William Peter Blatty and 'The Exorcist' -- Taking incarnate evil seriously for 40 years

In the middle of a New York Magazine dialogue on heaven and hell, damnation and salvation, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia offered this theological zinger: "I even believe in the Devil."

The Devil is a major player in the Gospels and faithful Catholics know that, he said, before adding: "Most of mankind has believed in the Devil, for all of history."

The principalities and powers of elite America were shocked, shocked by his confession. But one veteran Hollywood scribe pounded out a friendly email of support, from one conservative Catholic to another.

"I told him to quit honing into my territory," said William Peter Blatty, who won an Academy Award in 1973 for adapting his novel, "The Exorcist," for the big screen. "I don't tell him how to write Supreme Court opinions. ... He should let me take the heat for talking about the Devil. That's my job."

The 85-year-old Blatty was joking and being serious at the same time, which is business as usual whenever he explains the twists and turns in his life since 1967. That was the year when memories of a sobering theology lecture he heard as a Georgetown University student began evolving into the novel that transformed him from a comedy pro into a horror legend.

Grief also helped shape the novel, in which a Jesuit psychiatrist tries to help a 12-year-old girl who is exhibiting the symptoms of demon possession, complete with fountains of green vomit and obscenities.

The fictional Father Damien Karras experiences paralyzing doubts after his mother's death. Blatty was typing the second page of his earliest take on the story when he received the call that his mother had died.

"I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to make a statement that the grave is not the end, that there is more to life than death," said Blatty, in a Bethesda, Md., diner near his home, not far from the Georgetown neighborhood described in "The Exorcist."

After studying the explicit details in the journals of exorcists, he decided that a story about "what happens in these cases could really be a boost to the faith. It could show people that the spiritual world is real."

The bottom line: "The Exorcist" scared the hell out of millions of people. There were lines around the block at theaters and reports that janitors -- literally -- had to clean up the mess left by moviegoers who regretted consuming snacks during such a head-spinning, stomach-churning nightmare. When box-office receipts are adjusted for inflation, it remains the most successful R-rated movie ever.

That's the Hollywood story, which is being marked with 40th anniversary celebrations. But for Blatty, it's just as important that his work had an impact on people in a radically different setting. As a Jesuit in Los Angeles once told him, there was a "thundering herd of people headed into the confessionals" at churches in the weeks after the movie opened.

Amen, said Blatty. The goal was to defend the faith through writing that he considered a ministry, his own "apostolate of the pen."

The key to "The Exorcist," he explained, is that his protagonist's crisis of faith is much deeper than his doubts about the reality of demons. Caught up in grief and guilt, this Jesuit is tempted to believe that God cannot condescend to love fallen human beings -- like him.

"Karras has started to doubt his own humanity," said Blatty. "In the end, he is the ultimate target of this demonic attack. The Devil is tempting him to despair."

In one crucial passage in the novel, an older, experienced exorcist explains: "I think the point is to make us ... see ourselves as ultimately bestial, vile and putrescent; without dignity; ugly; unworthy. And there lies the heart of it, perhaps. ... For I think belief in God is not a matter of reason at all; I think it finally is a matter of love: of accepting the possibility that God could ever love us."

If readers and moviegoers pay attention, said Blatty, the chills caused by the demonic acts on the screen are merely the first step in a spiritual process that should drive them to look in the mirror.

"My logic was simple: If demons are real, why not angels? If angels are real, why not souls? And if souls are real, what about your own soul?"

'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."

A growing hole in the middle of American Jewry

There is a Yiddish saying about the mysteries of faith, family and fellowship that, loosely translated, proclaims: "You cannot make Shabbat by yourself." "The point is that you need the presence of other Jews around you to live out the dictates of your Jewish beliefs," said sociologist Steven M. Cohen, of the Jewish Institute of Religion at Hebrew Union College.

Shabbat creates that circle of support. Beginning minutes before sundown on Friday, it involves a day of rest, prayer, ritual feasting and ties that bind. Some of these traditions are defined by faith while others are rooted in ethnicity and culture. But the whole ancient package assumes that Shabbat brings Jews together.

