Angels, demons & good Catholics

Near the end of Dan Brown's "Angels & Demons," the beautiful scientist Vittoria Vetra clashes with a Vatican official who insists that the day researchers prove how God acted in creation is "the day people stop needing faith." "You mean the day they stop needing the church," she shouts, weaving together the novel's main themes. "But the church is not the only enlightened soul on the planet! We all seek God in different ways. ...

"God is not some omnipotent authority looking down from above, threatening to throw us into a pit of fire if we disobey. God is the energy that flows through the synapses of our nervous system and the chambers of our hearts! God is in all things!"

This long speech is not in the movie based on Brown's first novel about the dashing Harvard professor Robert Langdon, who uses his encyclopedic knowledge of art, religion, history, literature, architecture and archeology to crack through layers of ancient conspiracies that bedevil modern humanity.

This is, however, a speech that -- as a sermon by the author -- offers insights into the worldview behind "Angels & Demons" and the novel that followed it.

That, of course, was "The Da Vinci Code," which ignited a global firestorm because of its depiction of Jesus as a brilliant, charismatic and ultimately misunderstood mortal man who married the brilliant, charismatic and misunderstood Mary Magdalene and had a child with her before his untimely death. This power couple's goal was to create an inclusive, dogma-free, sexually enlightened faith. But, alas, the power-hungry patriarchs who created Christianity -- especially the Roman Catholic Church -- conspired to wreck and bury their work.

Director Ron Howard, who also directed "The Da Vinci Code" movie, admits that large parts of "Angels & Demons" were scrapped and rewritten while turning the prequel into a sequel. Brown gave his blessing since the book's major themes remained intact.

As with "The Da Vinci Code," Howard is convinced that he has not created an anti-Catholic film. His goal, he said, was to raise questions about the nature of faith.

"I believe in God, yes, I do. I'm not a member of a church at the moment," he told reporters, before "Angels & Demons" reached theaters. "There is no personal struggle, for me, between my beliefs and religion. Basically, in a nutshell, I believe that our intelligence, and our curiosity, and our drive to know more are a part of the plan. … But I haven't worked to directly sort of inject my personal spirituality and belief system into the story."

The goal, while spinning another conspiracy-theory thriller, was to focus on "the threat that some in the Vatican may feel about what science represents, what it proposes to say about the origins of the universe and the origins of man," he said.

The plot begins with the sudden death of a "progressive and beloved pope." Then, all hell breaks loose as someone claiming to represent a secret society of freethinkers called the "Illuminati" kidnaps what the book describes as the four "liberal," reform-minded cardinals who were the top candidates to become pope and begins murdering them in public rituals.

As the coup de grace, this mysterious killer has arranged to steal a container of antimatter produced at the CERN Large Hadron Collider on the Swiss-French border. Langdon and Vetra have to rush around -- call it "24" meets a papal conclave -- and find this missing "God particle" stuff before it explodes and vaporizes Vatican City.

By the time it's all over, Langdon and company have solved a papal-murder mystery, saved the enlightened cardinal who ultimately becomes pope and, literally, saved the throne of St. Peter from being captured a madman who is, of course, the story's most articulate conservative Catholic.

This villain "feels that the church is going down the wrong path" as it pursues peace with science and modernity, noted actor Ewan McGregor. "He thinks that the church is becoming watered down and is becoming weaker and weaker. … He's trying to put it back on course."

The key is that "Angels & Demons" offers a Vatican that contains good Catholics and bad Catholics. By the end of the film, said Howard, Langdon has gained a "more complex view of the church."

In the end, there are good Catholics and bad Catholics and Brown and Howard get to determine who is who.

Again: Killing abortionists is sin

After days of angry headlines about the murder of an abortionist, one of America's most articulate defenders of life knew it was time for candor. "If anyone has an urge to kill someone at an abortion clinic, they should shoot me," said the late Cardinal John O'Connor, preaching to his New York City flock in 1994. "It's madness. It discredits the right-to-life movement. Murder is murder. It's madness. You cannot prevent killing by killing."

