The Rev. Rick Lance knows all about that. He has long been one of the true believers who battle the waves of “Happy Holidays” messages that define one of their faith’s holiest seasons as the civic tsunami between Halloween and the inevitable wrapping-paper wreckage on Christmas morning.

The problem is that whining doesn’t work. Thus, Lance has grown tired of preaching his all-to-familiar annual sermon on why the faithful should “keep Christ in Christmas” while making fewer pilgrimages to their shopping malls.

If people actually want to celebrate Christmas differently, this countercultural revolt will require advance planning and real changes.

“To continue playing the game of ‘ain’t it awful what they have done to Christmas’ may be a cop-out,” argued Lance, the executive director of the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions. “After all, we contribute to the commercialization of Christmas. We are a part of the supposed problem of abuse that the Christmas season has experienced. …

“A revitalization of Christmas will not come from Wall Street, Main Street, the malls or the halls of Congress and the state legislature. The chatter of talking heads on news programs will not make this a reality.”

It would help if their churches offered constructive advice. That’s why it was significant that, just before Dec. 25, the Southern Baptist Convention’s news service published several commentaries by Lance and others raising unusually practical questions about how members of America’s largest non-Catholic flock can fine-tune future Christmas plans.

For example, Christians for centuries have marked the pre-Christmas season of Advent with appeals to help the needy. It’s significant that Baptists — who tend to ignore the liturgical calendar — have long honored one of their most famous missionaries and humanitarians by collecting missions offerings during this timeframe. This Baptist missionary to China even has her own Dec. 22 feast day on Episcopal Church calendar.

Thus, Lance noted that, this year “my wife and I decided to make our largest gift ever to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions. … This may be a small step, but we believe it is a step in the right direction.”

One big problem is that America is a highly complex culture that observes at least three versions of Christmas, with the secular often bleeding into the sacred. They are:

* The Holidays: Formally begins on Black Friday after Thanksgiving. The season slows around Dec. 15, with few events close to Dec. 25. Shopping malls and lawyers define these Holidays.

* Christmas: This season begins in early December in most churches, with many concerts and festivities scheduled between Dec. 7 and Dec. 20, so as not to clash with travel plans by church members. There is at least one Christmas Day service.

* The 12 days of Christmas: This celebration begins with the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ on Dec. 25 and continues through Epiphany, Jan. 6. This ancient tradition is all but extinct.

So what are believers supposed to do next time to restore faith to the Christmas season?

The Rev. Todd Brady of First Baptist Church in Paducah, Ky., urged parents to think twice before — literally — adding Santa to their outdoor Nativity scenes.

“Children in today’s world already have a difficult time distinguishing between fantasy and reality,” he said. “Christmastime often blurs even further the line between what is real and what is not real.”

Church historian Nathan Finn also asked parents to weigh the implications of discussing that magical list that determines “who’s naughty and nice.” Children quickly realize this is an empty threat.

“Far more troublesome is the sub-gospel message this tradition sends. Santa is cast as the judge of all children,” he noted. The problem is that the real Christian Gospel insists that, “every kid deserves the coal. Every parent deserves the coal. I deserve the coal. … There is nothing we can do to change our circumstances and move ourselves from the naughty list to the nice list.”

The bottom line: The true meaning of Christmas isn’t that Santa Claus is the highest authority on sin and grace.

“We are moved from the naughty list to the nice list,” stressed Finn, “not because of something we do, but because of what Jesus had done for us.”

“The Church has always sought,” notes the Book of Blessings, “to ensure that all those things that are involved in any way in divine worship should be worthy, becoming and beautiful. … Those objects that through a blessing are set aside for divine worship are to be treated with reverence by all and to be put only to their proper use, never profaned.”

This includes books on the altar, as noted in the 2001 text Liturgiam authenticam (The Authentic Liturgy): “The books from which the liturgical texts are recited in the vernacular with or on behalf of the people should be marked by such a dignity that the exterior appearance of the book itself will lead the faithful to a greater reverence for the word of God and for sacred realities.”

But the question some Catholics are asking these days is this: Can there be an app for that? What if clergy used iPads containing the Roman Missal?

At this point, the hierarchy has not publicly approved this leap, noted Father John J.M. Foster, who teaches liturgical law at the Catholic University of America. But that doesn’t mean that the Vatican might not support the limited use of an iPad application, which recently was created by an Italian priest who is a consultant with the Pontifical Council for Social Communications.

Nevertheless, it’s hard to imagine priests walking in processions with iPads lifted high. Could that happen?