So what does it mean when the first major study of American Jews in more than a decade shows that -- even among Jews who call themselves religious -- only 33 percent believe being part of a Jewish community is "essential to being Jewish"? Only 23 percent of these "Jews by religion" considered it essential to follow Jewish laws.

The results in this Pew Research Center study were, of course, even more sobering among the rising number of Jews -- one in five -- who said they had "no religion at all."

"In theory, Jews who answer 'none' when asked about their religion can still be part of the wider Jewish community. There's nothing new about that," said Cohen, in a telephone interview.

In practice, however, this "none" trend is viewed as negative by many Americans who consider the practice of Judaism to be a crucial part of Jewish identity, he said. Thus, the rising number of Jewish "nones" has many of the same serious implications as the much-discussed national rise in the number of the religiously unaffiliated among people in general.

This national survey of Jews, by the Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project, is the first conducted by an institution outside the Jewish community. Jewish surveys in recent decades have consistently caused controversy because of fierce debates about how to define who is, and who is not, Jewish.

Among its headline-grabbing findings, this survey noted:

* The percentage of adults who are "Jews by religion" has declined by about half since the 1950s. While 93 percent of G.I. Generation Jews call themselves religious Jews, only 68 percent of young "Millennial" Jews make that claim.

* Only 15 percent of those surveyed said being Jewish is "mainly a matter of religion," as opposed to 62 percent who said Jewish identity is primarily about ancestry and culture. Two-thirds said it isn't necessary for Jews to believe in God.

*Among "Jews of no religion," 79 percent have a non-Jewish spouse, compared to 36 percent of religious Jews. This is crucial, since 96 percent of Jews married to Jews raise their children in the faith, while only 20 percent of intermarried Jews do so. And Orthodox Jews continue to have much higher birthrates than other Jews.

In addition to raising demographic questions about the future, the growing divide between secular and religious Jews can cause sparks in daily life, said Naomi Zeveloff, of the Jewish Daily Forward. In a recent article she noted that when Chabad-Lubavitch activists go "bageling" -- approaching New Yorkers to ask if they are Jewish -- they have an unusual way of verifying that they are on target.

One "surefire way" to know someone is Jewish, she wrote, is that "they react to your question with anger," like one subway rider who replied, "I'm not religious" when approached by Jews in typically Orthodox garb.

"If you are a secular Jew, anything goes," said Zeveloff, in a telephone interview. "Many secular Jews assume that religious Jews, especially the Orthodox, don't think they are Jewish enough and that their Judaism is somehow invalid or inferior."

Jewish community leaders, said Cohen, must face a growing hole in the middle of American Jewry as "nones" surge on one side, and the Orthodox hold firm on the other. However, they can take comfort in the fact that Jews have "invented new ways to be Jewish" through the ages.

"You can be Jewish by being religious, but you can also say that you are a Jew because your politics are liberal," he said. "We have Zionists. We have secular Zionists and we have religious Zionists, we have left-wing Zionists and we have right-wing Zionists. ... Judaism has always been a kind of cottage industry."

The Anglican wars roll on (and Holy Communion for dogs)

The German Shepherd's name was Trapper and he came to St. Peter's Anglican Church with his owner, a newcomer at the historic Toronto parish. At the end of the Mass, Trapper went forward with everyone else for Holy Communion. That's when the vicar, in what she later described as a welcoming gesture, served the dog some of the consecrated bread that Anglicans believe has -- in a mysterious manner -- become the body of Jesus Christ.

So one parishioner complained to the bishop and, in a flash, critics online were quoting Matthew 7:6 ("Do not give dogs what is holy...") and the controversy -- this story has had long legs -- even reached BBC with the headline, "Canadian priest sorry for giving dog Holy Communion."

It seems that strange and dramatic events of this kind happen year after year in the global Anglican Communion -- truly one of God's gifts to headline writers.

