According to a top strategist in the presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain, Sarah Palin believed that the decision to pick her as the Arizona Republican’s running mate was actually made by Almighty God.

Translated into the logic of an Associated Press report, this political theology sounded like this.

“In an interview with the CBS news magazine ‘60 Minutes,’ Steve Schmidt described Palin as ‘very calm — nonplussed’ after McCain met with her at his Arizona ranch just before putting her on the Republican ticket. … Schmidt said he asked Palin about her serenity in the face of becoming ‘one of the most famous people in the world.’ He quoted her as saying, ‘It’s God’s plan.’ “

The Washington Post headline proclaimed, “McCain aide: Palin believed candidacy ‘God’s plan.’ “

After this latest Palin firestorm it’s time to ask: “Why can’t journalists learn to understand how ordinary evangelicals talk?”

To make matters worse, readers have no chance to understand this private, second-hand quotation because it has been stripped of all context. There is no way to know if this snippet is the entire Palin quote or merely what Schmidt has chosen to share as part of the ongoing fighting between factions inside McCain’s failed campaign.

The big question: Did Palin say her nomination was part of “God’s plan for her life” or did she, as implied, dare to claim that it was part of “God’s plan for America”? Most press reports have implied the latter, linking her faith-based confidence with speculation that she will run for president.

This has made her an easy target for her critics — again.

“Palin isn’t a minister or priest. She isn’t a bishop. She is a celebrity,” noted Andrew Sullivan, on his Atlantic Monthly website. “When she says ‘it’s God’s will,’ she is saying, it seems to me, either that her destiny is foretold as a modern day Esther … or that it doesn’t matter what decisions she makes in office because God is in charge. So she is either filled with delusions of grandeur and prone to say things that believing Christians keep private out of humility; or she thinks she’s some kind of Messiah figure.”

However, anyone with a working knowledge of evangelical lingo will understand that what Palin probably said was that this stunning door onto the national stage was, win or lose, part of “God’s plan” for her life.

This is the approach that she consistently uses in her memoir, “Going Rogue,” when discussing the twists and turns in her life — from an unexpected chance to climb the political ladder in Alaska to the challenge of an unexpected pregnancy, leading to the birth of a child with special needs.

In other words, Palin believes in a God who is mysteriously working through the choices and events — painful and joyful — that have shaped her life. This is a perfectly ordinary belief among millions of evangelical Protestants and, truth be told, many other believers as well.

It may help to recall that, during the 2008 campaign, Charlie Gibson of ABC News struggled to understand another piece of evangelical-speak drawn from Palin remarks about the Iraq War.

The governor told a church audience: “Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending (soldiers) out on a task that is from God. That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God’s plan.”

However, in his interview with Palin, Gibson said: “You said recently, in your old church, ‘Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God.’ Are we fighting a holy war?”

Palin responded: “You know, I don’t know if that was my exact quote.”

Gibson fired back: “Exact words.”

Not exactly. Palin was reminding the worshipers to pray that God had a plan in Iraq and that decisions made by America’s leaders would be consistent with that plan. She was not, as Gibson said, claiming that this was a certainty.

The bottom line: It may be time to circulate a basic “How Evangelicals Talk” phrase book that can be used in elite newsrooms, much like the one that journalists needed when Gov. Jimmy “born again” Carter first emerged on the national scene.

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As news spread about her untimely death, former colleagues sought ways to describe her linguistic style using words that could be printed in family newspapers.

A Washington Post Tribute noted: “Some journalists swear like sailors; she swore like the fleet.”

“She had a unique persona. She could be very intimidating. She knew how to browbeat people,” said Mark O’Keefe, who worked for Howell on the Newhouse staff and as editor of Religion News Service. “It’s easy to talk about her colorful language, but I also think it’s important to understand why she used to get so upset. …

“She was a fierce advocate for important stories that she really cared about and that was especially true when it came to covering religion.”

Howell died on Jan. 2 during a trip to New Zealand with her husband, Peter. She was crossing a road to take a photograph and was hit by a car traveling on the left side of the roadway, the opposite of the custom in the United States. She was 68.

A symbolic figure for many journalists, Howell was a spitfire from Texas who pushed, argued and wrestled her way to the top of the executive ladder in an era when men ran the newsrooms that mattered. During her years at the St. Paul Pioneer Press — finally reaching the top editor’s chair — she guided two projects that won Pulitzer Prizes, one on the plight of Midwestern farms and another on AIDS in the heartland.

