Buying St. Nostradamus

When American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon, a jet-fuel fireball claimed most of its victims before they could even dive under their desks.

But as rescue crews worked through the charred halls, word spread of an amazing sign of hope. On the second floor -- steps from where the plane sliced away the building -- stood a stool holding a large, open book that had not been burned. Eyewitnesses reportedly said it was a Bible and the news flew across the nation via the Internet.

"It's such a perfect metaphor," noted Barbara Mikkelson, a curator at the San Fernando Valley Folklore Society's urban legends research site (www.snopes.com). "It's like, in the midst of all of this death, mayhem and horror, this one enduring symbol of faith was untouched. ...

"When you look at it that way, it's kind of a shame it turned out to be a dictionary."

Imagine what people would have thought if it had been a copy of "Nostradamus: The Complete Prophecies."

That's the book by the French astrologer who "in 1654" wrote: "On the 11th day of the 9th month, two metal birds will crash into two tall statues, in the new city, and the world will end soon after." Only, Nostradamus -- who died in 1566 -- didn't write that. He also didn't write some of the other verses attributed to him in waves of recent emails. Alas, it's too late for the converts who bought those Nostradamus books and videos.

Truth is, people are buying all kinds of things. Rumors and visions are everywhere.

"As the saying goes, the problem isn't that Americans don't believe in anything. It's that they believe in everything," said George Gallup, Jr. "What this says to me is that people are searching, but they aren't rooted in the orthodox faith. Most of them will say they are Christians, or even born-again Christians, but they aren't grounded in any traditional set of beliefs. ...

"People are roaring off in all directions. They're hanging onto to whatever helps them feel better, including some things that are pretty nutty."

News reports have featured stirring images of Americans flocking into sanctuaries. According to the headlines, terrorism has stirred the fires of faith. But the reality is more complex than that. While it's easy to find signs that more Americans are hungry for "spiritual experience," there is little evidence that they're committed to the doctrines and disciplines of any one faith.

Last summer, the Gallup Organization produced data indicating that belief in biblical authority has fallen to an all-time low. While 93 percent of all households own at least one Bible, only 27 percent of people polled affirmed that Scripture contains "the actual word of God in all instances." That figure was 65 percent in 1963.

Meanwhile, the same "Emerging Trends" newsletter contained an article noting "a significant increase in belief in psychic, paranormal and occult phenomena over the past decade." A third or more of Americans now believe in such things as "haunted houses, possession by the devil, ghosts, telepathy, extraterrestrial beings having visited earth and clairvoyance." Belief in angels also continues to soar.

So it isn't surprising that Americans are seeking spiritual answers to questions raised by the hellish images they witnessed on 9/11, said Frank Newport, editor of the Gallup Poll. But it also isn't shocking that most of them are turning to the World Wide Web, mall bookstores and video stores instead of to churches.

After the attacks, the percentage of those polled that said they had attended worship during the previous seven days rose from 41 to 47 percent, over the numbers in May. The percentage who said that some kind of religion was "very important" in their life rose from 57 to 64 percent.

"That whole story may turn out to have been an urban legend," said Newport. "Yes, more people seem to have gone to church, that first weekend, but it was nothing truly extraordinary. ... I'm sure there are all kinds of anecdotes about people stopping and smelling the roses and thinking twice about their lives. But we're just not seeing any evidence of some kind of Great Awakening out there."

Apocalyptic questions for the press

Surely it was the strangest question a journalist asked on the day the world changed.

The mid-day mass at her New York City parish drew a larger crowd than usual, Peggy Noonan reported in the Wall Street Journal, and the people on the kneelers looked "stricken." As the rite ended, the columnist and speechwriter sought out a neighbor. Her family was OK.

"Did a rat stand on its hind legs this morning?", asked Noonan.

The Park Avenue woman said "no."

This was a question with a history. In the mid-1990s, this neighbor told Noonan about her growing sense of dread about New York City's future. Out of the blue, she said: "If ever something bad is going to happen to the city, I pray each day that God will give me a sign. That he will let me see a rat stand up on the sidewalk. So I'll know to gather the kids and go."