The cardinal's famous soundbite was part of a larger debate during the mid-1990s, as pro-life leaders articulated precise reasons why frustrated activists on the fringe of their movement should reject violence. This debate remains tragically relevant, after the killing of late-term abortionist George Tiller while he was serving as an usher at Reformation Evangelical Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kan.

The alleged gunman Scott Roeder has expressed sympathies for the views of activists who -- as in this "Defensive Action Statement" at ArmyofGod.com -- argue that this kind of violence is morally justified.

"We ... declare the justice of taking all godly action necessary, including the use of force, to defend innocent human life (born and unborn). We proclaim that whatever force is legitimate to defend the life of a born child is legitimate to defend the life of an unborn child."

This is precisely the argument that O'Connor and others fervently opposed 15 years ago. Quoting the Catholic Catechism, Pope John Paul II, Gandhi and other sources, he attacked the ancient consequentialist argument that good ends justify any means.

"Where does this spiral end? How is it limited? Surely, we are all as tired of abortion as we are tired of murder. But we must fight murder without conforming to it or condoning it," wrote the cardinal, as part of "Killing Abortionists: A Symposium" in the journal First Things.

"Let us attend to God's revelation: 'Do not be conquered by evil, but conquer evil with good' (Romans 12: 21). ... No Christian, however well-intentioned, has the moral right to declare himself the sole detective, district attorney, judge, jury and supreme court in our democratic society and on his own authority set aside the natural law and the Ten Commandments, allegedly to advance the fifth of those Ten Commandments."

While frustrated by new political defeats, mainstream abortion opponents have continued to embrace this viewpoint. The list of organizations strongly condemning Tiller's death includes the National Right to Life Committee, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Americans United for Life, Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America, Care Net, the Susan B. Anthony List, Priests for Life and many others.

"Murdering someone is a grotesque and bizarre way to emphasize one's commitment to the sanctity of human life," noted Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. "People who truly believe in the sanctity of human life believe in the sanctity of the lives of abortion providers as well as the unborn babies who are aborted."

Land noted that another important document emerged from the 1994 debates, produced by a circle of Southern Baptist theologians. A major theme in this "Nashville Declaration of Conscience" is that Americans continue to have many legitimate ways to challenge their government's abortion laws, short of violent revolution.

Ultimately, this document concluded, it is the "people of the United States, acting through legitimate governmental institutions, who are responsible and ultimately accountable for immoral laws permitting and protecting the taking of unborn human lives. ... Legalized abortion on demand is the single gravest failure of American democracy in our generation. But we recognize it as a failure of a legitimate democracy rather than as the imposition or decree of an illegitimate regime."

Abortion continues to stretch the "American body politic near the breaking point" because the issue pivots on fundamental moral questions, noted ethicist David Gushee of Mercer University, who drafted the Nashville document early in his academic career. In terms of history, only debates over slavery cut this deep.

But it's wrong to blame abortionists, politicians, talk-radio hosts or any other single group of people for this conflict, he said. All Americans need to look in a mirror.

"In a vast, diverse, squabbling, pluralistic democracy, even on matters of the gravest and most heartfelt significance we face sometimes irreconcilable differences," said Gushee. "If that democracy is to survive, we must learn to deal with them without killing each other."

Religion ghosts in Ukraine

KIEV, Ukraine -- Merely saying the forest's name -- Bykivnya -- can cause strong emotions for millions of Ukrainians.

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."

That other Notre Dame speech

It was hard to ignore the papal bull condemning the slave trade, which was read to American Catholic leaders gathered in Baltimore in 1839. Pope Gregory XVI proclaimed that "no one in the future dare to vex anyone, despoil him of his possessions, reduce to servitude, or lend aid and favor to those who give themselves up to these practices, or exercise that inhuman traffic by which the Blacks, as if they were not men but rather animals, having been brought into servitude, in no matter what way, are, without any distinction, in contempt of the rights of justice and humanity, bought, sold and devoted sometimes to the hardest labor."

Nevertheless, the first bishop of Charleston, S.C., attempted to soften the blow. Quoting scripture and Catholic doctrine, Bishop John England wrote a series of letters arguing that the pope didn't mean to attack those -- including Catholics -- who already owned slaves.