“Not yet,” said Foster. “That doesn’t mean that some parish somewhere isn’t going to make PDF copies of the Gospels, put them on an iPad and hand them to the deacon. … However, we shouldn’t assume that something can be used in the liturgy, simply because it has not been forbidden.”

This buzz began in June, when Father Paolo Padrini said he was releasing an app offering the Roman Missal — the texts that are read and sung during Masses throughout the year — in Latin, English, Italian, French and Spanish. Two years earlier, he created an iBreviary for the iPhone, containing the Catholic book of daily prayers.

The Catholic blogosphere reacted immediately. Certainly in iMissal would help priests, such as military chaplains, who were constantly on the move. Priests with weak eyesight could change font sizes in a few seconds. But what would happen if the app crashed during Mass? Could laypeople read along, or would they be tempted to check their email?

The church, however, has faced technical questions before. Hand-written volumes gave way to those printed on presses. However, priests cannot hear confessions by telephone. Internet confessions don’t work, either.

Speaking as a “self-professed geek who is a lover of both technology and theology,” Jeff Miller of the Curt Jester website confessed that he has mixed emotions about liturgical texts on mobile devices.

“This might be a question answered by the Vatican sometime in the future, though they are notoriously slow in answering questions of this type,” wrote Miller. “I can certainly see why some priests would appreciate an electronic version of the Roman Missal. It would be much harder to loose your place and in fact easier to find the correct section each day. I love electronic versions of the Liturgy of the Hours because it makes it so easy to read … without having to thumb through a bunch of ribboned bookmarks.”

Some changes will be needed, stressed Jeff Geerling of Open Source Catholic. For example, the screens on these devices will need to operate without strong backlighting. Imagine the blue-glow distraction of iPads during candlelight services. And that omnipresent aluminum shell?

“An appropriate case,” he noted, “would need to be manufactured to (a) mask the logo on the back, and (b) downplay the fact that a bit of electronic technology is being used. Something simple; perhaps a nice red leather case?”

At this point, noted Foster, no one knows how these apps will evolve. One thing is certain. Priests would need to look up prayers for special occasions and rites.

“There would still be work to do,” he said. “That’s why we have all those ribbons. It’s not like you could just call up a day of the year and everything would be right there so that you could keep scrolling on and on and on. It’s not that simple.”

This symbolic act takes place during the “Aleinu” prayer that reminds worshipers of their duty to “bend our knees, and bow down, and give thanks, before the Ruler, the Ruler of Rulers, the Holy One, Blessed is God.”

Rabbi Shira Stutman isn’t sure how many people will accept her invitation to exit the pews and perform this prostration for themselves during her seeker-friendly High Holy Days service at the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue in Washington, D.C. But many of those who do, she said, will find themselves assuming a familiar meditative pose.

It helps to know that this unusual synagogue offers occasional services that blend yoga with traditional Shabbat prayers.

“There are different ways to do a full prostration, but one of them looks exactly like the yoga position called ‘Child’s Pose,’ “ said Stutman, referring to a move in which individuals sink to their knees, bow their foreheads to the floor and extend their arms forward. “I’m guessing that for most of the people who will attend the service I’m leading — young professionals in their 20s and 30s — the Child’s Pose will be more familiar than the tradition of the rabbi prostrating during the Aleinu prayer.

“This will let me use this simple yoga pose to talk about what the act of prostrating can mean for us in worship.”

This is the kind of multi-layered experience that is common at Sixth and I, which offers four radically different services — Orthodox, conservative, family friendly and progressive — during the holy season that begins at sundown today (Sept. with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and ends 10 days later with Yom Kippur, the solemn Day of Atonement.

This multi-domed sanctuary on the edge of the Chinatown neighborhood has a complex and poignant history. Built in 1908 for the Adas Israel Congregation, it was sold in 1951 to the Turner Memorial AME Church and, by 2002, was hours away from being converted into a nightclub.

However, a trio of Jewish developers rushed in and purchased it for $5 million. Before long, they had created a coalition that focused on creating an urban facility that was part synagogue, part education complex, part community center and part concert hall — yet independent from the branches of Judaism that have defined the faith for the past century or so.

“Jews in this generation, or generations, don’t want to define themselves by the terms of the past,” said Esther Foer, the synagogue’s executive director. “Those denominational labels — like ‘Conservative’ and ‘Orthodox’ and ‘Conservadox’ — don’t matter much anymore, especially when you are talking about how people want to worship.

