The pope mentioned “religious freedom” in the third sentence of his Jan. 19 remarks at the Vatican and he never let up — returning to this hot topic again and again.

The bottom line, he said, is that America’s once strong political consensus has “eroded significantly in the face of powerful new cultural currents which are not only directly opposed to core moral teachings of the Judeo-Christian tradition, but increasingly hostile to Christianity as such.”

It doesn’t matter if these attacks originate in “radical secularism,” “radical individualism,” a “merely scientific rationality” or suppressive forms of “majority rule,” said Benedict, during one in an ongoing series of meetings with American bishops. Catholic leaders must strive to defend church teachings in ways that reach all believers in their care — including Catholic politicians.

Within a matter of hours, these American bishops had good cause to reflect on one Benedict passage in particular.

While he didn’t name names of cite issues, the pope noted that of particular Vatican concern are “attempts being made to limit that most cherished of American freedoms, the freedom of religion. Many of you have pointed out that concerted efforts have been made to deny the right of conscientious objection on the part of Catholic individuals and institutions with regard to cooperation in intrinsically evil practices. Others have spoken to me of a worrying tendency to reduce religious freedom to mere freedom of worship without guarantees of respect for freedom of conscience.”

The next day, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius — a liberal Catholic — announced that the Obama administration would not back down on its new rules requiring the majority of church-based institutions to include all FDA-approved forms of contraception in the health-insurance plans they offer to employees and even students. This would include, with no out-of-pocket payments, sterilizations and the contraceptives — abortifacient drugs — commonly known as “morning-after pills.”

“Scientists have abundant evidence that birth control has significant health benefits for women and their families, it is documented to significantly reduce health costs and is the most commonly taken drug in America by young and middle-aged women,” announced Sebelius. The administration’s decision was made “after very careful consideration, including the important concerns some have raised about religious liberty.”

In a concession that further infuriated her critics, she said some religious institutions could apply for a one-year delay in complying with the rules.

The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was not amused.

“In effect, the president is saying we have a year to figure out how to violate our consciences,” said Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York, in an online video. “To force American citizens to choose between violating their consciences and forgoing their healthcare is literally unconscionable. It is as much an attack on access to health care as on religious freedom.”

Pro-Vatican Catholics were united in their opposition to the new regulations, which also drew fire from conservative Protestants and Jews. At the same time, the struggle provided fresh evidence of painful divisions among American Catholics, including the reluctance or refusal of many Catholic institutions to defend church teachings. For example, a mere 18 Catholic colleges — out of nearly 250 nationwide — united for an earlier protest of the proposed HHS regulations.

“Some Catholics will hear this news with mixed or negative emotions, including many bishops,” noted Dr. Patrick Whelan, of the Catholic Democrats organization. “At the same time, we know Catholic women, and by extension their families, use oral contraception at the same rate as the overall population. For over half a century, since the issuance of Humanae Vitae, Catholics and Catholic theologians have taken issue with the Church’s teaching on birth control.”

Meanwhile, a cardinal long admired by progressive Catholics added his voice to the chorus of those who were outraged.

“I cannot imagine that this decision was released without the explicit knowledge and approval of President Barack Obama,” said retired Cardinal Roger Mahoney of Los Angeles, on his weblog. “I cannot imagine a more direct and frontal attack on freedom of conscience than this ruling. … For me the answer is clear: we stand with our moral principles and heritage over the centuries, not what a particular Federal government agency determines.”

After his coronation as king, the pope released Edward from this vow — if he built a monastery dedicated to the first bishop of Rome. Thus, St. Peter’s Abbey was rebuilt in Westminster.

Pope Benedict XVI gently stressed this history in the first words of his address during his recent visit to Westminster Abbey, where he prayed with the archbishop of Canterbury.

“I thank the Lord for this opportunity to join you … in this magnificent Abbey church dedicated to St. Peter, whose architecture and history speak so eloquently of our common heritage of faith,” said Benedict. “Here we cannot help but be reminded of how greatly the Christian faith shaped the unity and culture of Europe and the heart and spirit of the English people. Here too, we are forcibly reminded that what we share, in Christ, is greater than what continues to divide us. …

“I thank the Lord for allowing me, as the successor of St. Peter in the See of Rome, to make this pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Edward the Confessor.”

Benedict’s historic visit to England’s national shrine received little coverage, in part because his remarks there were intensely spiritual. Meanwhile, journalists had to notice that his Westminster Hall address on the role of reason and faith in politics drew a secular flock that included, as an Associated Press report noted, “former Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, who recently converted to Catholicism.”