"Bishop England was not a bad man. He was not personally in favor of slavery, nor was he a racist," noted Father John Raphael of New Orleans, at a rally organized as an alternative to the University of Notre Dame's graduation rites.

"In fact, Bishop England exercised a cherished and personal ministry to black Catholics," he added. "But in the face of strong, anti-Catholic sentiment and prejudice, he simply wanted to show his fellow antebellum Southerners that Catholics could be just as American as everybody else and that tolerance of their cherished institution -- slavery -- was not in any way opposed by the Catholic church."

It was wrong for Catholics of that era to seek any compromise on slavery, stressed Raphael, who serves as principal of St. Augustine High School, one of Louisiana's most prominent African-American institutions. It is just as wrong, today, for Catholic leaders to compromise on abortion. At least the slaves were allowed to live, to be baptized and to receive the sacraments, he said.

The symbolism was obvious, since the priest is a prominent African-American graduate of Notre Dame.

The symbolism was more than obvious, since he was speaking at a rally protesting Notre Dame's decision to grant President Barack Obama an honorary doctor of laws degree, clashing with a U.S. Catholic bishops policy that states: "Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions."

The Mass and rally on Notre Dame's south quad followed hours of prayers in the university's Alumni Hall and famous Marian grotto. These solemn, peaceful events received little media attention, even though they drew several hundred or several thousand participants, depending on who did the counting, as well as 25 Notre Dame faculty members, 26 graduating seniors and Bishop John D’Arcy of the Catholic Diocese of Ft. Wayne-South Bend. A louder standoff between police and 100 off-campus activists -- led by anti-abortion leader Randall Terry -- received most of the news coverage.

During the actual commencement address, a few protesters yelled, "Stop killing our children." Most of the graduates booed the protesters, then chanted, "Yes we can," Obama's campaign slogan, and "We are ND" as they were removed.

Notre Dame President John Jenkins stressed that Obama accepted Notre Dame's invitation knowing that "we are fully supportive of church teaching on the sanctity of human life and we oppose his policies on abortion and embryonic stem cell research."

"President Obama is not someone who stops talking to those who differ with him," stressed Father Jenkins. Then he added, "Mr. President, this is a principle we share."

Meanwhile, many of the speakers at the "Notre Dame Rally for Life" openly criticized Obama's policies, but consistently focused their harshest words on the actions of the current Notre Dame administration.

"Faith without works is dead, words without actions are meaningless," said Father Raphael. "If, as we have been told, a dialogue is actually taking place … between the presidents of Notre Dame and the United States, between the university and the nation, then, for the university at least, that dialogue must be shaped by truth and charity, and protecting the sanctity of all human life, as the church understands life, must be its goal. …

Actively building a culture of life at Notre Dame must become central to the university's witness and mission to the nation and to the world."

Truth, doubt and Notre Dame

President Dwight Eisenhower's Civil Rights Commission faced high hurdles as it searched for common ground in the tense years after the U.S. Supreme Court began attacking the walls of segregation inside America's schools. After several years of struggle, Father Theodore Hesburgh discovered a bond between his commission colleagues that transcended race and regional differences, noted President Barack Obama, in his historic commencement address at the University of Notre Dame.

All of them liked to fish. Thus, the president of America's most famous Catholic institution -- he served for 35 years -- arranged for a twilight cruise on the lake at Notre Dame's retreat center at Land O'Lakes, Wis.

"They fished, and they talked, and they changed the course of history," said Obama.

Hesburgh mastered this kind of graceful strategy, as did another hero of Catholic progressives -- the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago. The president challenged the graduates to learn from their examples while supporting "movements for change both large and small."

"Remember that each of us," he said, "endowed with the dignity possessed by all children of God, has the grace to recognize ourselves in one another; to understand that we all seek the same love of family, the same fulfillment of a life well lived. Remember that in the end, in some way we are all fishermen."