While leading the Newhouse bureau in Washington, she played down business-as-usual political coverage and focused on culture, technology, sexuality, race and, yes, religion. In the mid-1990s, Howell urged Newhouse to purchase Religion News Service, the only mainstream wire service dedicating to covering religion news.

In the years that followed, “She protected us, advocated for us, cajoled us, yelled at us, pushed us, swore at us and loved us,” noted Kevin Eckstrom, the current RNS editor, in an online tribute. “She, more than any other person, is responsible for us weathering the media meltdown that has devastated daily journalism.”

A cartoon in that newsroom says it all. In it, Howell is depicted as an angel hovering over the U.S. Capitol, while a second Howell — a devil with a pitchfork — gazes up in disgust, saying, “Give me a @?X!*$# break.” An adult convert to the Episcopal Church, the editor cherished her two nicknames bestowed by friends — Mother Mary Deborah and the Dragon Lady.

After her retirement in 2005, Howell repeatedly articulated her views on religion news while serving as ombudsman, or readers’ representative, at the Washington Post.

“Religion is a subject that many Post readers care deeply about, and they often don’t think journalists care as deeply about it as they do,” argued Howell, in one column. “Journalists are just like readers. Some are religious; some not. I don’t think that matters as long as religion and spiritual issues are reported thoroughly and sensitively. … I think that readers would not be so offended by an occasional story or reference they see as insensitive if they believed that The Post made religion coverage a priority.”

Howell was just as blunt in her farewell column, which urged the newspaper’s editors to, “Devote more coverage to religion. When you see how many reporters cover sports and politics, it seems natural to add more coverage of a subject dear to many readers’ hearts.”

It might even help to pursue more in-depth, accurate coverage of the lives and beliefs of conservatives. “I’d like those who have canceled their subscriptions to be readers again. Too many Post staff members think alike; more diversity of opinion should be welcomed,” wrote Howell.

Year after year, stressed O’Keefe, Howell used her national network of contacts in newsrooms, and her credibility as journalism pioneer, to pound away on the importance of religion in the news.

“She was so passionate,” he said. “What she believed was that journalists can’t understand this country and what makes it tick — as well as lots of events around the world — without understanding religion. … She was like an invisible guardian angel out there behind the scenes, fighting in her own unique way for serious religion coverage in the mainstream press.”

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The cast of “It’s a Wonderful Life 2” reassembled on stage at Celebration Covenant Church, a suburban megachurch north of Dallas. There were characters from a Victorian tableau, along with Frosty the Snowman, young ballerinas and children dressed as penguins. Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus were there, too.

Then, entering from stage right, came “an adult Christ stripped down to his loincloth and smeared with Dracula blood, dragging a cross to center stage while being whipped by two centurion guards,” writes Stuever, in “Tinsel,” his open-a-vein study of Christmas in the American marketplace. “Here is where the Nativity, Dickens and Burl Ives collide head-on with Good Friday, as Jesus is crucified while everyone sings ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing,’ ending on a long, noisy note: ‘newborn kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing.’

“Then they freeze.

“Hold it for applause.”

The scene was achingly sincere and painfully bizarre, with holy images jammed into a pop framework next to crass materialism. For millions of Americans, this is the real Christmas.

“I wrote it in my notes, right there in that church,” said Stuever. “I wrote, ‘It’s Picasso.’ … I just couldn’t believe it.”

There is nothing new about a journalist “embedding” himself to experience life on the front lines. Rather than heading to Iraq, Stuever moved to the Bible Belt. He lived in Frisco, Texas, for six months in 2006, then made 12 short follow-up trips during the next two years.

The veteran Washington Post reporter convinced three families to let him see Christmas through their eyes, from the Back Friday craziness to the somber trashing of mountains of ripped wrapping paper. The book’s credo is voiced by Tammie Parnell, a 40-something business dynamo who decorates McMansions for women who are too busy to prepare for a Texas-sized Christmas.

“Fake is okay here,” she tells Stuever. “Diamond earrings. Christmas trees. If you want me to prove that fake is okay here, let’s you and I go to the Stonebriar Country Club pool one day and check everyone out.”

The bottom line? Most Americans say they want Bethlehem and the North Pole, but the truth is that they invest more time, energy and money at the North Pole. That’s fine with Stuever, who is openly gay and calls himself a “Christmas loser” — while wrestling with the lessons of his Jesuit education and the loss of his Catholic faith.

