From day one in the Pope Francis era, the so-called insiders who do so much to shape public opinion have said "conservatives" -- inside the Vatican and outside -- were grumbling about this shepherd's unorthodox style.
That is certainly true in some corners of the church, noted Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia, a prominent voice on matters of doctrine and public life. However there is a bright side to all the jarring news reports about Pope Francis.
The famous Catholic writer G. K. Chesterton once noted that "every age gets the saint it needs. Not the saint people want, but the saint they need -- the saint who's the medicine for their illness. The same may be true of popes," said Chaput, in a July 26 speech at the Napa Institute in California.
Growing tensions on the Faith and Family Left
It was one of those symbolic questions that pollsters toss into the mix when probing fault lines inside political coalitions.
The Pew Research Center recently asked, as part of its "Beyond Red vs. Blue" political typology project, whether voters agreed or disagreed that it is "necessary to believe in God to be moral."
Among the voters called "Solid Liberals," one of three major Democratic Party camps, only 11 percent of those polled said "yes." People in the emerging "Next Generation Left" felt the same way, with only 7 percent affirming that statement.
However, things were radically different among the voters that Pew researchers labeled the "Faith and Family Left." In this crowd -- the survey's most racially and ethnically diverse camp -- an stunning 91 percent of those polled saw a connection between morality and belief in God.
"That number, the size of that gap, jumped out at me" in the results, said Carroll Doherty, director of political research at the Pew Research Center.
Faith and Family Left voters are "pretty loyal Democrats, the kind that supported Bill Clinton and Al Gore. They voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and most of them voted for him again in 2012," he added. "But when it comes to moral and cultural and religious issues, they take a very different approach" from the Solid Liberals and those in the Next Generation Left.
Religious leaders struggle to reach 'emerging adults'
When leaders of traditional faith groups think about reaching out to Millennials, religious seekers, unaffiliated "Nones" and other postmodern young Americans, this is the voice that many keep hearing in their heads.
"Morality is how I feel too, because in my heart, I could feel it," said one person interviewed in the National Study of Youth and Religion. "You could feel what's right and wrong in your heart as well as your mind. Most of the time, I always felt, I feel it in my heart and it makes it easier for me to morally decide what's right and wrong. Because if I feel about doing something, I'm going to feel it in my heart, and if it feels good, I'm going to do it."
Seconds later, young people caught up in what experts now call "emerging adulthood" may stress that they are open to attending multigenerational congregations that offer roots, tradition and mentors. But how will they know when they have found the right spiritual home?
Right. When they feel it.
That's a hard target to hit, said Naomi Schaefer Riley, author of "Got Religion? How Churches, Mosques and Synagogues Can Bring Young People Back." Many religious leaders are struggling to find a "sweet spot between deep religious messages that sound cool" and faith that "seems like it comes from a sappy self-help book," she noted.
In light of current trends, it's also hard for clergy to take comfort in the trend seen in previous generations, which is that young people who abandon the pews usually return when they are married and have children. Trouble is, increasing numbers of Americans between 20 and 40 are delaying marriage, family and any community ties that bind. Some are opting out of marriage altogether.
This creates strong moral tensions.
Clergy, temptation, sex abuse and the law
Surely one of our world's most endangered species -- right up there with the Mountain Gorilla or the Sumatran Tiger -- is the church "ministerius youthii."
That was the conviction of the late Louis McBurney, a Mayo Clinic-trained psychiatrist who spent decades at his Colorado retreat center helping ministers crushed by the demands and temptations of their jobs. Youth ministers, for example, face stunning parental expectations, low pay, the loss of privacy and a nagging sense of powerlessness.
Plus, it's hard to work with adolescents in a sex-soaked culture. Many older teens think they are more mature than they really are, noted McBurney, in his 1986 volume "Counseling Christian Workers." Consider the case of "Joe," a newly married seminary graduate who was energetic, talented and driven. Then, there was this one girl.
"She was a beautiful 17-year-old who was more mature than her peers," wrote the psychiatrist. "They began to play tennis together, and she was frequently the last to leave group activities. Joe couldn't remember who made the first move to sexual intimacy, but once that happened it snowballed."
Many were hurt in the train wreck that followed, an all-to-common scenario that in the past often played out behind closed doors with parents and church leaders hiding the damage. Times have changed, to some degree, after years of public debate about the sexual abuse of minors by clergy, teachers, coaches and other trusted adults.
The respected evangelical publication Leadership Journal recently unleashed a firestorm of criticism by publishing an anonymous piece -- since taken offline -- entitled "My Easy Trip from Youth Minister to Felon." One passage was particularly galling to Twitter critics who used #TakeDownThatPost and #HowOldWereYou as hashtags.
Sobering words define a young priest's life
As sermons go, it was not the kind of pulpit performance that -- when it was given -- created a buzz in the pews. The young Catholic priest's voice was flat and subdued, his face calm but not expressive.
