemembers to other chaplains when their own theology or conscience will not allow them to perform the services to which a servicemember is entitled,” stressed Gundlach, writing in Stars and Stripes. “Any chaplain who can’t fulfill this expectation should find somewhere else to do ministry.”

The urgency of these debates will only increase after this week’s Pentagon statement instructing its recruiters to accept openly gay applicants, a shift driven by a federal court decision barring the military from expelling openly gay soldiers.

Military chaplains are already being asked to serve as doctrinal Swiss Army knifes, performing rites and prayers for personnel from a variety of flocks when the need arises. This kind of pluralism is easy for chaplains from some traditions, but not others.

Meanwhile, it’s hard for chaplains to refer troubled soldiers to clergy in foxholes 30 miles away. It’s impossible to have a variety of chaplains — Southern Baptists and Wiccans, Catholic priests and rabbis — serving on every base, let alone in submarines.

There is no easy way out of this church-state maze.

If “don’t ask, don’t tell” is repealed, “no restrictions or limitations on the teaching of Catholic morality can be accepted,” noted Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the Archdiocese for Military Services. While Catholic chaplains must always show compassion, they “can never condone — even silently — homosexual behavior.”

A letter from Metropolitan Jonah of the Orthodox Church in America to the chaplains board was even more blunt: “If our chaplains were in any way … prohibited from denouncing such behavior as sinful and self-destructive, it would create an impediment to their service in the military. If such an attitude were regarded as ‘prejudice’ or the denunciation of homosexuality as ‘hate language,’ or the like, we would be forced to pull out our chaplains from military service.”

So be it, said Gundlach. While these chaplains “worry about being discriminated against, they openly discriminate against some of the very people they are pledged to serve and serve with. If the hate speech currently uttered by some conservative chaplains and their denominations is any indication of how they will respond in the future, we can expect this discrimination to continue.”

These chaplains need to resign, he said. The armed services “will be the better for it.”

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.”

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.”