“A dip into even the most reverent inquiries by Bible scholars,” he argues, “easily leads to the conclusion that there was no actual manger scene in Bethlehem, no shepherds dropping by to see the baby, no star in the east, no Magi, no frankincense, no myrrh. … Many scholars have concluded, some more gently than others, that the Christmas story is intentionally fictive, written by the earliest, first-century evangelists to beef up Jesus’ street cred as a believable Jewish Messiah. Like any superhero, Christ needed an origin story rife with the drama, metaphors and the meaningful symbols of the era.”

Thus, “Tinsel” seeks the meaning of Christmas in the material world itself, in the blitz of shopping, in houses draped in high-voltage lights, in the complex joys and tensions of family life. Stuever argues that the binges of shopping and feasting are as ancient — and more significant today — than the rites of praying and believing.

For Stuever, Christmas is fake, but that’s fine because fake is all there is. He argues that millions of Americans struggle to find the “total moments” of nostalgia and joy that they seek at Christmas because they are not being honest about why they do what they do during the all-consuming dash to Dec. 25.

“It’s so easy to see all of the craziness on TV and say, ‘Oh, those poor, stupid people,’ ” he said. “But when you get down there in the middle of it with them and listen to what people are saying and try to feel what they are feeling, you realize that all of that wildness is not just about buying the new Wii at Best Buy. …

“It’s a religious experience for them, even though it couldn’t be more secular. They’re out there searching for transcendence, trying to find what they think is the magic of Christmas.”

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A journalist was chasing Wasilla Bible Church members in the aisles, trying to convince somebody, anybody, to dish about his flock’s most famous church lady. The craziness had started as soon as Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin became the GOP’s nominee for vice president.

Suddenly, there were satellite dishes out front and worshippers were trapped inside, trying to escape to the safety of their cars in the parking lot.

Kroon tried to control the chaos, telling journalists they were free to participate in worship services, but not to film or interrupt them. The pastor also asked them not to “fish for interviews” as members arrived or departed. He thought these rules were enough. He was wrong.

“We can look back and say, ‘Whoa. We really should have done this or that differently,’ ” said Kroon. “I was naive enough to think this wasn’t going to affect us — but it did. We ended up scrambling to get from day to day. We had that deer in the headlights look for quite a while.”

Wasilla Bible Church leaders encountered professionals from the New York Times, CNN, Time, Fox, the major television networks and just about everyone else — from America and around the world. Flocks of alleged journalists arrived from every corner of the World Wide Web, as well.

After hurricane Palin, Kroon met with management consultant James Stamoolis and prepared some tips for clergy who struggle with media attention — wanted or unwanted. Some of those tips are relevant again in Wasilla, since Palin’s faith plays a big role in her new “Going Rogue” memoir. Here’s a sample, drawn from a talk with Kroon.

* Never accept an interview without confirming a reporter’s identity and his or her current employer. Just because someone has written for the Associated Press doesn’t mean that he isn’t currently a blogger for PalinIsADummy.org or something like that.

* Help reporters understand that private communications between clergy and the faithful are, in fact, privileged and guarded by the same kinds of laws that shield reporters and their sources.

* Keep contact information for community leaders — such as telephone numbers and email addresses for church elders — in a firewall-protected section of your congregation’s website. Post contact information for staffers who are prepared to handle media requests in a timely manner.

* Ask if reporters or producers have experience covering religion news. Some journalists sincerely want factual information that will help them cover a story fairly and accurately, while others “are in a hurry and they simply want what they want. You may think you’re helping them understand who you are and what you believe, but they just want a good quote and then they’re moving on,” said Kroon.

* It may help to post information about your denomination or tradition, including frequently asked questions about worship, media relations, how the congregation is governed and the meaning of unique terms (such as “born again” or “charismatic”) that newcomers will encounter.

* Understand that a two-hour interview may be reduced to 20 seconds and that the journalist decides what goes in that soundbite. So avoid lectures and focus on the key points that you must make to explain your congregation’s point of view. It’s also important to remember that silence is the reporter’s problem, not your problem.

* In the Internet age, there is no reason that a pastor cannot — as a condition for talking to a reporter — insist on the right to record and transcribe an interview. That way, the professionals on both sides of the transaction know that they are on the record and the results, if needed to clarify a point, can be posted online or emailed to a publisher.