Also, it appears unlikely that this trend will change anytime soon. Recently, in a burst of candor in Mexico, the current Archbishop of Canterbury harkened back to the English Civil War and quoted sobering advice from Bishop Jeremy Taylor, who was under the patronage of Archbishop William Laud when the latter was executed in 1645 by the Puritan parliament.

The Most Rev. Justin Welby noted that Taylor warned: "It is unnatural and unreasonable to persecute disagreeing opinions. ... Force in matters of opinion can do no good, but is very apt to do hurt."

These are hard words in an era in which England's shrinking flock of Anglicans is still fighting over female bishops and, across the Atlantic, the shrinking flock of Episcopalians continues to fight over non-celibate gay bishops. Meanwhile, leaders in the growing Global South churches of Africa and Asia are calling for repentance and doctrinal discipline.

During an August 13 address in Monterrey, Welby said he sometimes worries that Anglicans are "drifting back" into a true civil war of their own.

"Not consciously, of course, but in an unconscious way that is more dangerous. Like a drunk man walking near the edge of a cliff, we trip and totter and slip and wander, ever nearer to the edge of the precipice," he said, in the released text.

"On one side is the steep fall into an absence of any core beliefs, a chasm where we lose touch with God, and thus we rely only on ourselves and our own message. On the other side there is a vast fall into a ravine of intolerance and cruel exclusion. It is for those who claim all truth, and exclude any who question. When we fall into this place, we lose touch with human beings and create a small church, or rather many small churches -- divided, ineffective in serving the poor, the hungry and the suffering, incapable of living with each other, and incomprehensible to those outside the church."

The problem? One bishop's "core beliefs" are another's cruel dogmas. And, according to Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, Christianity is entering another 500-year cycle of doctrinal reform similar to that of Martin Luther.

"The major shifts of focus of these periodic seismic events are profoundly unsettling to many people, but they seem to be necessary to God's mission," she said, in an August 15 address at the national assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, meeting in Pittsburgh.

Anger and fear caused by rapid political and cultural changes have caused some members of liberal Protestant flocks to flee, said Jefferts Schori, whose denomination has declined from 3.6 million members in 1965 to 1.9 million in 2011. In the tumultuous past decade, average Sunday attendance has declined nearly 25 percent, to roughly 650,000 Episcopalians.

Jefferts Schori's flock is also aging rapidly, in part because -- as she boldly told The New York Times in 2006 -- Episcopalians are "better-educated and tend to reproduce at lower rates" than Catholics and other believers and because they "pay attention to the stewardship of the earth."

While other are seeing signs of peril, she said, progressives must see progress, especially when fighting for gay rights, racial justice and causes central to their faith.

"The challenges that both our churches have experienced around issues of inclusion of all human beings in recent years have reminded us that God is always at work -- on us, within us, and among us," said Jefferts Schori. "Some have judged our smaller numbers as faithlessness but it may actually be the Spirit's way of pruning for greater fruitfulness."

Apple, iSacraments and this lonely age

Probing the mysteries of Christmas, Pope Benedict XVI asked his flock gathered in 2006 to ponder what this season might mean to people living in the Internet age. "Is a Savior needed," he asked, "by a humanity which has invented interactive communication, which navigates in the virtual ocean of the Internet and, thanks to the most advanced modern communications technologies, has now made the earth, our great common home, a global village?"

What the world really needed, quipped Gizmodo writer Brian Lam, responding to the pope, was a new spiritual tool. Thus, digital believers were waiting for a John the Baptist -- Apple's Steve Jobs -- to "unveil Apple-Cellphone-Thingy, the true Jesus Phone" during the upcoming rites of the Macworld Conference.

That online exchange set the stage for an Apple advertisement that serves as a stained-glass image moment revealing the mysterious role that digital devices now play -- moment by moment -- in the lives of millions, according to University of Notre Dame business professor Brett Robinson, author of "Appletopia: Media Technology and the Religious Imagination of Steve Jobs."

