Duck! Elderly patriarchs discussing doctrine!

This elderly patriarch's image is certainly striking, with his stern face and a gray beard that flows over his chest, contrasting with the colorful clothing typical of his flock and his unique line of work. Just before Christmas, he raised eyebrows with a blunt statement on one of today's most controversial issues.

No, this wasn't the Duck Commander in Louisiana. This patriarch resides in the city his followers formally refer to as Constantinople-New Rome.

"The Lord appointed the marriage of male and female in the blessed family," proclaimed Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, while discussing Mary, Joseph and the newborn Jesus. He is the first among equals of the patriarchs who lead the world's 250 million Eastern Orthodox Christians (the church in which I am a member).

Patriarch Bartholomew claimed the "manifold support of the institution of the family comprises the obligation of the Church and responsibility of leadership in every country." Thus, he argued that "in order for a child to be raised in a healthy and natural way, there needs to be a family where man and woman live in harmony as one body, one flesh, and one soul, submitting to one another. ...

"We must all encourage the creation and function of natural families, which can produce citizens that are spiritually healthy and joyful."

Soon after that, a Catholic bishop delivered a Christmas sermon in which he addressed a related topic -- the adoption of children by same-sex couples. Then, to make matters even more newsworthy, he claimed that he spoke with the encouragement of his own patriarch, the pope of Rome.

Auxiliary Bishop Charles J. Scicluna told journalists in Malta, a Mediterranean island, that Pope Francis was shocked to learn, in a Dec. 12 meeting, that a civil unions bill would allow gay couples to adopt children in that predominately Catholic country.

The pope, he claimed, urged him to speak out boldly. The bishop also said that Pope Francis -- declared 2013 Person of the Year by The Advocate, a major gay magazine -- had repeated the views he expressed in 2010 as Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, when he called same-sex marriage an "anti-value and an anthropological regression" for humanity. In 2009, Bergoglio had written to Catholic leaders in Buenos Aires stressing: "We are not talking about a mere bill, but rather a machination of the Father of Lies that seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God."

However, Pope Francis also -- in November remarks to the Catholic Union of Superiors General -- suggested that church leaders must find new ways to show mercy and understanding to the children of same-sex couples and divorced parents, so as not to be guilty of "administering a vaccine against faith" among the young.

Clearly, it is becoming more difficult for traditional religious believers to publicly voice, let alone to boldly defend, the doctrines of their faith. That is certainly what "Duck Dynasty" patriarch Phil Robertson learned when he spoke his mind in an infamous GQ magazine interview, which briefly got him exiled from his family's popular series on the A&E Television Network.

"Everything is blurred on what's right and what's wrong. Sin becomes fine," he said. "Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men. Don't be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers -- they won't inherit the kingdom of God."

Anyone familiar with scripture knew that this was a near verbatim quotation from St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, noted Janet E. Smith, who teaches Catholic moral theology at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit. It also helped that, while he used some swamp-level language that offended millions of Americans, Robertson stressed that he was just a repentant sinner who, when it came to sex, booze and the nasty ways of the flesh, had been there and done that -- many times.

This is what church leaders must carefully communicate, said Smith, in an online commentary. They must demonstrate that they realize many ordinary people spend their lives engaged in a "very wrenching struggle with powerful appetites, deep wounds and habits that at least to some extent balm those wounds. We must realize what we are asking of people and help them with our prayers, sacrifices, understanding and friendship."

What would Pope Francis pick as top 2013 news story?

Popes come and popes go, with a new pope elected every few years or decades. Thus, when viewed through the lens of history, the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI was a stunning event in the history of Roman Catholicism and, thus, all of Western Christianity. He was the first man to resign St. Peter's throne in 600 years. Surely this was the most important religion-news story of 2013?

But when seen through the lens of the mainstream press, the bookish Benedict's exit was a mere ripple in the news flow compared to the tsunami of headlines inspired by the rise of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires as the first Latin American pope. During his remarkable media honeymoon, Pope Francis has been humble and savvy, pragmatic and charismatic.

Most of all, this pope has shown that he wants a mission-minded church that balances a defense of Catholic doctrine with a renewed commitment to offering mercy and pastoral care to the poor, the powerless and those of little or no faith. He wants to build a church defined by its actions, not just by words.

To no one's surprise, the election of Pope Francis was selected as the year's No. 1 religion story by the journalists in the Religion Newswriters Association, with the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI the No. 2 story. Pope Francis was also named Religion Newsmaker of the Year.