In 1998, Noonan wrote that she too was convinced someone was about to do "the big, terrible thing to New York or Washington." It might be a nuclear bomb, chemicals or germs.

"Three billion men, and it takes only a dozen bright and evil ones to harness and deploy," she wrote, in an essay reprinted after 9/11. "What are the odds it will happen? Put it another way: What are the odds it will not? Low. Nonexistent, I think."

What was the answer? Noonan urged readers to, "Pray. Unceasingly. Take the time."

It wasn't a typical question and she didn't offer a typical journalistic answer. But when the flying bombs hit the World Trade Center, things turned upside down in public life and in the news, said Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard. This attack did more than shake the White House and the U.S. Congress. It shook America's soul.

"We left an era of peace and prosperity and considerable decadence," he told a Baptist Press student journalism conference in Nashville. Now, the nation faces "war and economic trouble and serious issues that will force us to think on a much larger scale. ^?Our culture changed, a little bit. These changes may not be permanent, but they are certainly big right now."

Journalists need to consider apocalyptic questions that once would have seemed insane. Here are a few I have heard lately:

* If bin Laden wants to conquer the Islamic world, toppling "sinful" and "Westernized" Muslim regimes in the process, what would the U.S. and NATO do if his revolution seemed poised to take the Arabian peninsula? What are the implications for Jerusalem if bin Laden captures Mecca and Medina?

* Has anyone considered the implications of a blast leveling the Vatican during the current month-long synod between Pope John Paul II and the world's Catholic bishops?

* According to Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, the real war is "not between civilizations, but within them -- between those Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and Jews with a modern and progressive outlook and those with a medieval one." This raises a crucial question: How many elite progressives assume that orthodox believers who defend ancient traditions - this pope leaps to mind -- are spiritually on the side of terror and repression?

* In 1998, Osama bin Laden issued a commandment -- or "fatwa" -- that Muslims should kill as many Americans as possible, broadening his earlier call for the deaths of American soldiers. What would happen if Muslims who say bin Laden has distorted their faith issued a "fatwa" against him? Will anyone dare?

Barnes asked this question: "Has President Bush been called by God to be president and lead the nation at this particular time? ... Is this why he is here? Does God have him here for a purpose?" Barnes noted that the circuitous path that led the one-time party boy and under-achieving businessman to the White House has led some to speculate that "God's hand is on this man and on his life, as he deals with this war or terrorism."

All kinds of people will, of course, disagree about how to answer questions of this kind. But it will be hard for journalists to ignore the fact that people are asking them.

Saints at Ground Zero

The first time Father John Romas approached ground zero it was hard to find the site of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church.

Rescue workers in the World Trade Center ruins then watched in silence as the man in black robes fell to his knees and began weeping.

"My church was gone. There was no church at all -- no doors, no walls, no windows," said the priest, trying to express himself in English. "I cried and cried. Then I looked up and saw what was left of the towers. Then I started crying again and I cried twice as long. ...

"We will rebuild. There is no question. We have suffered a great loss, but our church can be rebuilt. But how can we replace the people, the thousands of lives? How can we weep enough those who were lost?"

Across the street, workers are searching for the bodies of nearly 6,500 people who are missing after the terrorist attack. The members of St. Nicholas do not think that any parishioners died when the towers, a mere 250 feet away, fell onto their small sanctuary in an avalanche of concrete, glass, steel and fire.

Nevertheless, the Orthodox believers want to search in the two-story mound of debris for the remains of three loved ones who died long ago -- the relics of St. Nicholas, St. Katherine and St. Sava. Small pieces of their skeletons were kept in a gold-plated box marked with an image of Christ. This ossuary was stored in a 700-pound, fireproof safe.

"We do not think it could have burned. But perhaps it was crushed," said Father Romas. "Who knows? All we can do is wait and pray."

Workers have only been able to recover a charred cross, a twisted brass candelabra and bits of marble that may have come from the altar. At mid-week, the search for the relics had been postponed again.

It's hard for outsiders to understand what this loss would mean to a parish, said Father Robert Stephanopoulos, dean of the city's Cathedral of the Holy Trinity. These ties with the saints are more than symbolic. This mystery is rooted in centuries of tradition.