In the ad, a human finger reached out of darkness toward the rows of icons on the glowing iconostasis of the new iPhone screen above this incantation: "Touching is Believing." For Robinson, there is no way to avoid a connection with the biblical image of Jesus inviting the doubting St. Thomas to put his finger into the wounds on his resurrected body and, thus, "be not faithless but believing."

"It's all about the metaphors," said Robinson, in a telephone interview. "You cannot explain what cannot be explained without metaphors. Technology needs metaphors to explain itself to the world and the same is true for religion."

Thus it's significant that, for some many consumers, the use of Apple products have become what scholars have long called the "Apple cult," he said. It's also clear that Jobs -- drawing on his '60s driven devotion to Eastern forms of religion -- set out to combine art, technology and philosophy into a belief brand that asked consumers to, as stated by another classic ad, to rebel and "think differently."

"It's easy to get into arguments about what is a religion and what is not," said Robinson. "But there's no question that the giant glass cube of the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue" in New York City serves as "a cathedral and that people go travel there on pilgrimages and that their local Apple Stores are like local parishes. ...

"The goal is to consume something bigger than themselves and then they can draw a sense of identity from those products."

Jobs knew all of that. After fleeing the Missouri Synod Lutheranism of his youth, he went out of his way to rattle traditional cages throughout his career. This was, after all, the man whose company logo was a rainbow apple -- minus one Edenic bite. He tested an early product with a prank call to the Vatican, pinned a $666 price tag on the Apple I and dressed as Jesus at the company's first Halloween party.

In his famous 2005 Stanford University address, Jobs told the graduates to "trust in something -- your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. ... Don't be trapped by dogma. ... Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice."

At the heart of the Apple mythos, stressed Robinson, is an amazing paradox, the yin-yang doctrine that Jobs was trying to sell consumers good computers in order to help them escape a chilly world dominated by bad computers. He sold his refined, graceful devices by using images of enlightenment and community, while users may end up spending untold lonely hours staring at digital mirrors in their hands or on their desks.

The bottom line: Have the products inspired by the "Jesus Phone" turned into narcissistic rosaries?

"That iPhone provides some of the comforts and a sense of security that religious faith provides," said Robinson. "It promises to connect you to the world and to the transcendent. ... Yet most people spend most of their time looking at the same five or six sites online -- like Facebook -- that primarily are about their own lives.

"They spend untold hours in this intimate ritual of touching those phones, clicking and clicking their way through their own interests, their own desires, their own lives. The emphasis ends up being on the 'I,' not the other."

Concerning those screaming babies in Mass

It was a blunt, honest, raw question and Deacon Greg Kandra knew it would stir deep emotions and fierce arguments among Catholic readers. The Catholic mother of six stressed that she sincerely wanted to know: "Why don't parents take screaming babies out of church?"

Nearly 200 online comments later -- with Kandra moderating comments to keep the dialogue constructive -- legions of Catholic writers are still airing their "screaming babies" differences at his "The Deacon's Bench" website and on other sites online.

The author of the original letter added: "When I politely ask the parent of a screaming child why they refuse to leave Mass so they don't disrupt it for everyone else, they get angry at me! ... There were four screamers at the morning Mass -- every Saturday the same families show up with screaming babies AND STAY in the chapel with them! People have expressed their desire that they leave the kids at home, but they don't."

Reactions on the other side were just as harsh, with Catholics expressing anger at those who glare at parents who bring noisy toddlers to church, allowing their children to act up Sunday after Sunday.

"Jesus embraced children, folks, and so does our church," read one typical response. "If you don't want to hear them cry, the solution is not to remove the holy little ones from the church. The solution is for you to go to the 7 a.m. quickie Mass or the solemn high Mass that takes three hours. Find a Mass kids aren't going to and shut yourself up in that one."

Catholics on one side accuse the others of being too judgmental. Then Catholics on the other side -- often from earlier generations -- argue that today's parents are not sensitive to the needs or others or strict enough when disciplining their children.

Believers on both sides insist that they are defending holiness of the Mass itself, as well as its role in the lives of their children.