After all, he was only a year or so into his priesthood and preaching was still rather new to him. On this day he was working with a sobering text from the Gospel of Luke in which Jesus looks over the city of Jerusalem and weeps, knowing that death and destruction looms in the future.
So that was what Father Kenneth Walker preached about, in a sermon captured on video that has gone viral on the Internet in the days after he was gunned down, at 28 years of age, by a burglar at Mother of Mercy Mission parish near downtown Phoenix. He talked about forgiveness and the need for people living in a sinful, broken and violent world to realize that they may not have much time remaining to get right with God.
"God is all merciful, but he is also perfectly just," he said. "He will not prevent something from happening, if we bring it about by our own choosing. Nevertheless, God gives time and opportunity to repent before he lets the consequences fall upon us."
The Bible and church history are full of cases in which God warns people to flee wickedness, he said. In some cases, saints and martyrs suffered and died while God gave a wayward land more time to repent.
"We are in a similar situation today, since we are now living in a world that is increasingly rejecting Christ and casting him out of the public forum," said Walker. "We have grown far too attached to our own knowledge, our technology and our worldly pleasures -- such that we have forgotten God and what he has done for us."
Look around, he said. These are troubling times for Catholics who strive to practice the ancient traditions of their faith.
A wry case for using beer in evangelism
While he knows that millions of teetotalling Christians disagree, Father William Miller believes he can make a theological case for the moderate consumption of beer through a simple use of evangelistic math. "Beer is the universal beverage.
If you want to sit down and have a friendly, personal conversation with about 90 percent of the people in this world then that is probably going to take place over a beer, that is if you want them to open up and level with you," said Miller, who is -- logically enough -- the author of a chatty book called "The Beer Drinker's Guide to God."
"Think about it. If you're serious about talking to ordinary people about God, are you telling me that you don't want a chance to sit down and connect with about 90 percent of the world?"
Miller is aware that it's easier for an Episcopal priest to make this case than it would be for clergy in many, but not all, doctrinally conservative Protestant flocks. In an admirable demonstration of restraint, he resisted the temptation to open his book with the old proverb that wherever two or three Episcopalians are gathered together, "you will always find a fifth." Instead, he went with Catholic wisdom from St. Bridget of Kildare: "I should like a great lake of the finest ale for the King of Kings."
Then again, the great Protestant Reformer John Calvin took part of his salary in barrels of wine and the feisty German theologian Martin Luther was, truth be told, a German Lutheran who wrote classic hymn texts -- such as "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" -- to fit the melodies of popular drinking songs.
Since Miller grew up steeped in the traditions of the Church of Christ in Texas, he is very familiar with conservative arguments against the use of alcohol and he is quick to quote biblical injunctions against drunkenness. This is handy since, in addition to leading St. Michael and All Angel's Episcopal Church in Kauai, Hawaii, he is part owner of a bar -- called Padre's -- in Marfa, a West Texas community so edgy and artsy that, despite it's tiny size, it has been granted its own National Public Radio station.
The bottom line for Miller is that alcohol is part God's creation and can be used in ways that are sacramental and glorious, as well as sinful and depraved. He is convinced that Jesus would, as his first miracle, have turned water into beer if that particular wedding party had been held in Texas.
Pope, patriarch, primacy and the press
The Holy Land pilgrimage by Pope Francis contained plenty of symbolic gestures, photo ops and sound bites crafted to slip into broadcasts, ink and Twitter.
There was his direct flight into the West Bank, the first papal "State of Palestine" reference and the silent prayer with his forehead against the concrete security wall between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, near graffiti pleading, "Pope, we need some 1 to speak about justice." He also prayed at a memorial for suicide-bombing victims and put a wreath on the tomb of Zionism pioneer Theodor Herzi.
The backdrop for the Manger Square Mass included an image of the infant Christ swaddled in a black-and-white keffiyeh, the headdress made famous by the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. And, of course, the world press stressed the pope's invitation to presidents Shimon Peres of Israel and Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority to visit the Vatican for prayers, and surely private talks, about peace.
After days of statecraft, Francis arrived -- drawing little attention from major American media -- at the event that the Vatican insisted was the key to the trip. This was when Pope Francis met with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I for an historic evening prayer rite in the ancient Church of the Holy Sepulcher, a setting long symbolic of bitter divisions in world Christianity.
The symbolic leader of the world's Eastern Orthodox Christians, the successor to the Apostle Andrew, had earlier invited Francis, the successor to the Apostle Peter, to join him in Jerusalem to mark the 50th anniversary of the breakthrough meeting between Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras. Their embrace ended 900-plus years of mutual excommunication in the wake of the Great Schism of 1054.
"Clearly we cannot deny the divisions which continue to exist among us, the disciples of Jesus: this sacred place makes us even more painfully aware of how tragic they are," said the pope, at the site of the tomb the ancient churches believe held the body of Jesus. "We know that much distance still needs to be traveled before we attain that fullness of communion which can also be expressed by sharing the same Eucharistic table, something we ardently desire. ...