“What matters, at the end of the day, is that we are all Jews — who are praying.”

While Stutman was trained in a liberal Reconstructionist school, she stressed that the synagogue does not have one defining congregation or rabbi. Instead, it uses six prayer books and is served by six rabbis and scores of other worship leaders. Her “Sixth in the City” services are attempts to create “primal worship” experiences, mixing English and Hebrew with themes from many sources, including Judaism, mass media and different world religions.

All of this is fitting in an age in which the vast majority of young Jews have no affiliation whatsoever with traditional Jewish institutions. Jewish leaders are struggling with this reality, as demonstrated by a 2001 survey that defined a Jew as someone whose “religion is Jewish, OR, whose religion is Jewish and something else, OR, who has no religion and has at least one Jewish parent or a Jewish upbringing, OR, who has a non-monotheistic religion, and has at least one Jewish parent or a Jewish upbringing.”

What matters, said Stutman, is that people are searching for connections and experiences that help define who they are — as Jews.

“We are not defined by any one set of doctrines or dogmas … so every Jewish service is a fusion service,” she said. “At any Jewish service there are people in the room with 1000 different views of God and half of them are probably atheists anyway. That’s a given. What matters is that people know there is a place where they find community and keep searching.”

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.”

Some people look at this piece of silver or gold jewelry in the James Avery line and they see fishing lures — period.

But other shoppers see the same item and they think of these words of Jesus: “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” This is especially true if they have completed a United Methodist Walk to Emmaus weekend, or some other renewal program inspired by the Catholic Cursillo movement.

“Most of our customers purchase and wear that for the religious symbolism,” said Paul Avery, executive vice president of the company that his father started in a garage. “But there is a group that has no clue what it means. … They just happen to like it. They like to fish or whatever.”

So one man’s ring of fishing lures is another man’s symbol of faith.

The key is that there is an element of mystery to symbols of this kind, said another veteran of this family-driven firm based in Kerrville, an arts-friendly community in the Texas Hill Country.

“It’s interesting that you would never find this in traditional church history, this symbol, but you would find the scriptural reference to being fishers of men,” said Howell Ridout, the company’s vice president of marketing and development.

This particular bracelet started out as a “grassroots thing that just happened,” he explained. Emmaus Walk veterans “actually started using fishing tackle from the hardware store” to remind themselves of the importance of this biblical passage. Now, this modern bracelet is one of the company’s most popular items.

Then again, the current catalogue also contains the very first cross that founder James Avery designed in 1954, a variation on a classic Latin design. Some of the Christian and Jewish symbolism used in this jewelry is truly ancient, while other pieces offer modern variations on biblical themes — such as a bare cross made of nails.

In recent years, Ridout explained, religious items have made up 25 percent of the company’s line and about 25 percent of its sales. However, nearly 80 percent of all James Avery customers at one time or another purchase at least one item of religious jewelry. Clearly, these items are central to the company’s identity, he said.

For centuries, religious symbolism has been at the heart of some forms of faith. What is unusual about the James Avery story is that almost all of the company’s stores — there will be 59 by the year’s end — are in the Bible Belt and 49 are in Texas.

While its customer base includes a wide range of believers, the chain could not succeed in the region in which it is succeeding without appealing to Baptists and other conservative Protestants who for generations have viewed religious symbolism as too “high church,” if not too Catholic.

Then again, the Hill Country location is crucial. Its culture blends art elements from the American Midwest, from Germans settlers, from rustic ranches across the Southwestern and, of course, from Spanish influences. The result is a unique aesthetic expressed in stone, leather, wood and pounded silver.

“Texas is, geographically, a very unique area,” said Paul Avery. “You have the deep Hispanic culture that is so rooted in that Catholic base. Then you have more of the Protestant side of that, the non-Catholic. And there’s a blend of those two cultures that probably allows a lot of … natural evolution.”

These hills also are full of church youth camps, a network that exposed James Avery’s work to young seekers as the 1960s veered into the “Jesus Movement” of the 1970s, which led into an era of charismatic renewal in mainline churches and waves of changes in how many Americans worship.

These days, art and even elements of liturgy can be found in a wide variety of Protestant sanctuaries, Ridout said. Churches of all kinds are moving in a more visual, experiential direction.

It has become common to see Texans wearing crosses — or perhaps symbolic fishing lures — as they go to work, to school, to the grocery store or to church.

“I think there are some clues there, both as to what is acceptable and to what’s sought after and comfortable,” Ridout said. These changes symbolize “what’s meaningful to people, what truly motivates them.”