But here is an interesting question to ponder: Based on his own words and actions, what 2013 event or trend would Pope Francis have selected as the most important?

As the year came to a close, it appeared the pope's attention was increasingly focused on the persecution of believers around the world, especially endangered Christian minorities in Egypt, Syria and throughout the Middle East. In a sermon on Nov. 28, he even urged his listeners to recall that when people are forbidden to worship, and faith is driven from public life, the end times could be near.

"What does this mean? It will be like the triumph of the prince of this world: the defeat of God. It seems that in that final moment of calamity, he will take possession of this world, that he will be the master of this world," he said, in remarks that drew little commentary from world media.

When this happens, explained Pope Francis, "religion cannot be spoken of, it is something private, no? Publicly it is not spoken about. The religious signs are taken down. The laws that come from the worldly powers must be obeyed. You can do so many beautiful things except adore God."

The rest of the RNA Top 10 list included these events and trends:

(3) In another 5-4 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for gay marriage in California and voided the ban on federal benefits to same-sex couples. Supporters of gay marriage celebrated victories in other states as well, with Illinois and Hawaii becoming the 15th and 16th states to legalize same-sex marriage.

(4) Legal battles continued in courts nationwide over the Health and Human Services mandate requiring most non-profit ministries to offer health-insurance plans covering sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives, including "morning-after pills." The U.S. Supreme Court accepted a case brought by Hobby Lobby, a for-profit corporation led by conservative Christians who claim that the mandate violates their freedom of religious expression.

(5) Battles continued in the Middle East over the political role of Islam, with violence escalating in Syria and continuing in Egypt -- where the military ousted the freely elected Muslim Brotherhood-led government and violently cracked down on its Islamist supporters.

(6) Nelson Mandela died at age 95 and was remembered as a prophet of non-violence and reconciliation in South Africa.

(7) Attacks on religious minorities continued around the world, including bloody attacks on Christians in Egypt, Syria, Pakistan and Kenya.

(8) A Pew Research Center survey found that more than 1 in 5 American Jews now claim no ties to Judaism as a faith. The number of professing Jewish adults is now less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, although Jewish identity remains strong.

(9) Leaders of the Boy Scouts of America voted to accept openly gay Scouts but not Scoutmasters. While most evangelicals opposed this change, Catholic and Mormon leaders were divided.

(10) Muslims joined others in condemning the Boston Marathon bombing committed by two young Muslim men who attended colleges in the area.

Telling the Nativity story, with help of two foster boys

Night after night, Jesse and Kelly Cone led their children through some of the most familiar verses in all of Christianity. The goal was to use the quiet pre-Christmas season of Advent -- or Nativity Lent in their Eastern Orthodox parish in Santa Maria, Calif. -- to help their young sons grasp the meaning of Feast of the Nativity, which begins Dec. 25th and continues for 12 days. This isn't easy in a culture in which the powers that be roll out the Christmas bandwagon with the Halloween candy, well before the Thanksgiving turkey.

Each night at their simple Lenten meals the Cones opened a bag containing a verse or two of scripture, and four pieces of candy. The story started slowly, with all the familiar details about Roman politics, taxes, a census and a man named Joseph, making a precarious journey with his pregnant wife, Mary.

Then came this crucial detail, the moment when Mary "brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn."

All of this was familiar territory for the two Cone sons, but not for the two foster children living with the family.

"These boys were new to the Nativity story, but they certainly knew all about being homeless and alone," explained Kelly Cone, reached by telephone.

In a post online, that has since gone viral, she described the turning point: "Then we reached the part of the story where Mary and Joseph were forced to stay in a stable outside, cold and alone. No one had any room for them. They did the best they could, even though it was lower than low.

"I looked up at our 10-year-old foster boy, and his head was bowed, his face drawn and serious. Unlike his 5-year-old happy-go-lucky brother beside him, he remembers. He remembers the cold nights sleeping on the street or in someone's car because his mother had nowhere safe for him to stay. Instead of protecting him and reaching out for help, she eventually abandoned him at a mobile home park."

The 10-year-old boy -- who cannot be named due to privacy issues -- had tears in his eyes. Kelly Cone asked him how he thought Mary and Joseph must have felt.

"Sad. Cold," he replied.