"We believe the Communion of the Saints is real and that we worship and pray with all the saints in heaven," he said. "But these particular saints are also a part of that parish family, in a unique way. They have been a part of that parish for many years and, of course, the people want to see these relics recovered. Yes, this is a family matter."

The building that became St. Nicholas (www.stnicholasnyc.org) was built as a private residence and even spent a few years as a tavern. The four-story structure was not dramatic on the outside, except for the sight of its Byzantine cross standing in stark relief against the soaring glass-and-steel towers. But on the inside it was a haven in the urban chaos. Its candles and icons -- gifts from Czar Nicholas II of Russia -- inspired people of many church traditions to spend their lunch hours in prayer.

Father Romas said he does not know the names of the saints whose relics were sealed into the altar 80 years ago. Once those relics were in place, the altar would have been washed and vested in a rite that in some ways resembles a baptism. These traditions began in the early church, where persecuted Christians often worshipped in catacombs near the tombs of the martyrs.

This parish is named after St. Nicholas of Myra, the 4th century saint who in many Western lands evolved into St. Nick. The bishop is the patron saint of merchants, endangered children and seafarers, a connection with the history of lower Manhattan. The relics of St. Katherine and St. Sava came from monasteries connected with those saints.

"They are irreplaceable. They are special links to these saints that we love," said Lorraine Romas, the priest's wife. "But our church will live on, no matter what. We hope that someday our new sanctuary will be a place where people can come and pray and light candles for those who died. We must have a place like that."

What comes after the anger?

Terry Anderson thought he had conquered his anger at the terrorists who locked him away for 2,545 days.

The Associated Press veteran had traveled back to Lebanon to make a documentary. He met with officials of Hezbollah. It was hard, but he did it.

Then an image on his giant-screen television brought it all back. Anderson was watching a routine news interview with a politician in Beirut, when he recognized his voice. This was the man the hostages called "the boss," in their shadowy world of blindfolds and secret prisons.

"I knew that voice. ... We had to listen to him day after day. He was in charge," Anderson said, speaking this week at St. Andrews School in Boca Raton, Fla. "And there he was in my living room, larger than life on my television screen in Ohio. I'm watching him and listening to him and I'm thinking, 'You bastard! I am still angry, because you did that to me.'

"That surprised me. It surprised me that it was still buried in there someplace."

On Sept. 11, he was stunned and horrified all over again.

Anderson has paid his dues. He knows all about terrorism, nationalism, religious fanaticism and the other "isms" that haunt the Middle East. He knows more than anyone could want to know about the agonizing path that broken people will have to walk after the events in New York City, Washington, D.C, and rural Pennsylvania.

But Anderson isn't sure that he can grasp the pain felt by those who lost loved ones on 9/11, even after his years as a hostage and as a war correspondent. Anderson said he isn't even sure what to call what happened on that day. "Terrorism" is being radically redefined.

"These terrorists ^?are not asking for anything. There are no demands. They simply want to destroy," he said. "There is no question of negotiation. ... They are anarchists. It used to be that terror had political aims. They can't really have any expectations that they can damage us in any lasting way. This is terror for the sake of terrorizing people."

Anderson's testimony on faith and forgiveness was scheduled before the bombings. Above all, he said he considers himself blessed. He is thankful for his life, marriage, family and work as a writer and teacher. He said he is thankful for the faith that helped him stay sane in his chains, locked away with a circle of brothers that included a Catholic priest and a biblical scholar.

But this is a hard time to preach about the power of forgiveness.

"I don't think the people who lost loved ones at the World Trade Center even want to HEAR the word 'forgiveness,' right now. ... They are still grieving, as we all are, as a nation," he said. "When I speak about forgiveness, I am speaking totally about my personal experience, my own feelings and my own search. I cannot speak for anyone else."

During the decade since his release, the tenets of his faith have brought him pain as well as comfort. It's hard to get past the words that are "right there on the very first page of our contract" with God, he said. "That's the place where it says, 'Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.' "

Anderson said his wife once described the lessons they have learned this way: "If you want the joy, you can't have the anger."