Notre Dame's president, Father John Jenkins, then underlined this link to the civil rights era by giving Obama a photograph of Hesburgh clasping hands in solidarity with the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Whoever prepared Obama for this triumphant visit did a fine job, noted George Weigel, at National Review Online. The president "hit for the cycle" at Notre Dame, "mentioning 'common ground'; tolerance and reconciliation amid diversity; Father Hesburgh; … problem-solving over ideology; Father Hesburgh; saving God's creation from climate change; pulling together; Father Hesburgh; open hearts, open minds, fair-minded words; Father Hesburgh."

But the speech also offered a provocative statement about Catholic faith and the public square, noted Richard Garrett, a Notre Dame law professor whose areas of research include Catholic social thought and church-state relations.

The president urged the students to have "confidence in the values with which you've been raised. … Be unafraid to speak your mind when those values are at stake." But he also stressed that the "ultimate irony of faith is that it necessarily admits doubt."

"It's beyond our capacity as human beings to know with certainty what God has planned for us or what he asks of us. And those of us who believe must trust that His wisdom is greater than our own," said Obama. This should "humble us. It should temper our passions, cause us to be wary of too much self-righteousness. … Within our vast democracy, this doubt should remind us even as we cling to our faith to persuade through reason, through an appeal whenever we can to universal rather than parochial principles."

It was hard not to connect this pronouncement with the renewed abortion debates that followed Notre Dame's decision to grant Obama an honorary doctor of laws degree. In the end, 80-plus bishops publicly criticized this action, arguing that it violated a 2004 U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops policy that stated: "Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions."

The problem with the Obama's logic, explained Garnett, is that traditional Catholics argue that the sanctity of human life -- from conception to natural death -- is based on universal, rational principles of human rights, dignity and equality, not narrow, uniquely "Catholic" beliefs.

The bottom line: The church defended the same principles in the civil rights era.

"There's a powerful move at the end of the president's speech to suggest that the Catholic stance on the right to life -- the stance of Notre Dame -- is a matter of mere faith, and not a reasoned stance at all. … 'Parochial' is a very loaded word to use," noted Garnett.

"So it appears that Obama agrees with what Father Hesburgh believed in the 1960s, but does not agree with what Pope Benedict believes today, which implies that one set of convictions is based on reason and one is not. But from the Catholic perspective, both of these stances are rooted in the very same universal truth."

Finding God on the jagged edge

Screenwriter Joe Eszterhas knows all about strange plot twists and he is convinced that God often sends big messages in the final acts of people's lives. Once a scandalous Hollywood insider, the author of twisted thrillers such as "Basic Instinct" and "Jagged Edge" can quote chapter and verse about life and death in Tinseltown. Consider the ruthless movie mogul who died during a beach vacation when a metal bar fell from a construction crane and pieced his heart. Or how about the Casanova actor whose reputation made his testicular cancer a bit too ironic?

Eszterhas will name names, when confessing his own sins.

The screenwriter's egomaniacal tantrums were the stuff of legends, along with his appetite for alcohol, cocaine and first-person research for the lap-dancing scenes in "Showgirls." Then there was his foul, blasphemous mouth.

It was tempting to connect the dots when he was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2001, said Eszterhas, during his blunt and mildly profane testimony at Biola University's annual conference on faith and the entertainment industry. The resulting surgery claimed 80 percent of his larynx.

"Was it possible," he mused, in his one-foot-in-the-grave voice, "that God had to cut my throat?" Then he heard the harsh commandments for his new life.

"I adored my wife and children, so I tried," Eszterhas told the audience at CBS Studio Center. "I stopped smoking. I stopped drinking. I was trying my best to stay alive. I was trying my best not to die, but I knew that I couldn't do it."

Thus begins the wild conversion story he has shared many times, reading from his book, "Crossbearer: A Memoir of Faith." The turning point arrives with a weeping sinner on his knees, his heart skipping beats, his hands shaking, his voice moaning through his tracheotomy tube. Then Eszterhas hears his own voice mumbling strange words.

"I didn't know why I had said it. I had never said it before," he said. "Then I listened to myself say it again and again and again. 'Please God, help me.' 'Please God, help me.' 'Please God, help me' ... I thought to myself, 'Me, asking God, begging God? Me, praying?' "

Then his pain was gone and he was staring into a bright light. He decided that, with God's help, "I could defeat myself and win, if I fought very hard and if I prayed. ... God saved me from me."