Part of the problem, noted Kandra, is that Catholics on both sides have grown up in an era in which it is far too easy to "become lazy and spoiled," often jumping from parish to parish seeking the right "fit" for their personal tastes and prejudices. What if their current parish's Mass schedule doesn't fit a child's soccer schedule?

"Why should we be surprised," noted Kandra, by email, when "they can't abide something as normal -- and as intrusive -- as a baby's crying? ... It's vexing, and more than a little ironic, that a church that climbs on soapboxes and carries banners and prays endless rosaries in defense of life can be so intolerant of life when it's in the pew behind you, bawling.

"I still like what one priest said: a church without crying babies is dead. Let the babies come and cry. That's a sign of life."

Still, it's crucial to note that almost everyone agrees that priests need to ask the faithful to maintain some sense of decorum and discipline during services, noted Erin Manning, who posted during the original "screaming babies" debate and on her own "And Sometimes Tea" website. It isn't safe, for example, to let little children wander around the sanctuary during services.

But in the end, one person's "screaming baby" is another person's baby who is merely crying for a few minutes before slipping into a nap. There are also parents who hesitate to rush misbehaving children to the parish "cry room," where others may literally be playing with stacks of toys and ignoring the service altogether, she said.

Most of all, it's crucial for experienced parents to pass along what they have learned to parents in the next generation -- many of whom were raised in smaller families and, thus, never learned how to care for younger siblings.

"It's easy to forget that many of today's young parents are not only relying on daycare, etc., but grew up in it themselves," said Manning. In churches today "we have second- and even some third-generation parents who honestly don't know what sort of discipline is possible with young children or how to instill it. As the second oldest of nine children I knew ... that discipline was possible and required only patience, consistence and the willingness to keep trying even on days when nothing seemed to be going right."

Sobering words for Brazil's bishops

If Roman Catholicism can be compared with a fleet, then the Brazilian church has long been it's largest aircraft carrier -- with an estimated 123 million Catholics, more than any other country on earth. But that isn't how Pope Francis described this church during one of the less-publicized addresses during his epic World Youth Day sojourn in Rio de Janeiro. Instead of a rich and powerful vessel for the old establishment, he told Brazil's bishops that their church is now a humble sailing ship surrounded by the giant ships of globalization and Protestantism.

"The Church's barque is not as powerful as the great transatlantic liners which cross the ocean," said Francis, in the first of two lengthy, serious addresses to bishops from this region.

"Dear brothers, the results of our pastoral work do not depend on a wealth of resources, but on the creativity of love. ... Another lesson which the Church must constantly recall is that she cannot leave simplicity behind; otherwise she forgets how to speak the language of Mystery," said the official text. "At times we lose people because they don't understand what we are saying, because we have forgotten the language of simplicity and import an intellectualism foreign to our people."

The Argentinean pope didn't have to do the math concerning Brazil's 275 dioceses. As noted in a July 18 analysis from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, Catholic fortunes have clearly declined there in the 21st Century. Between 2000 and 2010, Catholics dropped from 74 percent of Brazil's population to 65 percent. In that same period, Protestantism grew from 15 percent of the population to 22 percent.

The rise in Pentecostalism has been particularly striking, with 6 percent of Brazil's population attending these churches in 1991 -- compared with 13 percent in 2010.

The texts from Pope Francis made it clear that he thinks the evangelistic efforts of local clergy have been weak and, in particular, that they must regain a common touch that resonates with the poor, the weak and those yearning for spiritual experiences that transcend mere lectures.

Comparing Catholicism's ancient traditions with the city of Jerusalem, the pope asked Brazil's bishops if they still have what it takes to win those who have fled their altars seeking forms of faith considered "more lofty, more powerful and faster" than the Catholicism that is their heritage.

"I would like all of us to ask ourselves today: Are we still a Church capable of warming hearts? A Church capable of leading people back to Jerusalem? Of bringing them home? Jerusalem is where our roots are: Scripture, catechesis, sacraments, community, friendship with the Lord, Mary and the apostles," he said. "Are we still able to speak of these roots in a way that will revive a sense of wonder at their beauty? ...