That’s certainly what musician Phillip Magness experienced when he took a sabbatical at Bethany Lutheran Church in Naperville, Ill., and began a research tour after the 2006 release of the Lutheran Service Book. Since he led the committee charged with promoting the new hymnal, Magness wanted to see what was happening in the conservative denomination’s sanctuaries.

“What I found out is that we’re a lot like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates,” he said. “It says Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod on the sign, but when you go inside you have no idea what you’re going to get. … Some of our churches are playing with the structure of the liturgy and some are playing with the content and our whole synod is trying to find out how to draw some boundaries.”

One pastor wanted to offer five worship services in five musical formats to meet the needs of what he perceived as five separate audiences in his church.

The “TLH” service was for members still attached to the 1941 volume called “The Lutheran Hymnal.” Then there was the “Valpo” audience, which yearned for the “smells and bells” approach to high-church worship popular at Valparaiso University in Indiana. Then there were fans of the pop “CCM” music found in the “Contemporary Christian Music” industry. The “Gen X” crowd wanted its own post-baby boomer music.

The fifth service? It would feature country music.

These struggles are particularly poignant for Missouri Synod Lutherans, who are part of a 2.3 million-member denomination that occupies a tense niche between the larger, more liberal Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the evangelical megachurch marketplace.

It’s crucial, said Magness, to understand that the churches linked to Martin Luther are part of the Protestant Reformation, but it’s hard to pin a simple “Protestant” label on their approach to piety. Missouri Synod Lutherans, for example, have much in common with evangelicals, especially in terms of biblical authority and conservative morality. However, some parish leaders are not sure they want to make radical changes to modernize their worship services.

Magness, for example, is one of about 30 Missouri Synod musicians known as “cantors,” an honorary title once held by Johann Sebastian Bach and many others in Lutheran history. Magness has created “Liturgy Solutions,” a company that helps churches of all sizes maintain Lutheran traditions, while mixing old and new music.

“We know that culture is not static,” he said. “We want to find the way to proclaim the church’s message in ways that remain reverent and appropriate, yet sound fresh today. Otherwise, we’d be singing chants in Latin every Sunday.”

The problem is that many pastors resort to forming separate congregations that worship under the same roof — variations on a “traditional” vs. “contemporary” split. What is “traditional” worship? That’s whatever older church leaders were doing before new leaders decided to change what Magness called the “soundtrack” for worship.

Sadly, these worship wars often drive off some faithful members, losses that negate whatever growth followed the changes that were adopted to attract newcomers.

Magness believes that church leaders should attempt to work with all their members to create services that are faithful to the past, but not stuck in the past. A common warning sign that trouble is ahead, he added, is when pastors begin altering the words of crucial prayers and liturgical texts — even the ancient creeds.

The bottom line, he said, is that dividing a church into separate, even competing, worship services rarely produces growth. At least, that isn’t what is happening in the Lutheran congregations he has studied.

“Maybe the saints prefer a place where the real practice of the church — preaching the Gospel in its truth and purity and administering the sacraments rightly and reverently — are much, much more important than whether Jack’s son gets to play his trap set in church or whether the patriarchal families get to pick all the hymns because they don’t want to sing any new songs,” said Magness, at a national worship conference.

“I do know this: the congregation that works out these issues the old-fashioned way provides a better confession of ‘one Lord, one faith and one baptism’ than the congregation that doesn’t share the Lord’s Supper together.”

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith sent the guidelines to the leader of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. However, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick chose not to share the letter with America’s bishops, which kept its blunt contents secret — until a leak in Italy.

“The Church teaches that abortion or euthanasia is a grave sin,” warned the letter, adding that there is a “grave and clear obligation to oppose” civil laws and judicial decisions that “authorize or promote” these acts. At the same time, it explained that there “may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not … with regard to abortion and euthanasia.”

On the central issue, the guidelines said when a person’s “formal cooperation becomes manifest (understood, in the case of a Catholic politician, as his consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws), his Pastor should meet with him, instructing him about the Church’s teaching, informing him that he is not to present himself for Holy Communion until he brings to an end the objective situation of sin and warning him that he will otherwise be denied the Eucharist.”

Months later, the letter’s author — Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — became Pope Benedict XVI. There is no evidence his views have changed.

However, the status of politicians who clash with Rome remains controversial, especially when Catholics occupy strategic positions on the U.S. Supreme Court, in the president’s cabinet and on Capital Hill.