From that moment on, the Cones knew this would not be an ordinary Advent and Christmas. There were children at their table who were hearing the Nativity story for the first time and, day after day, this reality began to gnaw at the Cones "like a bad toothache," she said.

The questions kept coming. Yes, the baby in the manger is the same Jesus they heard about at church. Yes, Christians really believes that the Son of God was born in a manger, without a home to call his own. Yes, shepherds in that part of the world had to sleep out in the cold while protecting their sheep from, among other threats, lions. Yes, coming face to face with an army of angels probably freaked the shepherds out.

While his wife processed her thoughts online, Jesse Cone shared these Advent dinner vignettes with students at the Christian high school where he teaches.

"Every kid knows the story, and every kid there has read a lot of theology. ... I told the story at our Christmas chapel -- not as eloquently as my wife did -- and people were crying," he said. As it turns out, "not only can you get a better view of the Nativity story by spending time with homeless boys than at the mall, you can see it better than you can from a theology department."

In California, he noted, people sing all kinds of Christmas carols that make references to snow and this becomes normal, even when snow is something that they rarely if every experience. The snow exists in their minds and they are comfortable with that. Sadly, the same thing tends to happen with the Nativity story itself.

All of these details, added Jesse Cone, are "artifacts we appreciate from a distance. That's what Christ meant for these boys before actually hearing the story, and that's how it can become for many of us as well."

But not this Christmas: This year the story came home for real.

Eye to eye with Mother Teresa (farewell to Scripps Howard)

Mother Teresa was having a bad press conference.

Journalists gathered for her 1989 Denver visit seemed determined to ask a litany of questions about her views on every imaginable issue in world affairs and American politics. The soft-spoken, yet often stern, nun seemed confused and kept stressing that her Missionary Sisters of Charity would always focus on the needs of the needy and the sick, including those suffering from AIDS.

One television reporter even asked if the day's main ecumenical event -- a "Celebrate Life with Mother Teresa" prayer rally -- would include a Mass. Once again, the tiny sister from Calcutta was confused. How could there be a Catholic Mass if the rally included Lutherans, Baptists, Episcopalians, Pentecostal believers and clergy from other churches?

"We will pray together," she said. "That is what we can do."

I raised my hand and asked another question that I knew she might not want to answer. I had heard that she had privately toured Northeast Denver, an impoverished area hit hard by gangs. Might she open a mission there?

Mother Teresa smiled, but gently deflected the question, noting that Denver had recently been added at the end of a long list of dioceses worldwide making just such a request.

What happened next was a singular moment in my journalism career, one that awkwardly blurred the lines between the personal and the professional.

Why bring this up right now? For more than 25 years, I have written this weekly column for the Scripps Howard News Service, a streak that ends this week with the closing of the wire service. My "On Religion" column will continue to be carried by Universal Uclick, formerly known as the Universal Press Syndicate.

During this quarter of a century, readers have asked one question more than any other: Who is the most remarkable person you've met while covering religion? That's a tough one. The Rev. Billy Graham or novelist Madeleine L'Engle? Who was the more charismatic positive thinker, the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale or actor Denzel Washington? What was more amazing, seeing Chuck Colson preach inside a prison on Easter or Bono lead a Bible-study group at the U.S. Capitol?

My answer centers on what happened after that Denver press conference, after Mother Teresa -- now the Blessed Mother Teresa, one step from being recognized as a saint -- finished her private prayers before the ecumenical service.

The clergy taking part in the rally were gathered in a holding room deep inside the arena and, eventually, security guards moved through to remove the reporters. I was in a corner, hidden behind the Greek Orthodox cathedral dean in his flowing vestments. The guards missed me.

Suddenly, Mother Teresa entered, spending a few moments with each of the clergy. When a priest tried to introduce me, she took my hand. "Yes," she said, smiling. "He asked me earlier about starting a house here." We talked briefly and she said she was surprised that a reporter had asked that question.

Hours later, as the rally ended, Denver's archbishop followed protocol and gave the elderly nun several gifts from the people of Colorado. Then she raised her hand to silence the crowd.

"I have a gift for you," she said, gesturing toward members of her team. "I will give you my sisters and I hope that, together, we are going to do something beautiful for God."

Archbishop J. Francis Stafford -- now a cardinal in Rome -- flushed red with shock. The work to build a Denver mission would begin immediately, rather than many years in the future.

Mother Teresa's gift was the story of the day and my editors kept asking a blunt question: What led to her shocking decision?