Kroon stressed that he was truly impressed by many of the journalists, especially with their commitment to accuracy and fairness. They wanted to get the story right. But others arrived in Wasilla with their minds clamped shut. They came to get the story that they already knew that they wanted to write.

“Pastors need to understand that there are really good reporters and there are some really bad ones, too,” he said. “You also have to understand that even the really good ones are going to push you to your boundary lines. That’s what they do.”

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Still, the Pulitzer Prize winner took her game to another level in a recent column attacking Rome for its investigation of religious orders that shelter sisters who oppose many of the church’s teachings.

Wait, is “investigation” the right word?

“The Vatican is now conducting two inquisitions into the ‘quality of life’ of American nuns, a dwindling group with an average age of about 70, hoping to herd them back into their old-fashioned habits and convents and curb any speck of modernity or independence,” she wrote.

Dowd rolled on. Reference to the fact Pope Benedict XVI was once a “conscripted member of the Hitler Youth”? Check. Reference to his Serengeti sunglasses and trademark red loafers? Check. Strategic silence on the fact that many traditionalist orders are growing, while liberal orders are shrinking? Check.

New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan fired back at Dowd and her editors, going much further than the low-key criticism that mainstream religious leaders usually crank out when they are mad at the press. His “Foul Ball!” essay was as subtle as a whack with a baseball bat.

Anti-Catholicism is alive and well, he argued. Check out the New York Times.

“It is not hyperbole to call prejudice against the Catholic Church a national pastime,” wrote Dolan. “Scholars such as Arthur Schlesinger Sr. referred to it as ‘the deepest bias in the history of the American people.’ … ‘The anti-Semitism of the left,’ is how Paul Viereck reads it, and Professor Philip Jenkins sub-titles his book on the topic ‘the last acceptable prejudice.’ “

A clash between the conservative archbishop and the Gray Lady was probably inevitable. After all, the newspaper is currently led by an editor who — months after 9/11, when he was still a columnist — accused Rome of fighting on the wrong side of a global struggle between the “forces of tolerance and absolutism.”

Calling himself a “collapsed Catholic,” well “beyond lapsed,” Bill Keller said the liberal spirit of Vatican II died when it “ran smack-dab into the sexual revolution. Probably no institution run by a fraternity of aging celibates was going to reconcile easily with a movement that embraced the equality of women, abortion on demand and gay rights.”

The archbishop offered his “Foul Ball!” commentary to the Times editors, who declined to publish it. Dolan then posted the essay on his own website, while also offering it to FoxNews.com — which promptly ran it.

Dolan was, of course, livid about Dowd’s broadside, calling it an “intemperate,” “scurrilous … diatribe that rightly never would have passed muster with the editors had it so criticized an Islamic, Jewish or African-American religious issue.”

The archbishop also accused the newspaper of various sins of omission and commission, asking the editors if they were printing stronger attacks on the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church than on other groups — religious and secular — that have struggled with sexual abuse. The Times, he claimed, was guilty of “selective outrage.”

For example, he noted a recent report on child sexual abuse in Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community that, after addressing the facts, “did not demand what it has called for incessantly when addressing the same kind of abuse by a tiny minority of priests: release of names of abusers, rollback of statute of limitations, external investigations, release of all records and total transparency.”

Dolan also accused the Times, and other media, of downplaying public reports in 2004 and 2007 that documented the problem of sexual abuse of minors by educators in U.S. public schools. It seems, he said, that major newspapers “only seem to have priests in their crosshairs.”

This prickly dialogue is sure to continue. After all, the 59-year-old Dolan was installed as New York’s 13th Catholic archbishop last April — so he isn’t going anywhere. And while America’s most powerful newspaper faces a stunning array of financial challenges, the New York Times is still the New York Times.

Stay tuned.

“The Catholic Church is not above criticism,” stressed Dolan. “We Catholics do a fair amount of it ourselves. We welcome and expect it. All we ask is that such critique be fair, rational and accurate, what we would expect for anybody. The suspicion and bias against the Church is a national pastime that should be ‘rained out’ for good.”

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Viewers would be looking for signs that the quarterback was OK after a nasty concussion. Many would also want to see which Bible reference would be written in the patches of eye black that would be visible whenever television cameras focused on the face of America’s most famous muscular Christian.