Tensions from the Ratzinger letter were also felt during the public events marking the passing of Sen. Edward Kennedy, one of the most symbolic and influential Catholics in American political history.

Catholics on both sides of the aisle dissected the rites, seeking signs of favor or disfavor. The outspoken Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston presided in the funeral Mass, but played a small role. Was that important? Where were the region’s other bishops? Were television crews told to avoid camera angles that would reveal who received Communion?

But the most symbolic moment occurred during the graveside service in Arlington National Cemetery. That’s when the now retired Cardinal McCarrick — a close friend of Kennedy — read the dying senator’s private appeal for a final papal blessing.

“I know that I have been an imperfect human being, but with the help of my faith, I have tried to right my path,” wrote Kennedy. “I want you to know, Your Holiness, that in my nearly 50 years of elective office, I have done my best to champion the rights of the poor and open doors of economic opportunity. I’ve worked to welcome the immigrant, fight discrimination and expand access to health care and education. I have opposed the death penalty and fought to end war. …

“I have always tried to be a faithful Catholic, Your Holiness, and though I have fallen short through human failings, I have never failed to believe and respect the fundamental teachings.”

McCarrick read excerpts from a Vatican reply, keeping some parts private. The final lines, written by a papal aide, were simple: “Commending you and the members of your family to the loving intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Holy Father cordially imparts his Apostolic Blessing as a pledge of wisdom, comfort and strength in the Lord.”

Kennedy’s letter raised a familiar and haunting question: Are the Catholic doctrines on the sanctity of every human life, from conception to natural death, part of the church’s “fundamental teachings” or not?

While praising the senator’s career, McCarrick added what was almost certainly a gentle reference to his clashes with the church on abortion, gay rights and other doctrinal issues. The bottom line: Kennedy maintained a 100 percent pro-abortion-rights voting record, according to NARAL Pro-Choice America.

“They called him, ‘The Lion of the Senate,’ and indeed that is what he was,” said the former shepherd of the Washington archdiocese. “His roar, and his zeal for what he believed, made a difference in our nation’s life. Sometimes, of course, we who were his friends and had affection for him would get mad at him when he roared at what we believed was the wrong side of an issue.”

* * * *

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?

“I knew that I didn’t want to be in charge of anything,” said Atkinson, long known as the “Real, Live, Preacher” to those who read his intensely personal online journal (reallivepreacher.com).

“Preachers talk and talk and I wanted to get away from that. I didn’t want to be a worship tourist, but I thought it would be refreshing to worship in some places where I was the person in the room who knew the least about what was going on.”

It helps to know that Atkinson leads an unusual Baptist flock, a “contemplative Christian community” that holds spiritual retreats based on the writings of St. Francis of Assisi and men’s fellowship meetings over beer and pizza. Covenant’s belief statement stresses that the “fullness of the gospel cannot be contained in any one church.”

While proud of his Baptist heritage, Atkinson said the “glory days” when “moderate” and “conservative” Baptists fought to control the old corporate machinery are long gone. Now, many congregations are experimenting with “emerging,” “post-denominational” and “postmodern” identities and forms of worship.

Thus, Atkinson began his sabbatical by visiting the radical stillness of a Quaker gathering, a tradition that asks believers to remain silent until God inspires someone to speak. For 30 minutes, every cough, sneeze or stomach growl was audible.

“You have to lose a lot of your shame when you sit in silence with people,” he wrote. “These sounds are not disturbing to the time of worship. Not at all. They are the delightful sounds of humans trying to be quiet. And we cannot. … So even the sounds of people trying to be quiet are a part of the lesson.”

A few Sundays later, Atkinson found himself swimming in words and symbols when his family visited an Eastern Orthodox sanctuary.

“It was like they were ripping raw chunks of theology out of ancient creeds and throwing them by the handfuls into the congregation,” he wrote. “I heard words and phrases I had not heard since seminary. Theotokos, begotten not made, Cherubim and Seraphim borne on their pinions, supplications and oblations.”

The experience, he concluded, was an “ADD kid’s nightmare,” with the “robes, scary art, smoking incense, secret doors in the Iconostas popping open and little robed boys coming out with golden candlesticks, chants and singing from a small choir that rolled across the curved ceiling. … There was so much going on I couldn’t keep up with all the things I couldn’t pay attention to.”

His family struggled, but Atkinson had tears in his eyes by the end of the nearly two-hour liturgy. After years of focusing on user-friendly ways to attract people to church, he was stunned to attend a service that — much like the Quaker meeting — placed intense demands on all the participants.