What does this mean for the nation? Anderson said he is convinced America can seek security, without surrendering its values of freedom. The free world can demand justice for Osama bin Laden, without making decisions rooted in a thirst for revenge.

"The people that kidnapped me, just like the people who committed this terrible atrocity, are not sorry today. They are not asking for forgiveness," he said. "No, forgiveness is about what is in me. Hatred and anger are terribly debilitating. They are soul destroying even, I think, when they are righteous.

"We have every reason to be terribly anger at those people. They need to be punished. But anger will lead us, I think, into places where we do not want to go."

Father, forgive them

Just after dawn, Father Seamus Murtagh got up to write his Sunday meditation.

The appointed text was the parable of the prodigal son in the Gospel of St. Luke, with its twin themes of repentance and forgiveness. He decided his flock at St. Ann's Catholic Church in West Palm Beach, Fla., would hear about forgiveness. He wrote a simple title on his work -- "Father, Forgive Them."

It was Tuesday morning. Soon the events crashed into his prayers.

"As I pondered the news, one of my reactions was -- I must change that message," said Murtagh, his gentle Irish voice tight with emotion as hepreached at an interfaith service Tuesday night. "So I sat down to re-write the message. Then I asked myself, 'What am I doing? Is it OK for me to speak about forgiveness in the abstract, if we are afraid to do it in the concrete?

"I decided that the message stays the same ... We need to really believe what we believe about our God and that it is in forgiveness that we are healed and made whole. We are transformed ourselves in the act of forgiving, more, perhaps, than the people who are forgiven."

There were thousands of services held in the hours after the terrorist attacks, with stunned people reciting ancient words about ancient mysteries. This was merely one of those services. There were businessmen from the nearby Trump Towers. There were young people who seemed to have come from the beach. The kneelers at the historic Holy Trinity Episcopal Church were lined with mothers, fathers and children who had watched hell unfold on television.

When all is said and done, said Murtagh, Americans must be driven "kicking and screaming into the word of forgiveness" while shunning the "deep satisfaction of revenge, of closure through getting even." Those touched by the tragedy mustremember that God is "a God of forgiveness, a God of peace and a God of justice."

There were stories to tell at each and every prayer service, as global terrorism lurched into the age of the cell telephone and the World Wide Web. From coast to coast, everyone seemed to know someone who knew someone who had received a call that answered an anguished prayer or carved a wound into the soul.

At this service, Rabbi Howard Shapiro of Temple Israel turned to Hebrew for a prayer of thanksgiving that his son's daily subway trip through the World Trade Center had ended in safety. Then the verses he read from Isaiah included these sobering words: "All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower ofthe field. The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever."

The reading from St. Matthew was almost hard to bear: "Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all of these things will be given to you as well. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

Afterwards, I called Father Thaddeus Barnum, who wrote a book entitled "Where is God in Suffering and Tragedy?" about his experiences as a counselor inside the crash site of USAir flight 427 outside of Pittsburgh. Those memories washed over him again Tuesday, a flashback to days that changed his life forever.

"There is so, so much that we have all taken for granted. It's the little things, the little gifts, the little details of daily life with our lovedones," he said, piecing together his thoughts for his next trip into a pulpit. "Scripture tells us to love God with all of our hearts and all of our minds and to love each other."

"That is what this is all about. This reminds us that we are too busy to love God and we are even too busy to love each other. We take all of that for granted. We belong to God and we belong to each other. This makes us see that, whether we want to or not."

My Generation: Hooking Up, Part II

Things can get pretty tense when parents and teen-agers talk about premarital sex.

No matter how bad it gets, some questions must be asked. But these days it isn't enough for adults to grill children. Something a bit more risky and unnerving needs to happen first, according to philosopher J. Budziszewski. Children may need to ask their parents some questions.

Here's one: "Mom, did you shack up with dad or anybody else before you got married?" Or how about this one: "Dad, how many girls did you 'hook up' with before you met mom?"

Parents who joined the sexual revolution often have some explaining to do. Absolute candor may not be the answer, but neither is silence. This is especially true for parents, educators and clergy who say that they want to defend centuries of Judeo-Christian teachings that sex outside of marriage is sin and a threat to spiritual and emotional wholeness. These adults may, literally, need to confess their sins and seek forgiveness.