"People today are attracted by things that are faster and faster: rapid Internet connections, speedy cars and planes, instant relationships. But at the same time we see a desperate need for calmness, I would even say slowness. Is the Church still able to move slowly: to take the time to listen, to have the patience to mend and reassemble? Or is the Church herself caught up in the frantic pursuit of efficiency?"

When it comes to training pastors capable of doing this work, there is no quick fix and, warned Francis, "Bishops may not delegate this task."

By the time he addressed conference leaders from Latin America and the Caribbean, shortly before leaving the country, Pope Francis was openly stating his desire for bishops to leave the comfort of their ecclesiastical fortresses and to return to the pastoral front lines, working elbow to elbow with their people.

As one observer told "Whispers in the Loggia" blogger Rocco Palmo, "This will cause heart failure in certain quarters." The pope appealed for better preaching, improved Bible studies, a renewed presence among the poor, expanded use of the talents of women and a true openness to laypeople providing parish-level leadership in cooperation with their pastors.

"The key," said Palmo, via email, "is that Francis is far more invested on the 'culture war' inside the church" than in controversies about public issues that make headlines. The pope is "literally declaring war on the clericalism, decadence, etc. that he sees inside the walls than anything going on in the world outside."

Making a case for the common hymnal

There was a time when the faithful in the heavily Dutch corners of the Midwest would not have been able to sing along if the organist played the gospel classic, "Precious Lord, Take My Hand." True, some may have recognized the hymn that Mahalia Jackson sang at the 1968 funeral of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., since this was the civil rights leader's favorite: "Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on, let me stand. I am tired, I am weak, I am worn. Through the storm, through the night, lead me on to the light. Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home."

But, by 1987 this beloved African-American spiritual had been added to the Christian Reformed Church hymnal. A generation later, it has achieved the kind of stature that puts it in the core of the "In Death and Dying" pages of the church's new "Lift Up Your Hearts" hymnal.

"When you're creating a new hymnal, you know that you have to retain all those heart songs that just can't go away," said the Rev. Joyce Borger, editor of the 1,104-page volume, produced in collaboration with the Reformed Church in America. "We're talking about the hymns that you cannot imagine living without, and 'Precious Lord, Take My Hand' certainly falls into that category now. It has become one of our songs."

Research indicates the average church may have "a repertoire" of 150-plus hymns -- not counting Christmas carols and seasonal songs -- that worship leaders can list in the Sunday bulletin and know that most people will sing them with confidence.

The challenge facing teams that create hymnals is that "core songs" will vary radically from flock to flock, depending on where they are located, the dominant age groups in the pews and the cultural backgrounds of the worship leaders. The favorite-hymn list of a World War II generation pianist from rural Michigan will overlap some, but not much, with that of a Generation X guitarist in urban Detroit.

Also, while it's impossible to ignore classics from the Dutch Reformed tradition, Borger said "Lift Up Your Hearts" also needed to acknowledge the growing diversity found in today's churches, in North America and worldwide. In the age of increased contact between believers around the world -- not to mention YouTube -- it's common for suburban American teens to return from church trips to Africa or South America with notebooks full of new hymns they now cherish.

Then there is the surging popularity of pop-rock "praise choruses," which rise and fall in popularity from year to year, if not month to month. Also, the larger the modern church sanctuary, the more likely it is to feature video screens on which lyrics are constantly streamed into view. Why would digital worshippers want to tie up their hands with analog hymnals?

The pace of musical change is one reason hymnals are being now being recreated every generation, as opposed to remaining intact for a half a century or so as in the past, said historian John Witvliet, another member of the "Lift Up Your Hearts" team who leads the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Recent decades have seen a number of other factors that have caused musical earthquakes, he said, including a multimedia revolution in worship facilities, the global surge of Pentecostalism, the rise of seeker-friendly "megachurch" congregations that value relevance over tradition and increased ecumenical contacts between Catholic, evangelical and liberal Protestant churches

Thus, the 965 numbered selections in this new hymnal include 137 selections from its 1957 counterpart and 302 from a 1987 volume. However, it also includes at least 100 contemporary "praise choruses" and 50-plus hymns from around the world, with texts translated from 30 different languages. Every hymn in the book is annotated with guitar chords.