"We need to believe that, just as the stone before the tomb was cast aside, so too every obstacle to our full communion will also be removed."
British rabbi stands to defend America's first freedom
When Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks arrived in America recently representatives of the United States government did not greet him with a demand that Great Britain's former chief rabbi remove his yarmulke while in public. That's a good thing. But there are places -- France leaps to mind -- where this would not be the case. In fact, religious liberty is under siege in many corners of Europe, said Sacks, a member of the House of Lords.
"In Britain we have seen a worker banned from wearing a small crucifix at work," he said, after receiving the Becket Fund's 2014 Canterbury Medal for his work defending religious freedom. "A nurse was censored for offering to utter a prayer on behalf of one of her patients. Catholic adoption agencies were forced to close because they were unwilling to place children for to same-sex parents."
Elsewhere, Denmark has banned "shechitah," the kosher method of slaughtering animals by slitting their throats. A German court has banned infant circumcision. France has banned -- in public places -- Christians from wearing crucifixes, Jews from wearing yarmulkes and Muslim women from wearing hijabs.
"This is, for me, the empirical proof that ... the secular societies of Europe are much less tolerant than the religions that they accuse of intolerance," he said.
The quest for safe, generic, 'ceremonial' prayers
As the members of the Town of Greece Board prepared for business, a local Catholic priest rose to offer a short prayer. "Heavenly Father, you guide and govern everything with order and love," said Father John Forni, of St. John the Evangelist parish. "Look upon this assembly of our town leaders. ... May they always act in accordance with your will, and may their decision be for the well being of all. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord let his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord look upon you kindly and give you peace. Amen."
Perhaps it was the "Father" God reference, or even that final trinity of blessings, but this 2004 prayer was listed (.pdf) among those considered too "sectarian" during the Town of Greece v. Galloway case that recently reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
Most religious conservatives cheered the high court's 5-4 ruling, which said local leaders could continue to allow volunteers from different faiths to open meetings with "ceremonial" prayers that included explicit doctrinal references to their traditions, even references to Jesus Christ. The court majority also said it was crucial that one faith not dominate others and that prayers must not be allowed to "denigrate" other viewpoints, to "threaten damnation" or to "preach conversion."
However, Justice Anthony Kennedy noted for the majority: "To hold that invocations must be nonsectarian would force the legislatures sponsoring prayers and the courts deciding these cases to act as supervisors and censors of religious speech, thus involving government in religious matters to a far greater degree than is the case under the town's current practice of neither editing nor approving prayers in advance nor criticizing their content after the fact."
Kennedy's bottom line: "It is doubtful that consensus could be reached as to what qualifies as a generic or nonsectarian prayer."
Even among church-state analysts who disagreed on the decision, this theme -- that the state must be denied the power to determine which prayers are generic or safe enough -- emerged as crucial common ground.
"Put bluntly, government has no right to declare that the only God welcome in public is a 'generic God,' " noted the Rev. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in online commentary. "That is a profoundly important constitutional argument. For Christians, this is also a profoundly important theological argument. We do not believe that any 'generic God' exists, nor can we allow that some reference to a 'generic God' is a reference to the God of the Bible."
On the liberal side of Baptist life, Bill Leonard of the Wake Forest School of Divinity openly challenged the belief that the state should have the power to determine when prayers cross the line and become oppressive. "What government official," he asked, "will judge when one person's prayerful 'conviction' becomes another's 'damnation?' "
Labeling his perspective that of an "old-timey Baptist," Leonard said the big question is why so many rush to embrace "ceremonial" prayers in the first place.
"There may be government-centered ceremonies where the deity is addressed in various forms, but let's not stoop to calling it prayer," he said, in online analysis. "Prayer is talking to God, not to the Emperor, the President, the Congress, political parties, county commissioners or people gathered for hearings about potholes, zoning or sanitation. They may all need prayer, but certainly not the ceremonial kind.
"Prayer is anything but ceremonial; it burns in the soul, dances in the feet, erupts from the gut. ... No, no, Mr. Justice. Government use of prayer to tout privileged 'religious leaders' or their 'institutions' trivializes faith's most wondrous connection: a confrontation with the Divine."
This complex debate is packed with political and religious ironies, noted Francis Beckwith, who teaches philosophy and Church-State Studies at Baylor University.
Many liberals, especially unbelievers, would like to ban public prayer altogether, yet accept non-sectarian prayers as "their own kind of don't ask, don't tell policy," he said. Meanwhile, some conservatives feel "so squeezed out of everything" and "so under attack" that they grudgingly accept watered-down expressions of public faith.
In the end, he added, "Christians -- on the left or the right -- should worry about representatives of the state trying to co-opt their leaders and their symbols and their language to serve some particular political cause or movement. ... That temptation is always out there."