It was, he concluded, as if visitors were being told: “You don’t know what Theotokos means? Get a book and read about it. You have a hard time standing for two hours? Do some sit ups and get yourself into worship shape. It is the Lord our God we worship here, mortal. … THIS IS BIGGER THAN YOU ARE.”

Atkinson was intrigued and eventually attended Russian, Greek and Antiochian Orthodox churches.

Nevertheless, by the end of his sabbatical this liberal Baptist preacher knew he had a problem. While Atkinson appreciated the symbols, rituals and sacraments he encountered, he also knew that he couldn’t accept the doctrines that defined the worship, especially the Orthodox rites.

Simply stated, his views on sin, sexuality, salvation, heaven and hell were too modern. There was “no wiggle room” in the ancient doctrines and, Atkinson concluded, “I just couldn’t buy all of it.”

Now he is returning to his Baptist pulpit, while hearing choirs of voices arguing in his head representing many different eras of church history.

“What I don’t know how to do is rank all of these voices and decide who has authority,” he said. “Who is right and who is wrong? … And I want to know, where does Gordon Atkinson fit into this whole picture? I know that I can’t go back to the old Protestant, evangelical way that I was, but I don’t know where I’m supposed to go now. This is a problem.”

But as any reporter who actually interviewed her quickly learned, Calcutta’s “saint of the gutters” could be remarkably blunt. She once noted — in a half-serious jest — that she would rather bath a leper than meet the press.

“Mother was not known for the ambiguity of her feelings,” noted Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver, at a recent gathering of journalists at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. “A lot of people in the church, especially those who practice their faith in an active and regular manner, would agree with what she meant — because they feel the same way.”

The archbishop stressed that he does not feel that way, especially when working with journalists who have acquired the knowledge and skills needed to do accurate, critical coverage of religion. However, he is convinced that many religious believers simply do not appreciate the vital role that journalists are supposed to play in public life.

“Journalism is a vocation, not a job,” said Chaput. “Pursued properly, journalism should enjoy the same dignity as the law or medicine because the service that journalists perform is equally important to a healthy society. I really believe that. You form people. You form the way they think and the way they live their lives. So journalists have a duty to serve the truth and the common good.”

That’s the good news. I have heard Chaput make that point more than once during the quarter of a century since I first met him, while he was a Capuchin-Franciscan priest in urban Denver and I was a newcomer on the local religion beat.

Chaput was already interested in mass media, popular culture and the changing landscape of American religion and those interests only deepened when, in 1988, he was ordained Bishop of Rapid City, S.D. Soon after he returned to Denver as archbishop, in 1997, he organized a conference on the cultural and religious implications of the Internet.

These were precisely the kinds of topics that I wanted to emphasize when — 21 years ago this week — I began writing this column for Scripps Howard. Our interests also overlapped when I began teaching about religion and mass media, first in a Denver seminary and then in the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. Our paths have been crossing ever since.

When it comes to journalism, Chaput knows the good news and the bad news.

The bad news, he said, is that far too many journalists who cover religion events have no idea what they are doing. They may be talented and intelligent, but when it comes to religion they just don’t get it.

“I don’t expect journalists who track the church to agree with everything she teaches. But I do think reporters should have a working knowledge of her traditions and teachings,” he said. “I do think editors should have the basic Catholic vocabulary needed to grasp what we’re talking about and why we’re talking about it.”

Consider, for example, the media storms surrounding discussions of Holy Communion and the sacramental status of Catholic politicians who disagree with their church’s doctrines on abortion, marriage and similar issues. In his book “Render Unto Caesar,” Chaput argued that it’s the “political duty” of Catholics to “know their faith and to think and act like faithful Catholics all the time” — even those who work inside the Washington Beltway.

Alas, the journalists think they are writing about the rights of politicians, while some Catholic bishops want to discuss the salvation and, yes, damnation of souls. If journalists insist on describing this conflict in strictly political terms, he said, there is no way the public will ever understand what is happening.

“No one ever has a right to the Eucharist, and the vanity or hurt feelings of an individual Catholic governor or senator or even vice president does not take priority over the faith of the believing community,” said Chaput. Thus, while journalists are under “no obligation to believe what the church teaches … they certainly do have the obligation to understand, respect and accurately recount how she understands herself, and especially how she teaches and why she teaches” these doctrines.

Too often, said the archbishop, inaccurate news reports about this controversy have left the impression that “access to Holy Communion … is like having bar privileges at the Elks Club.”