Well, I had a quote from Stafford, who said: "She is a spontaneous person. Maybe we will never know why she made her decision now."

But I also told them about my strange encounter with the woman that millions already considered a living saint. Could I include this factual material in a news report, even though I was directly involved in what transpired?

What happened really happened. The quotes were in my reporter's notebook.

Nevertheless, we decided to play the main story straight.

The problem was that I was the eyewitness. I mean, I was there and so was Mother Teresa, the most remarkable person I have encountered in my journalism work.

Classic Billy Graham, at 95 years of age

The Rev. Billy Graham has been worried about the state of America's soul for a long, long time. So it wasn't surprising that -- when preaching what could be his final sermon -- the 95-year-old evangelist looked straight into the camera and talked about sin and tears, repentance and salvation. And the cross.

"Our country's in great need of a spiritual awakening. There have been times when I've wept as I've gone from city to city and I've seen how far people have wandered from God," said Graham, in a message recorded in his North Carolina mountain home.

"I want to tell people about the meaning of the cross. Not the cross that hangs on the wall or around someone's neck, but the real cross of Christ. It's scarred and bloodstained. His was a rugged cross. I know that many will react to this message, but it is the truth. And with all my heart, I want to leave you with the truth."

Simply called "The Cross," the 30-minute documentary premiered on Fox News, as well as in churches nationwide. It included footage of Graham with leaders ranging from the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., to Pope John Paul II, from Johnny Carson to Johnny Cash. Graham has met with every U.S. president since Harry Truman and the video included John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.

The video also was shown at a recent 95th birthday party for Graham in Asheville, N.C., that drew many prominent, and in some cases decidedly non-evangelical, conservatives -- including Donald Trump, Greta Van Susteren and Rupert Murdoch. In his introduction, the Rev. Franklin Graham told viewers that his father's message could "change your life and change the direction of this nation."

It would be hard, however, for critics to find any national politics in this message from the elderly Graham, said sociologist William Martin, author of "A Prophet With Honor: The Billy Graham Story."

In particular, there were no echoes of the 2012 advertisements in which the elder Graham was quoted as saying: "As I approach my 94th birthday, I realize this election could be my last. ... I urge you to vote for those who protect the sanctity of life and support the biblical definition of marriage between a man and a woman."

Instead, this video offered "classic Billy," said Martin, reached by telephone.

"Anyone who has been paying attention knows that at the heart of his preaching there has always been a message that this country is in pretty bad shape. That isn't something he started saying just the other day," he said. "I doubt there was anything new at all in this video and, from my point of view, that's a good thing."

Nevertheless, Graham repeatedly told viewers that he knew some of his words would be offensive.

"We deserve the cross. We deserve hell. We deserve judgment and all that that means," he said. "I know that there are many people who dispute that. People don't want to hear that they are sinners. To many people it's an offense. The cross is offensive because it directly confronts to evil that dominates so much of this world. ...

"One reason that the cross is an offense to people is because it demands. It doesn't suggest, it demands -- a new lifestyle in ALL of us."

Throughout the video, the voice of the frail preacher was mixed with the soaring cadences of the evangelist in the prime of life, his words rushing toward the moment when he urged seekers to come forward and make professions of faith.

But this time, the sermon ended with the elderly Graham quietly speaking words he has said in thousands of sermons, to millions of listeners, around the world: "There is no other way of salvation except through the cross of Christ. Jesus said, 'I am the way, the Truth and the Life. No man cometh to the Father except by me.' "

Yes, the words were familiar, said Martin, but it was hard not be affected by the sobering images of the white-haired evangelical patriarch working so hard to share this message one more time.

"That's Billy Graham and this is what he has believed his whole life," said the sociologist. "It's like he was saying, 'This is the old, old story and I'm going to tell it to you one more time.' "

'Backsliders' and the 'unchurched' equal the 'Nones'?

Old-school preachers used to call them "backsliders," those folks who were raised in the pews but then fled. Sociologists and church-growth professionals eventually pinned more bookish labels on these people, calling them the "unchurched" or describing them as "spiritual, but not religious."

Pollsters at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and similar think tanks are now using a more neutral term to describe a key trend in various religious traditions, talking about a sharp increase in the percentage of Americans who are "religiously unaffiliated."

That's certainly an awkward, non-snappy label that's hard to use in headlines. It's so much easier to call them the "Nones."