Condensed into the punchy talking points that sell screenplays, Eszterhas said his life has gone from "Malibu to Ohio, from booze to diet Sprite, from Spago to McDonald's, from Sharon Stone to Jesus." Now he walks five miles and prays for an hour every day. With his second wife and their four sons, he worships at Holy Angels Catholic Church in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, where he volunteers to carry the cross in Sunday Mass.

"The twisted little man" who wrote his scripts still lives in his head, he said, but is no longer in charge. The big question was whether Eszterhas could write without the tobacco, alcohol and deadly darkness that fueled his 16 screenplays, which became movies that grossed more than $1 billion.

Eszterhas said he sat frozen at his old typewriter, feeling "like Jack Nicholson in 'The Shining.' " He faced a complete mental block until he pounded out: "This is how I found God or how God found me." The memoir had to come first.

Since then, Eszterhas has written two scripts, including a "narco-terrorism" thriller he thinks would fit Nicholson. He also wants to write a small-budget movie about Our Lady of Guadalupe. In an age in which Hollywood keeps remaking old blockbusters, he wonders why no one has produced spectacular, digital versions of "The Silver Chalice," "The Robe" or "Quo Vadis."

While he wants to keep working, what Eszterhas can't imagine is writing the kinds of scripts that made him rich and famous.

"My head's not really in that place. I mean, the thing that I would like to do very much, in the time that I have left, in terms of my own screenwriting, is to … write some things that reflect my faith," he said. The goal would be to put "the same kind of energy, ... into doing faith-based films that I think can really be commercially viable, that I put into other films of a different sort that became commercially successful."

Notre Dame and her children

The women's clinic nurse confirmed that Lacy Dodd was pregnant, and then told her not to worry because she had "other options." That wasn't the kind of reassurance Dodd wanted, as a University of Notre Dame senior weeks away from her graduation ceremonies. When she returned to campus, Dodd headed straight to Notre Dame's grotto -- a small cave modeled after the famous Marian shrine in Lourdes, France.

"I knew this: No amount of shame or embarrassment would ever lead me to get rid of my baby. Of all women, Our Lady could surely feel pity for an unplanned pregnancy," wrote Dodd, in an essay aimed at Father John Jenkins, the university's president. The text was posted online by the journal First Things.

"In my hour of need, on my knees, I asked Mary for courage and strength. And she did not disappoint," she added. "My boyfriend was a different story. He was also a Notre Dame senior. When I told him that he was to be a father, he tried to pressure me into having an abortion. ... 'All that talk about abortion is just dining-room talk,' he said."

Family and friends stood by Dodd's side. Today, a decade later, she is a single mother and her daughter's name is Mary. Dodd serves on the board of Room at the Inn, an organization working to build an on-campus facility for pregnant unwed students at Belmont Abbey College, near Charlotte, N.C.

The timing of Dodd's essay -- "Notre Dame, My Mother" -- is, of course, linked to her alma mater's decision to invite President Barack Obama to deliver its mid-May commencement address and to receive an honorary doctor of laws degree.

Throughout his political career, Obama has opposed all restrictions on abortion rights, even in late-term procedures. But he has also reached out to Catholic and evangelical voters by pledging to help lessen the need for abortions, through government efforts to aid needy mothers and their children.

Catholic traditionalists and many Notre Dame alumni argue that honoring Obama in this way violates a 2004 U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops policy that said: "The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions."

Three years later, the bishops underlined the importance of this issue, arguing that the "direct and intentional destruction of innocent human life is always wrong and is not just one issue among many."

However, a recent online count found that only 66 bishops, out of 195 dioceses nationwide, have issued public comments critical of Notre Dame's decision. So far, the Vatican has remained silent on the issue.

Meanwhile, a Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life poll found that 50 percent of American Catholics approve of Notre Dame's decision to "invite" Obama, while 28 percent disapprove. However, only 37 percent of white, non-Hispanic Catholics who attend Mass weekly agreed with the Notre Dame decision, compared with 56 percent of those less active in the church. This parallels that fact that 61 percent of these "attend less often" Catholics support abortion rights in all or most cases, as opposed to 30 percent of the "attend weekly" Catholics.