"There is no period of time in church history -- ever -- in which there have been this many waves of change shaping Christian worship at the same time," said Witvliet. "A generation ago, we assumed that the hymnal in the pew WAS a church's musical repertoire. No one assumes that now."

But no matter how rapid the changes, he added, hymnals are symbols that the "church needs a common body of music to help keep it united. There must be some ties that bind."

An earthy reality in the words of Pope Francis

There is nothing unusual about a Catholic leader urging priests to draw closer to their flocks, to focus on day-to-day issues that bridge the gap between pulpit and pew. Still, it caught Vatican insiders off guard when Pope Francis, a week after his installation Mass, used a somewhat pungent image when discussing this problem.

"This is precisely the reason for the dissatisfaction of some, who end up sad -- sad priests -- in some sense becoming collectors of antiques or novelties, instead of being shepherds living with the smell of the sheep," he said. "This I ask you: be shepherds, with the 'odor of the sheep,' make it real, as shepherds among your flock, fishers of men."

At this point, "it's safe to say everyone in the Catholic world knows that line, if they're paying attention at all," said Father Robert Barron, president of Mundelein Seminary at the University of St. Mary of the Lake near Chicago. He is also known for his work as founder of the Word on Fire media ministry and as an NBC News analyst.

It's easy, when talking about this pope's back-to-basics style, to stress his life in Argentina, growing up in the home of immigrants from northern Italy. But when considering his preaching, said Barron, the key is to remember his experience at the parish and diocesan levels. While Pope Benedict XVI speaks with the precision of an academic comfortable in European classrooms, Pope Francis has spent much of his life preaching in slums.

"When you look at him in the pulpit you just have to say, 'This is a preacher in a parish.' He's going up there with notes, not a formal five-page text" the Vatican press officers distributed in advance, said Barron, in a telephone interview. "Every now and then you catch him looking up with a kind of twinkle in his eyes and you can tell he's enjoying what he's doing, what he's saying."

Recently, the conservative journal First Things collected a few "vivid images" drawn from early sermons and remarks by the Jesuit pope. For example, the pope has warned Catholics not to focus on temporary things and, thus, become "teen-agers for life." On another occasion, he said some Catholics complain so often they could become "Mr. or Mrs. Whiner" or end up with faces resembling "pickled peppers."

Other sound bites in this list included:

* On March 14, Francis used a bit of policy wonk lingo: "We can walk as much as we want, we can build many things, but if we do not profess Jesus Christ, things go wrong. We may become a charitable NGO, but not the church, the bride of the Lord."

* It's crucial for Catholics to live their faith, not just talk about it privately, the pope said in mid-April: "When we do this the church becomes a mother church that bears children. ... But when we don't do it, the church becomes not a mother but a babysitter church, which takes care of the child to put him to sleep."

* While some insist on talking about faith in vague terms, Francis reminded an April 18 audience: "When we talk to God we speak with persons who are concrete and tangible, not some misty, diffused god-like 'god-spray,' that’s a little bit everywhere but who knows what it is."

* Stressing the importance of Easter, he noted: "Efforts have often been made to blur faith in the Resurrection of Jesus and doubts have crept in, even among believers. It is a little like that 'rosewater' faith, as we say; it is not a strong faith. And this is due to superficiality and sometimes to indifference, busy as we are with a thousand things considered more important than faith, or because we have a view of life that is solely horizontal."

What runs through these words is the new pope's desire to awaken in his listeners a "religious sense," a "religious sensibility" that insists that there is more to life in the real world than mere materialism, said Barron.

Pope Francis knows that "if you want people to act, you have to touch them at the level of the real, the earthy and the practical," he said. "As a pastor, he has used this language before. Now he is using these kinds of images again -- from the throne of St. Peter."