Tebow was wearing Isaiah 40:31 when he got hurt against Kentucky: “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”

This biblical commentary continued when he returned against LSU, with a reference pointing to 1 Thessalonians 5:18: “In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.”

The Palm Beach Post put it this way: “Give thanks in all circumstances.”

Not exactly.

You see, it’s hard to avoid quoting the Bible when you’re writing about an athlete who refuses to stop quoting the Bible.

Viewers who used an Internet search engine could find the full scriptural reference. Those who relied on news reports, however, tended to find language scrubbed clean of the fervent, conservative and, for many, offensive faith that shapes the lives of Tebow and his missionary parents and siblings.

Bob and Pam Tebow already consider his life a gift from God. During that pregnancy, his mother slipped into a coma after contracting amoebic dysentery. Doctors in the Philippines, where the Tebows are evangelical missionaries, feared that the strong medications she received had damaged her unborn child. Doctors advised an abortion. She refused, the family prayed and Tim Tebow survived.

Thus, Bob Tebow told Sports Illustrated, “I asked God for a preacher, and he gave me a quarterback.”

The son has done his share of preaching and missionary work, both overseas and in U.S. prisons. Meanwhile, he has refused to retreat during the many media marathons he endures as a superstar. This is, after all, the guy who seized the podium when he won the Heisman Trophy and, after taking some nervous gulps, immediately gave thanks to “my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave me the ability to play football.” In his rush, he said almost exactly the same thing moments later. The news reports that followed steered clear of these references.

While Tebow has been outspoken about his beliefs, he has avoided making openly evangelistic remarks while in the hot spotlight at a secular university in a highly diverse state. The closest he has come to giving an altar call was when he put John 3:16 under his eyes during the 2009 BCS championship game.

For those who have never seen Billy Graham in action, that verse proclaims: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

But that was a mere tremor compared with the quake that followed Tebow’s candid response when asked during a press conference: “Are you saving yourself for marriage?”

Laughing, he said, “Yes, I am.”

While another reporter struggled to ask a question, Tebow continued. “I think ya’ll are stunned right now. Ya’ll can’t even ask a question. Look at this. The first time ever. Wow. I was ready for the question. I don’t think ya’ll were, though.”

Thus, a simple Google search for “Tebow, virgin” yields 70,000-plus hits. Journalists and commentators can’t seem to decide if they were more offended by the question or by Tebow’s unapologetic answer. Was this a victory for the religious right or for crass, “gotcha” journalism?

The columnist who pushed that button has refused to apologize, noting that Tebow considered it a logical question in light of his highly public faith.

“Tebow demonstrated that he lives his life according to his own religious principles,” noted Clay Travis of the Fanhouse.com website.

“I asked because I believe it’s newsworthy and because, believe it or not, I thought Tim Tebow would answer the question by saying: ‘Yes, I am.’ … Why did I believe this? Because Tebow lives his faith. And I believe that living his faith is not artificial, he’s not pretending to be something he’s not.”

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She was a Libra and lived on a peacock farm on California’s Central Coast. The Chicago Tribune also reported that Black was “a devout Catholic and a devoted follower of astrology, which holds that the position of the stars and planets has a direct effect on human affairs and personalities.”

This is interesting since the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that: “All forms of divination are to be rejected. … Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers.”

Then there was the tragic case of Lucille Hamilton, who paid $621 to have her, or his, “spiritual grime” removed by a voodoo high priest. However, something went wrong and Hamilton — a 21-year-old male living as a female — died on the second day of the “Lave Tet” voodoo baptism rites.

The Philadelphia Daily News noted that, “Hamilton was a devout Catholic, with an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe tattooed on her foot.”

Yes, you read that correctly. You see, of all the labels used by journalists to describe believers — from “apostate” to “zealot” — surely “devout” has become one of the most meaningless. While this is true in a variety of world religions, for some reason things get especially interesting when “devout” appears in front of “Catholic.”

The bottom line: What’s the difference between a “practicing” Catholic and a “devout” Catholic? Do journalists simply know one when they see one?

Wall Street Journal editors recently raised questions about this “devout” issue in an online “Style & Substance” newsletter. This editorial note warned that it’s important for journalists covering criminal cases to consider whether a person’s faith background — devout or lapsed — is even relevant. For example, religious references may add vital information in reports about frauds committed by a Catholic individual against a number of Catholic organizations.