Alumni and current students know that these kinds of divisions also exist at Notre Dame, said Dodd. Notre Dame students also face crisis pregnancies and some young women there are convinced that they must have abortions in order to stay in school.

While others focus on the political implications of honoring Obama, Dodd said she worries about the impact of this symbolic event on women in the commencement audience who are wrestling with the same secret she faced 10 years ago.

Thus, she ended her essay with this question to the priest who currently leads Notre Dame: "Who draws support from your decision to honor President Obama -- the young, pregnant Notre Dame woman sitting in that graduating class who wants desperately to keep her baby, or the Notre Dame man who believes that the Catholic teaching on the intrinsic evil of abortion is just dining-room talk?"

These kinds of influences make a difference, said Dodd.

"I think that Notre Dame needs to be in the lead when it comes to supporting women who face unplanned pregnancies," she said. "Notre Dame needs to be on their side -- always."

Baptist take on spirituality

Don Whitney knows what happens when people hear that a Southern Baptist seminary is offering a doctor of philosophy degree in spirituality. "For many people, connecting 'Baptist' and 'spirituality' is like 'military' and 'intelligence.' They just can't picture those two words together," said Whitney, director of the new Center for Biblical Spirituality at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.

But for Baptists, he stressed, it's crucial to underline the word "biblical" in front "spirituality," in order to stress the center's ties to Protestant reformers who rejected what they believed were the errors of Rome.

When Whitney and his colleagues talk about spirituality, they emphasize images of the great Charles Spurgeon spending hours in Bible study before preaching, laypeople meditating on the symbolism in John Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress" and missionaries weeping while praying for the lost. They do not focus on monks chanting ancient prayers day after day, night after night, generation after generation.

"Why should we go to people who have locked themselves behind a door for 50 years if we want to learn about true spirituality, when the Bible tells us to go out and be salt and light in the world? ... This is not to say that we shouldn't go outside our tradition in order to learn, but we are saying that it's important to go to our own guys, first," said Whitney.

"We believe that biblical, Evangelical spirituality has not been tried and found wanting. It simply has not been tried."

The potential impact of this project is great, if only because 20 percent of all students attending U.S. seminaries study on Southern Baptist campuses. The center opened in January and seminary leaders believe they can handle five students in the Ph.D. program and 10 in their doctor of ministry program. While graduate programs teaching spirituality exist in a few U.S. seminaries, this Ph.D. program is the first targeting scholars and clergy among evangelicals.

One of the first challenges the center will face is defining "spirituality," a word that means one thing on the Oprah Winfrey Show and something else altogether then it appears in textbooks describing traditions in various world religions. For modern Americans, the word is so vague that it's almost meaningless, said church historian Michael Haykin, who teaches in the Southern Seminary programs.

Nevertheless, the word has great power and its appeal must be understood by anyone who wants to understand contemporary American religion.

When most Americans hear "spirituality," said Haykin, they think of "all of those areas in their internal experiences in which they come into contact with things that transcend daily life. ... It's all incredibly nebulous. The key is that the whole ritual of institutionalized, formal religion has nothing to do with this, for most people today."

Thus, researchers keep running into increasing numbers of un-churched adults who identify themselves as "spiritual," but not "religious." These seekers are interested in "spirituality" that is connected to emotions and personal experiences, but not in formal "religion" that comes packaged with history, doctrines and rules.

Meanwhile, many Protestant believers are anxious to escape what they believe is the dry, formal, merely rational approach to worship and prayer that dominates mainstream churches. Some turn to charismatic or Pentecostal churches and some turn to the so-called "emerging churches" that try to weave some ancient Christian prayers and disciplines into their progressive, "postmodern" take on faith.

"What unites all these people is an emphasis on personal experience," said Haykin. "For all of them, 'religion' is a bad word, something they are trying to get away from."

The Southern Seminary programs, he added, will emphasize that Protestant pioneers such as John Calvin and Martin Luther were interested in early Christian spirituality, but rejected what they believed were newer Catholic traditions. Then again, students will also study the works of latter reformers, such as the Puritans, who stressed personal piety while criticizing what they saw as the formalized, ritualized traditions of the Presbyterians, Lutherans and others.