"It's always tough to repent. I think a lot of adults are silent because they know they made their own mistakes in the past," said Budziszewski, who teaches at the University of Texas. He also writes about moral dilemmas in modern college life for www.Boundless.org under the byline of Prof. M.E. Theophilus."

"So parents are out there saying, 'How can I tell my child to abstain from sex before marriage when I know that I didn't? How do I answer their questions?' "

Some adults lie. Others choose silence. Budziszewski believes it would be more compassionate for them to say: "Look, I made mistakes and I have suffered the consequences. I know what I am talking about. Please, don't follow me there."

When adults are silent, children draw their own conclusions. It's hard for young people to figure out the rules when their parents and mentors have lots of motivation not to get too specific in discussions of sexual ethics. It's easy for the big picture to get blurred.

For example, a recent survey of college women commission by the Independent Women's Forum found that 83 percent said, "Being married is very important to me" and 63 percent expected to meet their mate during their years on campus. Yet 90 percent of those interviewed said that a sexual trend called "hooking up" was common at their schools and 40 percent said they had experienced it. Most defined "hooking up" as when a "girl and guy get together for a sexual encounter and don't necessarily expect anything further."

The ends and the means simply don't add up, said Budziszewski. Millions of young people say they want to find partners for traditional, faithful, committed marriages. Yet they appear to be making sexual choices shaped by hormones and confused emotions. This didn't work for the Baby Boomers and now it isn't working for their children.

The study, "Hooking Up, Hanging Out and Hoping for Mr. Right, found that many young women feel abused and pressured, living on campuses where there may be twice as many females as males or odds that are even worse. They have been told to seek romance, but not to pressure guys for commitments, to take responsibility for their own decisions, but not to judge the predatory acts of others.

Meanwhile, the statistics roll in about date rape, eating disorders, depression and divorce.

"Their culture has told them -- in so many ways -- that they need to compete for guys," said Budziszewski. "That's a losing strategy. ... You don't build trust with a guy by sleeping with him. You don't build a relationship that will last for a lifetime, by sleeping with a guy. You don't escape the sins of your parents, by sleeping with a guy."

Many parents, clergy and religious educators simply do not want to talk about it. But if they will not address these issues, who will?

"People in my generation," he said, "are going to have to make a decision about what they did in the past, if they want to talk honestly to their children in the present. At some point, they need to ask this question: 'Do I love my children enough to tell them the truth?' "

Hooking up, in the silence -- Part I

The girls thought they were "hooking up" with some fraternity brothers.

But the guys called it "Showtime at the Apollo." The game went like this, said one of Vigen Guroian's students, describing in a class assignment what went on at her boyfriend's fraternity at another college. A boy would bring a girl home, then leave the curtain parted on the glass door onto the dual-access balcony. Then his fraternity brothers in the next room could sit outside and watch.

"Now my boyfriend's defense of his brothers is that any girl who will allow you to sleep with her on the first night, and doesn't leave after you begin to do such degrading sexual acts, deserves it," wrote the student. The bottom line: "You only treat a girl like a slut, if she is a slut."

What did the girls think they were doing, auditioning for suburban siren roles in American Pie 3? It's even more sobering to ponder the roles played by the colleges, said Guroian, professor of theology at Loyola College in Baltimore.

"The failure of America's institutions of higher education -- especially that of Christian schools -- is not merely administrative. It is a failure of vision and religious and educational mission," he wrote, at www.Wilberforce.org. "When students are learning all the wrong habits in their daily college life, how can a truly humanistic higher learning occur?

"How can I teach Christian ethics with force and effect in the classroom when my college will not address or remedy the degrading living conditions my students have described?"

Every fall, millions of students go to college. Every fall, faculty, administrators and the parents who pay the bills have another chance to ask: "Do we really want to know what's going on?"

The feisty Independent Women's Forum recently offered an unnerving glimpse into the moral and sexual challenges facing co-eds in a report called "Hooking Up, Hanging Out and Hoping for Mr. Right." It was based on interviews with 62 women on 11 campuses, backed with follow-up telephone work with 1,000 young women.