Meanwhile, the editors asked, “Hasn’t devout Catholic become a cliche, rather like oil-rich Kuwait? It would seem that only Catholics and Muslims qualify as devout, since devout Catholic has appeared in our pages four times in the past year and devout Muslim twice. Zero for devout Jews and Protestants.”

There is no question that the term “devout” is used far too often and in a sloppy manner, said Richard Ostling, a religion-beat veteran best known for his work with Time and the Associated Press. This fact could be a comment on how little exposure many mainstream journalists have to religious life and practice.

“Perhaps, to someone with only secularist experiences and friends, any level of religious interest of any type might seem ‘devout,’ ” he said. But, in the end, “reporters can only observe outward behavior, not the inner soul. … There’s usually a connection between observance and personal faith, so generally it makes sense to assess personal belief by externals.”

Many of these common labels used to describe believers — terms such as “serious,” “practicing,” “committed” and, yes, “devout” — are completely subjective, agreed Debra Mason, director of the Religion Newswriters Association, which is based at the University of Missouri. Different people define these words in different ways. With the “devout” label, there is even the implication that these believers may be fanatics.

When in doubt, reporters should simply drop the vague labels and use plain information, she said, echoing advice offered by Ostling and others.

“Since journalists do not have a direct line into the soul to discern a person’s faith, it is far better to use precise descriptions of a person’s religious practice and observance,” said Mason. For example, a reporter could note that, “Joe Smith attended Mass every day” or that “Jane Smith attended worship every week, even when ill.”

The goal is to use clear facts instead of foggy labels, an approach that Mason admitted may require journalists to add a line or two of context or background information. Non-Catholics, for example, may not understand the importance of a Catholic choosing to attend Mass every day.

However, she stressed, this extra work is “a small price to pay for more accurate and precise reporting.”

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* * * *

There is no question what the Roman Catholic Church calls the holy bread that is consecrated during the Mass. It is called the “host.” Anyone who knows anything about Catholic liturgy knows this.

Now, how do you describe or define the host? Those seeking to be reverent tend to call it “consecrated bread.”

The problem, of course, is that the special bread used in Western Rite services is not simply unleavened bread. As the old saying goes, there are two acts of faith involved in meditating on the host during a Mass. The first is to believe that it is the Body of Christ. The second is to believe that it is, in fact, bread.

Thus, many people refer to the host in a variety of ways. Some people insist on calling the host a “wafer,” a term that angers many Catholics. However, there are Catholics who use this term. Still, most simply call it by its traditional name — a host.

It is true that, if you look up definitions online, there is an ecclesiastical definition for “wafer” that applies. Thus, you end up with these two clashing definitions:

1. A small thin crisp cake, biscuit, or candy.

2. Ecclesiastical — A small thin disk of unleavened bread used in the Eucharist.

So, is this unique bread the consecrated “host” or some kind of supposedly holy cookie? That seems to be the question.

I raise this because of the interesting and very detailed story that ran in the Boston Globe the other day about rites of “perpetual adoration,” a tradition that is explained well right at the top by religion-beat specialist Michael Paulson. However, many will stumble, or even scream, right at the lede:

The adorers sit in silence before the wafer.

Some settle cross-legged on the floor by the altar. Others kneel in a favorite pew. They read, or say the rosary; they pray, or think, or just allow the mind to wander. Hour after hour, day after day, they take part in an unusual Catholic ritual that appears to be making a modest comeback — a quest for silence in a noisy life, a desire to be part of a team, a hunger to feel closer to God.

The ritual, called perpetual adoration, is, at one level, strikingly simple: around-the-clock, people take turns sitting in a chapel in the presence of a consecrated wafer. But at another level, the ritual reflects an embrace of the teaching of Catholicism that many find hardest to understand: the belief that, during Mass, bread and wine are literally transformed into the body and blood of Jesus.

The lede seems to settle the issue. It’s a wafer. The Catholic church may say that it is the Body of Christ, or even consecrated bread, but it’s a wafer. For many readers, this rite is an act of faith. Others will consider it a mild form of madness.

I think it’s likely that they Globe newsroom stylebook even settles this language question (I’d love to know the actual answer, in fact). The story uses the term “wafer” eight times — including in a direct quote — and the term “host” only once. I found it interesting that the term “host” is left undefined. If the term is so common that it does not need to be defined, then why not use “host,” oh, eight times and the term “wafer” once? Just asking.