Speaking in the hall in which the Catholic martyr Sir Thomas More was convicted of treason for his loyalty to Rome, Benedict warned that the modern world — take Europe — is increasingly hostile to those who try to act on their beliefs.

“There are those who would advocate that the voice of religion be silenced, or at least relegated to the purely private sphere,” he said. “There are those who argue that the public celebration of festivals such as Christmas should be discouraged, in the questionable belief that it might somehow offend those of other religions or none. And there are those who argue — paradoxically with the intention of eliminating discrimination — that Christians in public roles should be required at times to act against their conscience.

“These are worrying signs of a failure to appreciate not only the rights of believers to freedom of conscience and freedom of religion, but also the legitimate role of religion in the public square.”

The abbey visit created no sparks, in part because earlier that day the pope told Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams that there was no need to “speak of the difficulties that the ecumenical path has encountered and continues to encounter. Those difficulties are well known.” Thus, there were no clear references to tensions about female priests, gay bishops in America’s Episcopal Church and the Vatican’s controversial decision — after many appeals by Anglican traditionalists — to make it easier for members of the Church of England to enter the Church of Rome.

Instead, Benedict repeatedly stressed that unity must be found in scripture, creeds and moral doctrines that date back to the early church. These words, however, are controversial in an age in which the global Anglican Communion is divided over teachings as central as the resurrection of Jesus and claims that salvation is found through Christ, alone.

“Our commitment to Christian unity is born of nothing less than our faith in Christ, in this Christ, risen from the dead and seated at the right hand of the Father, who will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,” he said. “It is the reality of Christ’s person, his saving work and above all the historical fact of his resurrection, which is the content of … those creedal formulas. … The church’s unity, in a word, can never be other than a unity in the apostolic faith, in the faith entrusted to each new member of the Body of Christ.”

Finally, Benedict stressed — yet again — that he was speaking and acting in “fidelity to my ministry as the bishop of Rome and the successor of St. Peter, charged with a particular care for the unity of Christ’s flock.”

Weeks after that signal in 2005, the cardinal became pope. Then at World Youth Day 2008, he said, “I am deeply sorry for the pain and suffering the victims have endured. … These misdeeds, which constitute so grave a betrayal of trust, deserve unequivocal condemnation.”

The pope’s recent letter to Irish Catholics also made headlines, of course. After new cries for repentance, Benedict XVI told the victims: “I know that nothing can undo the wrong you have endured. Your trust has been betrayed and your dignity has been violated. Many of you found that, when you were courageous enough to speak of what happened to you, no one would listen. … It is understandable that you find it hard to forgive or be reconciled with the Church.”

All of these words were spoken in public and, thus, led to debates and discussions around the world. However, in recent months tuned-in Catholics have been reading about a private, strategic statement — by a Catholic layman — that may have had the greatest practical impact in American sanctuaries. The St. Louis Beacon, an independent online newspaper, recently published the document.

The 10-page memo (.pdf here) was written by David Spotanski, vice chancellor of the Diocese of Belleville in Southern Illinois, and given to his bishop on Feb. 22, 2002.

It’s crucial that Bishop Wilton D. Gregory had recently become president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops — just as another wave of abuse reports hit the news. When the bishop began scanning the document, Spotanski took it back and read it aloud, behind closed doors.

“The truth is that our bishops are not doing all they CAN to stop sexual abuse of minors by their brother priests; they’re doing all they CARE TO,” wrote Spotanski. “Like most Catholics I’m stunned and horrified that there’s a distinction. … For a Church that can be so outspoken and uncompromising about the splinters in the eyes of our culture, She has apparently for decades hypocritically concealed a plank in Her own eye from which one could hew an ark.”

In addition to handing the bishop the memo, Spotanski provided a photo of his daughter and two sons, who were 14, 11 and 9 when it was taken. He then placed a copy of the photo in Gregory’s briefcase before every major meeting the bishop attended that year — including a face-to-face meeting between Pope John Paul II and the president of the U.S. Catholic bishops. Gregory also met with Cardinal Ratzinger and other top Vatican officials.

This led to a crucial Vatican summit on the abuse crisis and, eventually, much tougher policies to protect children in American churches.

While that charter didn’t take every action advised by Spotanski, noted commentator Ross Douthat, it’s safe to say that “while the princes of the American church were immobilized by denial … the rough draft of the policy that righted the ship was being written by a middle-aged layman in the Midwest, in consultation with the Catholic dads on his local softball team.”