Courtship is dead and dating is on life support. What has emerged is "hooking up," which most defined as "when a girl and guy get together for a sexual encounter and don't necessarily expect anything further." For young women, this intentionally vague term can refer to anything from kissing to heavy foreplay, from oral sex to intercourse.

More than 90 percent of the women said "hooking up" was common and 40 percent said they had experienced this phenomenon. Some said this made them feel desirable and helped them compete for males in today's overwhelmingly female campus scene. Others said "hooking up" made them feel awkward, ashamed and used. Yet 83 percent said, "Being married is very important to me" and 63 percent expected to meet their mate at college.

Washington Post columnist William Raspberry's reaction was blunt: "These women are out of their minds, and the adults who should be teaching them better ... have pretty much walked away from the job."

Political philosopher J. Budziszewski has watched this trend at the University of Texas and, writing as the fictional "Prof. M.E. Theophilus," he also addresses campus moral dilemmas for www.Boundless.org. Several parts of this study rang true for him, especially the pivotal role that faith played for the women who were trying to live chaste and modest lives.

But no matter what choices they had made, almost all -- 87 percent - stressed that they thought it was wrong to pass judgment on the sexual behavior of anyone, even males who were "hooking up" with scores of women. Many also said they could not lean on their parents. Nearly 40 percent of the girls from homes rocked by divorce reported "hooking up" more than six times, compared with about 20 percent of those from intact homes.

"They have been taught that they must not judge," said Budziszewski. "So when they are hurt, they have no one to blame but themselves. They can't even say the guy is a rat. Young women can't even speak the truth to each other and help protect each other."

Silent guns on Religious Right

Once there was a man who lived in a lighthouse on the foggy Atlantic.

This is the start of an old sermon illustration, yet one that is relevant after the 2000 White House race and the church-state seminar that surrounded the stem-cell research compromise.

As the story goes, this lighthouse had a gun that sounded a warning every hour. The keeper tended the beacon and kept enough shells in the gun so it could keep firing. After decades, he could sleep right through the now-routine blasts. Then the inevitable happened. He forgot to load extra shells and, in the dead of night, the gun did not fire.

This rare silence awoke the keeper, who leapt from bed shouting, "What was that sound?"

There has been a similar silence lately in American politics. Insiders are starting to notice the silence of a particular set of big guns. President Bush's strategists seem to have tamed the tongues of some of the most outspoken, and controversial, conservatives -- James Dobson and the Revs. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.

"I was absolutely amazed that those leaders actually worked quite hard for the Republican ticket and didn't make the kind of headlines that they typically made that would disillusion other voters," noted political analyst John Green of the University of Akron. "Yes, there is a good untold story there."

The movement that outsiders call the "Christian Right" is not a monolith. This is especially true when its leaders try to balance their idealistic stands on moral issues -- such as abortion and stem-cell research -- with the harsh realities of electoral politics.

When it came time to attack the views of progressive evangelicals such as Bill Clinton and Al Gore, these conservatives found it easy to preach similar sermons. Politicos on the left and right grew accustomed to the roar of their sound bites. But how are Dobson, Falwell and Robertson supposed to handle the inevitable ups and downs of their new president, the current born-again occupant of the White House?

"The hard-core pragmatists think that Bush ought to be given time and that only so much can be achieved," explained Green. "The hard-core purists never went along with that strategy -- they were induced to be quiet during the campaign, but they never bought into it."

Nevertheless, the big guns have remained amazingly quiet. This balancing act is starting to get tricky, and conspicuous. The stem-cell decision was a critical moment, with the president working overtime in an attempt to display moral gravitas, while desperately needing a compromise that would help him avoid the fatal Religious Right label in media reports.

The patriarchs of the right faced a similar challenge. They needed to praise the president that they have openly supported, while finessing the fact that he had compromised.

Robertson was the most positive: "I believe that President Bush provided an elegant solution to the thorny issue. The president has balanced the profound ethical concerns of those of us who deplore the wanton destruction of the unborn with the heartfelt concerns of the population who desire legitimate, scientific research."