I also wondered if this statement is true:

Later this week, in a Back Bay shrine, the Archdiocese of Boston will celebrate the return of perpetual adoration to Boston for the first time in decades. Volunteers at St. Clement Eucharistic Shrine are signing up 336 people — two for every hour of the week except during Mass — who will agree that, starting Saturday and continuing indefinitely, they will spend an hour a week in the presence of the consecrated wafer, a practice they understand as spending an hour a week with God.

That’s interesting. I had no idea that perpetual adoration was this rare, since I have heard about the practice in a number of contexts through the years. Are there no monasteries in Boston? Did this particular archdiocese ban or discourage the practice for some reason? I’m curious.

Please understand that I am not attacking the Globe report (and certainly not Paulson) on the “wafer” vs. “host” issue.

Still, I have no doubt that many Catholics were not offended by the drumbeat references to their adoration of a “wafer.” However, I am sure that some were offended and there is a good chance that some traditional Catholics still read the Globe.

My question is more basic: What was gained by using the blunt “wafer” reference in the lede? Is the word “host” so strange in a heavily Catholic region? Why not open by saying that they are kneeling before the “consecrated bread” that they believe is the Body of Christ? A reference to the belief of the worshippers would be accurate, even for skeptics. Correct?

Behind this question is another: Should journalists cover the beliefs of others with some sense of respect for the language that they would use? What is accomplished by using language that is sure to offend many of the “stakeholders” — that’s a journalistic term used by Poynter.org and in some other academic settings — who will care the most about the accuracy and sensitivity of this fine story?

There is no question that the Catholic church calls this a “host.” And there is no question that the Boston Globe calls this bread a “wafer.” I am asking this question: Why does the “wafer” language need to win in this debate? Is there a way to be both neutral and to show respect?

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This isn’t a large number of worshippers in the pews of 47 parishes — roughly the same number that would attend weekend Masses in two or three healthy Catholic parishes in a typical American city.

Episcopal attendance in New Hampshire fell sharply between 2003 and 2007, which is the most recent statistical year available (pdf). Meanwhile, this diocese had 15,621 members in 2003 and 14,160 in 2007 — a loss of 9.4 percent. The entire Diocese of New Hampshire is about the same size as many individual Protestant megachurches.

However, the influential bishop of this little diocese recently told the New York Times that things have been fine since 2003, when he was consecrated in a rite that rocked the global Anglican Communion.

“There are 15,000 people in the diocese of New Hampshire,” claimed the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson, in what he stressed was an exclusive interview during the national General Convention. This convention made more headlines by approving the selection of gays and lesbians for “any ordained ministry,” which means Robinson may soon lose his status as the Episcopal Church’s only openly gay, non-celibate bishop.

“We have received so many Roman Catholics and young families,” he said, “particularly families who are saying, ‘We don’t want to raise our daughters in a church that doesn’t value young people.’ ” In fact, the bishop insisted that his diocese “grew by 3 percent last year.”

If this early 2008 report is true, then Robinson and his diocese will be in the news again — offering proof that a liberalized Christianity can lead to growth, rather than decline. If that happens, many reporters will receive a smattering of calls and emails from amazed readers asking: “Why do the Episcopalians get so much news coverage?”

That’s a good question, since the Episcopal Church — with a mere 2 million members — often draws more attention than the Southern Baptist Convention, the Assemblies of God and several other major denominations combined.

What’s going on? After 30 years on the religion beat, I have decided that several factors are at work.

* Many of the Episcopal Church’s most vocal leaders — such as Robinson — work in the Northeast near elite media institutions. The church’s national offices are in New York City. Meanwhile, Episcopal cathedrals elsewhere are usually in urban centers that dominate regional media. For journalists, the Episcopalians are nearby.

* Conservatives have, for decades, been on the outside looking in when the Episcopal establishment made crucial decisions, in part because many conservative dioceses are in the Sunbelt far from the action. But in the Internet age, even conservatives are seeking, and getting, more media attention.

* Colorful photographs and video clips are crucial and it’s hard to offer compelling coverage of convention centers and churches full of clergy in dull business suits. Episcopalians, however, know how to dress up. In fact, their bishops even look like the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church — the biggest religion-news game in town.

* The true religion of journalism is politics and Episcopalians love to talk politics — from global warming to feminism, from multiculturalism to military spending, from national health care to gay rights. And in recent decades the denomination’s stands on controversial social issues have meshed nicely with the editorial stands taken by America’s most powerful media corporations.