Anyone who cares about the role of religion in public life had to pay attention to last year's "Nones of the Rise" study by the Pew researchers, especially the jarring fact that 20 percent of U.S. adults -- including 32 percent under the age of 30 -- embrace that "religiously unaffiliated" label. The question some experts are asking now is whether Americans have simply changed how they describe their beliefs, rather than making radical changes at the level of faith and practice.

While there has certainly been a rise in the number of "religiously unaffiliated" people, when researchers "dig down inside the numbers they will find that there hasn't been that much change in the practice of religion in America," said Frank Newport, editor-in-chief at Gallup, in a recent telephone interview.

"What's happening is that people who weren't practicing their faith and have never really practiced a faith are now, for some reason, much more likely to be honest about that fact," he said. "People used to say that didn't go to church, but they would still call themselves 'Baptists,' or 'Catholics' or whatever. ...

"It's that lukewarm, vague sense of religious identity that is fading. We're seeing a lot more truth in the reporting, right now."

It's especially important to note that young people who were raised in intensely religious, traditional homes are much more likely to continue practicing their faith, or to become active in a similar faith, according to a new Focus on the Family report (.pdf), built on the Pew Research Center numbers and the most recent General Social Survey from the National Science Foundation.

In the Millennial Generation -- young people born in the 1980s and '90s -- only 11 percent of those who now call themselves "religiously unaffiliated" said they were raised in a home in which a faith tradition was enthusiastically lived and taught.

The Focus on the Family study noted: "This is not a crisis of faith, per se, but of parenting. ... Young adults cannot keep what they were never given."

So what has changed? Experts at the Gallup Poll have been asking similar questions about religious identity and practice for decades, noted Newport, and it's clear that in the past it was much harder for Americans to face a pollster and muster up the courage to openly reject religion -- period.

"I found the survey in the '50s where it was zero percent 'none.' How's that? I mean literally, it rounded down to zero," said Newport, drawing laughter during a recent Pew Forum event. "So it's amazing that back when the Gallup interviewer came a-calling -- and it was in person in the '50s -- literally it looks like almost every single respondent chose a religious identification other than 'none.' "

Now, it's becoming clear that -- perhaps following the cultural earthquakes of the 1960s -- many Americans have stopped pretending they are linked to faith traditions that they have no interest in practicing. These "unreligious" Americans, Newport told the Pew gathering, are not really changing how they live their lives, they "are just changing the way that they label themselves."

Meanwhile, it may be time for researchers to pay renewed attention to what is happening among the Americans on the other end of the spectrum -- those who remain committed to faith-centered ways of life, said Newport, in the telephone interview.

"It's possible that if you really claim a religion today, then it's much more likely that your religious identity is pure, that you're making sacrifices to practice your faith because it really means something to you," he said. "Maybe it's significant that so many people are willing to stand up and say that they still believe."

Unusual challenge from a Greek Orthodox bishop

It happens all the time: Church leaders stand at podiums and urge members of their flocks to go and share their faith, striving to win new converts. These speeches rarely make news, because they are not unusual. But something very unusual happened earlier this month in Brookline, Mass.

"You will surely agree that our mission ... is to lead our brothers and sisters -- both inside and outside the church -- to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ," said the featured speaker.

"This is becoming more and more difficult because many hesitate to share their faith, fearing they will be considered quaint and bothersome. This is especially the case in America's colleges and universities where atheism and indifference on matters of faith and religion reign supreme."

This would be ordinary, if not tame language in a gathering held by Campus Crusade for Christ, the Southern Baptist Convention or any Bible Belt megachurch. But this speaker was Metropolitan Methodios, the white-haired leader of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Boston, addressing clergy and laity in a conference center dedicated to Greek culture.

The spiritual leader of Greek Orthodox believers in New England didn't stop with this call to evangelize people inside and outside his flock's sanctuaries. Instead, he directly challenged the lukewarm or even compromised version of the faith that may result from the media "bombardment of materialistic and hedonistic philosophies" that shape the public square.

All too often, he said, the result is neither orthodox nor Orthodox.

"People today fashion their personal beliefs by integrating Orthodox and non-Orthodox elements," he explained, in the speech text posted online (.pdf). "Without realizing it, they become 'cafeteria Christians.' Just as they do not partake of every food item in a cafeteria line -- but only those foods which they like -- in the same way they feel they can pick and choose from what Orthodoxy teaches. ...