Falwell expressed concern that Congress might twist this decision. But he hailed it as this president's finest hour, affirming that Bush "remained true to his pro-life commitment by boldly reaffirming his promise to protect unborn children - the most innocent of life." The decision was the "only viable solution to this moral puzzle," said Falwell.

Of the big three, it was Dobson who most openly confessed that Bush had softened the existing ban, by allowing federal funds to be used in research on stem cell lines already derived from embryos destroyed in private labs. "We grieve for the lives of these embryos," Dobson said. "But we are delighted that the government will not take part in killing any more."

But Dobson did deliver the sound bite that the White House needed: "President Bush faced tremendous political pressure to betray his pro-life commitment. He deserves praise from citizens who understand that it is never justified to destroy one life in order to possibly save another."

There was much more that could have been said. Right now, the guns are remarkably quiet.

Faith, journalism and 'the facts'

After another day of watching Pope John Paul II shake Communist Poland, American political philosopher Jean Bethke Elshtain and her hosts gathered at a television to see how the state's reporters would handle this spiritual drama.

Polish viewers, in 1983, did not see and hear millions of people chanting, "We forgive you" to their oppressors or the Polish pope repeatedly voicing the importance of solidarity -- "So-li-dar-nosc!" -- between God and his people. The TV news did not show his grief about martial law.

The reports didn't lie. They merely edited key facts.

"Who knew? They had about 30 seconds of a visual of John Paul speaking, but you did not hear his words," said Elshtain. "There was a narrator talking. The former archbishop of Krakow -- now the pope -- back in Poland -- end of story. Then they shifted, and it was one of those real Orwellian moments, to something about the level of coal production in Silesia. ...

"They didn't flat-out lie. They didn't say, 'And by the way, the pope hasn't been here today.' But was that the TRUTH of those events? Of course not."

News reports are longer and more detailed when John Paul comes to America. There are interviews with Catholics protesting church teachings on sex. Experts dissect the church-state implications of masses on public property. Reporters ponder his impact on Hispanic voting in Florida or California. There are features on pope-soap-on-a-rope and other novelties. The pope is seen as a head of state that delivers sound bites about public policies, not sacramental mysteries.

The reports don't lie. They may miss the spiritual facts.

"There seems to be this belief out there that religious truths cannot be examined," said Elshtain, speaking last week in Potomac, Md., to 200 journalists from 40-plus nations. "The media act as if the truth claims of religion are somehow strange and unable to be tested. As opposed to what? Political theory? Economics? Science? The arts? ...

"Religion does involve leaps of faith. That is also true of other important parts of life that journalists manage to take seriously. Yet religion is always singled out as somehow being uniquely irrational and the source of bizarre behavior."

The conference was called "Uncovering the Truth" and organized by Gegrapha, a network of Christians in mainstream newsrooms. "Gegrapha" is Greek for I have written. Pontius Pilate is quoted as using this term when asked why he identified Jesus as king of the Jews. Pilate said: What I have written, I have written. It was also the world-weary Pilate who asked, "What is truth?" He needed the facts.

Elshtain said journalists insist that their news reports are rooted in facts drawn from rational observations about the real world. They gather these facts as they search for "truth." But where do journalists find their information? They focus on politics, economics and other respectable sectors of the public life. Religion is not worthy.

Thus, journalists struggle to offer accurate, balanced, unbiased coverage of religious life. Journalists often panic when religious beliefs affect public life, as they so often do.

"It's true that it may be hard to write down the truth claims of religion, like facts in a ledger," said Elshtain. "But it's also true that religious truth claims set in motion real actions, by real people, in the real world. These religious words and acts and beliefs affect real life in the public square. You can report the facts about this."

Journalists must learn to accurately define religious terms and find informed, credible sources to speak for all sides in complicated controversies. It would help if more reporters received specialized training about religion, so they would have some idea what they're writing about. Believers get angry when news people mangle the facts.

Journalists must not become cynical about religion, Elshtain said, because this will shatter public trust in the press.

After all, a society that is "skeptical of everything, except its own skepticism" will struggle to maintain a healthy public life, she said. "There needs to be questioning. There needs to be debate. But a certain kind of radical skepticism that denies our capacity to know the truth -- that cannot sustain democratic institutions."