This cycle keeps repeating itself, generation after generation.

"We already have people accusing us of trying to smuggle a kind of Roman Catholic approach to faith into an evangelical seminary," said Haykin. "What we are saying is that the Protestant reformers were trying to get past the whole medieval Catholic world and reconnect with the ancient church and its approach to the spiritual life. That's what we are trying to do, too."

Painful options for postmodern nuns

It may take time, but it's hard for a Catholic educator to publicly praise the work of nuns who have bravely leapt "beyond Jesus" without drawing some flack -- especially in the Internet age. During this era of crisis and decline, some Catholic religious orders have chosen to enter a time of "sojourning" that involves "moving beyond the church, even beyond Jesus," Sinsinawa Dominican Sister Laurie Brink told a 2007 national gathering of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.

"Religious titles, institutional limitations, ecclesiastical authorities no longer fit this congregation, which in most respects is Post-Christian," added Brink, a former journalist who is a biblical studies professor at Chicago's Catholic Theological Union. For these women, the "Jesus narrative is not the only or the most important narrative. ... They still hold up and reverence the values of the Gospel, but they also recognize that these same values are not solely the property of Christianity. Buddhism, Native American spirituality, Judaism, Islam and others hold similar tenets for right behavior within the community, right relationship with the earth and right relationship with the Divine."

It took time, but ripples from her address have grown into waves of debate about the health of many religious orders, especially in light of reports that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is supervising a "doctrinal assessment" of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. The question is whether many sisters have rejected doctrines stated in Vatican documents focusing on the male priesthood, homosexuality and the Catholic Church's role in the salvation of souls. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger -- now Pope Benedict XVI -- played a crucial role in the development of these documents.

Catholic conservatives are convinced that Brink crossed an important line.

"If you're going to be Post-Christian, then be Post-Christian. I don't say that with snark. It's just reality," argued Catholic blogger Amy Welborn of Beliefnet. "If you've moved on -- move on. Step out from the protective mantle of identity that gives you cachet, that of 'Catholic nun.' "

However, it's important to note that this "Post-Christian," "sojourning" strategy was only the third of four strategies critiqued by Brink in the online text of her presentation, entitled "A Marginal Life: Pursuing Holiness in the 21st Century (.pdf)." Her goal was to urge leaders of Catholic religious orders to make clear, if painful choices in an age in which "indecision" is the proverbial elephant in the living room.

Sister Laurie began with this assumption: "Old concepts of how to live the Life are no longer valid."

The first option, she said, is "death with dignity and grace," as opposed to becoming a "zombie congregation" that staggers on with no purpose. This option must be taken seriously since the average age of the 67,000 sisters and nuns in the United States is 69. Many retreat ministries are closing and large "mother houses" are struggling with finances, while some congregations no longer invite or accept new candidates.

Meanwhile, Brink noted with sadness, some orders have chosen to turn back the clock -- thus winning the favor of Rome. "They are putting on the habit, or continuing to wear the habit with zest. ... Some would critique that they are the nostalgic portrait of a time now passed. But they are flourishing. Young adults are finding in these communities a living image of their romantic view of Religious Life. They are entering. And they are staying," she said.

Finally, some women are fighting on, hoping to achieve reconciliation someday with a changed, egalitarian church hierarchy. Thus, the current conflicts in American Catholicism cannot be hidden, she said.

"Theologians are denied academic freedom. Religious and laywomen feel scrutinized simply because of their biology. Gays and lesbians desire to participate as fully human, fully sexual Catholics within their parishes," said Brink. Many Catholics also oppose the "ecclesial deafness that refuses to hear the call of the Spirit summoning not only celibate males, but married men and women to serve" as priests.

These religious orders will strive to recruit new sisters and train them to continue the struggle against the "men who control the power in but not the Spirit of the Church," she said. If reconciliation occurs, it will take place in a reformed church.

Right now, she stressed, the Catholic hierarchy is "right to feel alarmed. What is at stake is the very heart of the Church itself."