The New York Times columnist, who is an active Catholic, called Spotanski, the “man who saved American Catholicism.”

If so, the key to the memo was its blunt, personal tone and its emphasis on the damage done to the lives and faith of ordinary Catholic children and their parents. For example, Spotanski asked, what Jesus would say to a cardinal who has “shown himself to be dishonest about his knowledge of the forcible anal rape of children?” He then quoted a bishop as observing, “I don’t think I’d like hell very much.”

Most of all, he argued, Catholic bishops needed to start thinking about their own vows and the church’s future and, thus, stop treating victims like “lepers, sinners, nuisances or threats.” At some point, faithful Catholics would close their hearts and their checkbooks.

When that happened, warned Spotanski, bishops in “tainted dioceses” would have to “choose between their missions and their mansions, their food buses and their limousines, the ‘least of their brothers’ and Brooks Brothers. … The depleted bottom line is that you simply can’t run a major American archdiocese for very long on 30 silver coins.”

“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.”

So Pope Benedict XVI visited the White House and proclaimed “God bless America!” Then he noted that, in this culture of radical individualism, “Freedom is not only a gift, but also a summons to personal responsibility.”

The former theology professor, speaking to Catholic college leaders, enthusiastically embraced academic freedom. Then he stressed that traditional doctrine — as “upheld by the Church’s Magisterium” — should shape all aspects of a truly Catholic “institution’s life, both inside and outside the classroom.”

The former prisoner of war, speaking at the United Nations, hailed the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Then he dared to claim that the document’s defense of universal truths is built on “the natural law inscribed on human hearts and present in different cultures and civilizations.”

The pope spoke to a wide variety of audiences during this visit and he emphasized words of praise and encouragement, not judgment. After all, Benedict could speak to gatherings of U.S. politicians and global diplomats, but he knew that he had no real authority over them. Also, as strange as it sounds, the pope’s control over what happens on Catholic campuses is limited, at best.

Thus, the message that mattered the most came when Benedict faced the 350 American bishops in the crypt under the soaring Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. In theory, the bishops answer directly to the pope when it comes time to explain what happens at their altars and in the pews.

The sound bite that dominated the news afterwards focused on the sexual abuse of children and teens by Catholic clergy, with the pope agreeing with Chicago Cardinal Francis George’s verdict that the scandal was “sometimes very badly handled” by the church hierarchy.

“Many of you have spoken to me of the enormous pain that your communities have suffered when clerics have betrayed their priestly obligations and duties by such gravely immoral behavior,” said Benedict. “Rightly, you attach priority to showing compassion and care to the victims. It is your God-given responsibility as pastors to bind up the wounds caused by every breach of trust, to foster healing, to promote reconciliation and to reach out with loving concern to those so seriously wronged. …

“Now that the scale and gravity of the problem is more clearly understood, you have been able to adopt more focused remedial and disciplinary measures and to promote a safe environment that gives greater protection to young people. While it must be remembered that the overwhelming majority of clergy and religious in America do outstanding work … it is vitally important that the vulnerable always be shielded from those who would cause harm.”

A leader of a support group for victims pressed on. The pope’s statement that the scandal was “somewhat mishandled” is inaccurate, because “this is a current crisis, not a past one,” said Barbara Doris of St. Louis, speaking for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. “The phrase obscures the unassailable fact that hundreds of bishops willfully and repeatedly deceive parishioners, stonewall police and leave children at risk.”

But there was more to this speech than one big quotation. While the pope’s address challenged the bishops to keep wrestling with the sexual-abuse scandal, he also put these evil acts in a wider framework — an era of revolt against the church’s moral teachings. And who is in charge of defending these doctrines, while finding ways to strengthen marriages and families?

That would be the church’s bishops, said Benedict. Thus, he urged them to address the sin of abuse within the “wider context of sexual mores,” thus setting an example for society as a whole. This crisis, he said, calls “for a determined, collective response,” a response led by the bishops.

“Children deserve to grow up with a healthy understanding of sexuality and its proper place in human relationships,” he said. “They should be spared the degrading manifestations and the crude manipulation of sexuality so prevalent today. … What does it mean to speak of child protection when pornography and violence can be viewed in so many homes through media widely available today?

“We need to reassess urgently the values underpinning society, so that a sound moral formation can be offered to young people and adults alike.”