The bottom line: Episcopalians wear religious garb, work in convenient urban sanctuaries and speak the lingo of progressive politics. Their leaders look like Catholics and think like journalists.

It also helps to remember that the Episcopal Church’s roots connect to Church of England, which gives it a unique role in American history, noted Bishop William Frey of the Diocese of the Rio Grande, who was a media professional before seeking ordination. This small, well-established denomination has helped shape the lives of 11 presidents, 35 U.S. Supreme Court justices and legions of journalists.

Like it our not, the Episcopal Church occupies its own corner in the public square — which leads to news coverage.

Is that a good thing? Sometimes Frey isn’t sure.

“I can’t understand why some people want the kind of media attention that we get year after year,” he said, during one media storm in the 1980s. “I mean, that’s like coveting another man’s root canal.”

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This is where the secret police of Soviet strongman Joseph Stalin buried 100,000 of their victims between 1937 and 1941 in a mass grave northeast of Kiev. President Victor Yushchenko did not mince words during his recent speech there, on Ukraine’s Day of Remembrance for Victims of Political Repression.

“Here, at Bykivnya, Stalin and his monstrous hangmen killed the bloom of Ukraine. There is no forgiveness and there will be none,” he told several thousand mourners and, of course, Ukrainian journalists.

The mourners wept, while processing through the site behind Orthodox clergy who carried liturgical banners containing iconic images of Jesus and Mary.

“Because of the national symbolism of this ceremony, the priests there may not be important,” said Victor Yelensky, a sociologist of religion associated with the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences. “But the priests have to be there because this is Ukraine and this is a ceremony that is about a great tragedy in the history of Ukraine.

“So the priests are there. It is part … of a civil religion.”

This is where the story gets complicated. In the Ukrainian media, photographs and video images showed the clergy, with their dramatic banners and colorful vestments. However, in their reporting, journalists never mentioned what the clergy said or did.

Media reports also failed to mention which Orthodoxy body or bodies were represented. This is an important gap, because of the tense and complicated nature of the religious marketplace in this historically Eastern Orthodox culture.

It would have been big news, for example, if clergy from the giant Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) — with direct ties to Moscow — had taken part in a ceremony that featured Yushchenko, who, as usual, aimed angry words to the north.

But what if the clergy were exclusively from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Kiev Patriarchate), born after the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991 and linked to declarations of Ukrainian independence? What if there were also clergy from a third body, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, born early in the 20th century?

A rite featuring clergy from one or both of these newer churches also would have been symbolic. After all, these days almost anything can create tensions between Ukraine and Russia, from natural gas prices to efforts to emphasize the Ukrainian language, from exhibits of uniquely Ukrainian art to decisions about which statues are torn down (almost anything Soviet) or which statues are erected (such as one of Ivan Mazepa, labeled a traitor by Russia after his 18th century efforts to boost Ukrainian independence).

But it’s hard for Ukrainian journalists to ask these kinds of questions and print what they learn when people answer them, according to a circle of journalists — secular and religious — at a Kiev forum last week focusing on trends in religion news in their nation. I was one of the speakers, along with another colleague from the Oxford Centre for Religion & Public Life.

As in America, Ukrainian journalists often assume that politics is the only faith that matters in life. The journalists in Kiev also said that they struggle to escape unwritten Soviet-era rules stating that religion was bad, irrelevant or, at best, merely private. Many journalists lack historical knowledge required to do accurate coverage of religion, while others simply do not care, because they shun organized religion.

“Many would say that, if we do not play the violin, we really should not attempt to comment on how others play the violin,” said Yuri Makarov, editor in chief of Ukrainian Week, speaking through a translator.

This blind spot is unfortunate, because Ukrainian journalists may have missed a crucial piece of the Bykivnya story, said Yelensky. It’s hard to understand the soul of Ukraine without grasping the power of religion.

“For many Orthodox people in western Ukraine, it is simply unacceptable to live in any way under the leadership of the Moscow Patriarchate. At the same time, for many Orthodox in eastern Ukraine, it is simply unacceptable to not to be associated and in communion with the Moscow Patriarchate. In the middle are places like Kiev. …

“This is a division that is inside Ukrainian society. Is it based on religion? No. Is religion right there in the heart of it? Yes.”

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