"Let me be clear: Core teachings of our faith are not subject to popularity polls or political correctness."

Metropolitan Methodios even, without mentioning a specific name, criticized a New England legislator who "claims to be an Orthodox Christian" and who "champions Greek political causes" because of his public advocacy of same-sex marriage.

It's important to note that, through the years, Eastern Orthodox bishops have released occasional public statements in which they affirmed basic tenets of their ancient faith. In some cases they have applied these doctrines to public issues in American life.

For example, the Eastern Orthodox bishops of North and Central America recently released a document that expressed "deep concern over recent actions on the part of our respective governments and certain societal trends concerning the status of marriage in our countries, in particular the legalization of same-sex unions."

Also, the symbolic leader of the world's 250 million Orthodox Christians (including me) recently addressed challenges to church teachings on marriage. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Istanbul stressed that the "partnering of the same sex is unknown and condemned" in church teachings, along with the "contemporary invention of 'mutual cohabitation,' which is the result of sin and not the law of joy."

These kids of documents are good, but only carry so much weight, noted Father Johannes Jacobse, head of the American Orthodox Institute in Naples, Fla. It is one thing for bishops to affirm two millennia of church teachings. It is something else for a bishop to openly challenge his people to life by them.

"This is the first time I have heard a Greek Orthodox bishop speak publicly with this kind of clarity and certainty on some of the pressing moral issues of our day," said Jacobse, who served as a Greek Orthodox priest from 1991 to 2009 and currently leads an Antiochian Orthodox parish. In this case, a veteran bishop "just stood up there and SAID IT. There seemed to be no sense of hesitation or fear that someone might think that he sounded like -- heaven forbid -- an evangelical or a moral conservative or something."

The bottom line, concluded Metropolitan Methodios, is that clergy and lay leaders must recognize that they need to "re-evangelize, to re-catechize, to re-teach the faith" to their own people, especially those on the margins of church life.

"The truth," he stressed, "is that many brethren sitting in the pews of our parishes are not knowledgeable of even the basic teachings of Orthodoxy."

The pope, the media and balance on pro-life ministries

It was the telephone call heard around the world, because the pope made the call. On the other end of the line was a single woman in central Italy, who mailed Pope Francis a confused, anguished letter after learning she was pregnant by a man who turned out to be married. The man demanded that she have an abortion and she refused.

Then a strange telephone number appeared on her caller ID screen. It was the pope, who called to say that she made the right decision because the "child was a gift from God" and that he wanted to help.

Pope Francis, she told The Catholic Herald, assured her that "as Christians we should never be afraid. He told me I had been very brave and strong for my unborn child. I told him that I wanted to baptize the baby when it was born, but I was afraid, as I was divorced and a single mother. ... He said he would be my spiritual father and he would baptize my baby."

If the baby is a boy, she plans to name him Francis.

A few news organizations, but not many, covered this media-friendly parable.

But two weeks later, the pope unleashed a media tsunami with a long, candid interview published exclusively in America and other Jesuit magazines around the world. While the pope talked about confession, sin and mercy, one quote leapt into news reports and headlines more than any other.

"We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible," he told the interviewer, a fellow Jesuit. "The teaching of the church ... is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time."

Stressing the need for improved pastoral responses on hot-button issues -- such as abortion and homosexuality -- Pope Francis said the church "cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently. .... We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel."

The pope, of course, stressed the need for balance between pronouncements and pastoral care, not the end of the church's public advocacy on its moral doctrines. He said that Catholic leaders cannot insist "only" on issues linked to sexual ethics, which is not the same as saying they should be silent on them.

The church, he said, must be a "field hospital" for the wounded and its most important message is "the first proclamation: Jesus Christ has saved you. And the ministers of the church must be ministers of mercy above all."

The world of Catholic bloggers, insiders and experts exploded, both on the doctrinal left and the right. Some traditional Catholics expressed sadness and concern, focusing on secular media editing of the pope's remarks, more than on the content of the actual interview.

While the media storm raged, Pope Francis did an interesting thing -- especially in light of his alleged call for the church to tone down its teachings on abortion and other hot-button issues. He addressed, with little media fanfare, a gathering of Catholic gynecologists, urging them to remember that a doctor's "ultimate objective" must always be the protection of life.

"The culture of waste, which now enslaves the hearts and minds of many, has a very high cost: it requires the elimination of human beings, especially if they are physically or socially weaker," he said, according to a English translation offered by The National Catholic Register.

"Our response to this mentality is a categorical and unhesitant 'yes' to life. ... Things have a price and are sold, but people have a dignity, worth more than things and they don't have a price. Many times we find ourselves in situations where we see that which costs less is life. Because of this, attention to human life in its totality has become a real priority of the Magisterium of the Church in recent years, particularly to the most defenseless, that is, the disabled, the sick, the unborn child, the child, the elderly who are life's most defenseless."

In the end, stressed the pope, the church must continue to proclaim that, "Each child who is unborn, but is unjustly condemned to be aborted, bears the face of Jesus Christ, bears the face of the Lord, who, even before he was born, and then as soon as he was born, experienced the rejection of the world."

Goodbye to a radical Baptist patriarch

The old Southern preacher had walked through many airport security gates using his cherry-wood cane and was surprised -- especially years before 9/11 -- when a guard ordered him to send it through the X-ray scanner. After that rite, the Rev. Will Campbell asked the guard to bring him the cane. The guard, somewhat miffed, asked if he could walk through the scanner without it. The preacher, somewhat vexed, said that was a question for his doctor.

Facing a nervous crowd, the guard ordered Campbell to walk through the gate. So the famous civil-rights activist -- the only white leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. invited to the first Southern Christian Leadership Conference meeting -- got down on the floor and crawled through. Then he retrieved his cane.

Campbell admitted, when telling this parable to Baptist progressives in 1994, that he then gave the cane a "sassy little twirl." His wife asked: "Why do you do things like that?"

"Because, I'm a Baptist! I come from a long line of hell-raisers," said Campbell. "I was taught that I wasn't a robot -- that I was a human being with a mind, capable of reason, entitled to read any book, including the Bible, and interpret it according to the ability of the mind I was given. That's why I do things like that."

The key, he said, is to ask what happened to all the Baptists who kept clashing with authority figures in the past. Where are the Baptists who were willing to be "tied on ladders and pushed into burning brush heaps because they believed in and practiced freedom of conscience," who "were so opposed to the death penalty they wouldn't serve on juries" and who "would not go to war, any war, for church or state? ... Where are they now?"

Campbell, he died last month at the age of 88, was a complex activist and writer who made lots of people mad for lots of reasons. Raised in rural Mississippi, he thrived at Yale Divinity School and failed as a small-town pastor. He accompanied the Freedom Riders in 1961 and marched in Birmingham in 1963. He tried to avoid reporters, but was tight with country-music rebels like Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings. He opposed both abortion and the death penalty and, late in life, backed gay rights.

The self-proclaimed "bootleg Baptist" spent his life preaching forgiveness and reconciliation, yet also called religious conservatives "ecclesiastical highwaymen" who were "espousing a course that is a rollercoaster to a fascist theocracy." Pushed to summarize his theology he stated: "We're all bastards, but God loves us anyway."

"Will was fond of saying that if you are going to love one then you have to love everyone. ... This meant rednecks as well as radicals," wrote the Rev. Timothy George, for the conservative "First Things" journal. He is the dean of Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Ala., and a former member of Campbell's Committee of Southern Churchmen.

Campbell "infuriated many," George added, "when he befriended members of the Ku Klux Klan and even visited James Earl Ray in prison. Campbell wrote: 'I have seen and known the resentment of the racist, his hostility, his frustration, his need for someone upon whom to lay blame and to punish. With the same love that we are commanded to shower upon the innocent victim, the church must love the racist.'

"The fact is Will Campbell was simply sui generis. He cannot be comfortably squeezed into anyone's box."

In the end, the only box Campbell accepted was a Baptist box that fit his own iconoclastic specifications -- rejecting all creeds, traditions and hierarchies.

"Institutions, by their very definition, are evil," he said, in that 1994 address. "Their raison-d'etre is always and inevitably self-survival. They, all of them, when they are threatened will go to any length, tell any lie, engage in any program to protect themselves. And justify it as being in defense of Almighty God."

For Baptists to be true Baptists, he said, it's crucial for them to teach that Jesus never "demanded of the people who wanted to follow him that they must first know this or that, this creed, or that catechism, the nature of the Trinity or the plan of salvation, or subscribe to an Abstract of Principles to the satisfaction of the Sanhedrin. He had not insisted on any systematic belief whatsoever."