The American Catholic Church on TV

No doubt about it, the creators of ABC's "Nothing Sacred" knew which scenes would get the most ink.

Like the premiere's scene in which a girl confesses that she's tempted to get an abortion and Father Ray tells her to follow her conscience. Or that night at the Valhalla Inn when he is tempted to sleep with the woman who was his lover during seminary.

But the real headline grabber is Father Ray's hip sermon bemoaning the church's obsession with sex.

"I am declaring a moratorium on sins of the flesh in St. Thomas Parish," he says, and then holds up a Bible. "You see this little book? This is the gospel. If it was written today, it wouldn't get published. Not enough sex. And all of the stuff that we've reduced religion to -- contraception, homosexuality, promiscuity, abortion -- they aren't in here. Oh, maybe a mention. But they're not what the book is about. And I was not ordained to be a sexual traffic cop, which is what I'm turning into most of the time. So, until further notice, I will not hear any more sexual sins in the confessional."

Cue the congregation, which applauds.

Father Ray isn't obsessed with sex, of course, and neither are the writers of this fall's most controversial new offering in prime time. And executive producer David Manson is shocked -- repeat shocked -- that many have been offended by events in this fictional parish.

"Hopefully, it'll be clear after a period of time that we're trying to give voice to many different points of view, that we believe there is an active pluralism inside the church," he wrote, defending the series on its Internet site. "We're trying to make sure that different points of view get articulated intelligently and with passion. ... We would like to get people thinking and talking about not only issues of the spirit but about the notion of inclusion."

Millions of American Catholics would say "amen" and will find "Nothing Sacred" beautiful, well acted, accurate and spiritually sensitive. These Catholics feel at home in the pluralistic body that many commentators call the American Catholic Church. But millions of others will disagree and see the series as another Hollywood attack on the Roman Catholic Church. One person's "dialogue" is another's "dissent." Meanwhile, the gospel according to "Nothing Sacred" is crystal clear: discipline, doctrines and creeds are the enemies of freedom, faith and spirituality.

In addition to sex, the premiere punched other buttons. Entertainment Weekly reports that it was written by Father Bill Kane, a Jesuit, using the pseudonym Paul Leland.

One reason Father Ray is so exhausted and angry is that he is hounded by critics who tape his unorthodox whispers in the confession booth and leak them to the ecclesiastical police. "It's just politics," says another priest. The problem, another priest adds, is a traditionalist hit squad called "Vinculum Caritatis" - Latin for "chains of love." This fictionalized group is probably a cross between advocates of the Latin Mass and another conservative group called Catholics United for the Faith.

And then there are the sacraments. During Mass, Father Ray offers a prayer over the bread and wine that is straight out of the Shirley Maclaine school of liturgy, saying: "Transform us, as you will transform these gifts, into life - deep and true." Later, he baptizes an infant without making the sign of the cross or referring to the Trinity of "Father, Son and Holy Spirit." In the most dramatic scene, the priest dabs holy oil on the forehead of a troubled teen who has rejected Christianity, while invoking the Eastern martial arts traditions of Sholin monks.

"The show's central premise is that the only good Catholic is a bad Catholic," said Father Gregory Coiro, media relations director for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, who has been critiquing rough scripts for ABC. "It's like they are saying that traditional Roman Catholicism is now a false substitute for the `real thing,' which is some kind of new faith that is completely built on experience and feelings. Well, that isn't the Catholic faith."

Mother Teresa -- not a 'nice' person

It was another day in the Home for the Dying, a year before a 1969 British film that made Mother Teresa the most unlikely of global superstars.

As was her custom, she was taking her turn doing basic chores. Over and over, the tiny nun and a coworker - an Anglican seminarian named Sathi Bunyan - lifted patients off the thin pads on narrow steel-framed cots. Fresh sheets weren't enough. Workers also used this agonizing ritual as a chance to cleanse the sores of those found abandoned along the streets of Calcutta.

"There was one moment that I will never forget," recalled Bunyan, who now serves as a priest in Loveland, Colo. "We were trying to pick up a man whose back was simply covered with sores. This was very hard and, as I lifted his shoulders, my hands slipped and he fell back onto the bed. It was agonizing."

Mother Teresa waited a moment and then prodded her disciple to try again. Her face revealed both compassion and determination. Yes, the man was in pain. Yes, lifting him again, peeling the soiled sheet from his body, and washing his sores, would hurt. But this did not change the fact that this needed to be done, for his sake.

It wasn't that Mother Teresa had no feelings or had become oblivious to suffering. Just the opposite -- she didn't let her feelings prevent her from doing what needed to be done. She washed people's wounds.

"This is what made Mother who she was," said Bunyan, who returned to India four years ago to take part in a celebration of her ministry. "She was not otherworldly. Too often, calling her a saint is just as bad as saying she's crazy. ... It still puts her off in an unreal world of very spiritual people. Then we don't have to take her seriously."

Truth is, Mother Teresa was not a "nice" person in the usual sense of the word. She wasn't trying to be nice. She was trying to be good. But even her goodness had an edge to it. She was as good as a dentist probing decaying teeth, a parent warning a straying child, a priest urging a sinner to repent. She loved people, but she ultimately cared more about souls than feelings.

She did talk about peace and people liked that. They were less interested in her views on the sources of conflict. Mother Teresa, over and over, insisted that abortion was a sign that violence was seeping into all human relationships. When she accepted the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize she bluntly told her hosts: "Abortion is the worst evil in the world."

Years later, she faced America's political establishment at the annual National Prayer Breakfast. Too often, she said, modern parents are too busy to care for their own children or their own marriages. This causes strife, creating poisons that spread into the world and destroy peace. Then abortion teaches people to "use any violence to get what they want," she said.

In one of the defining moments in her life, she turned and looked at President Clinton and Vice President Gore and their wives. "Please don't kill the child," she said. "I want the child. Please give me the child. I am willing to accept any child who would be aborted and to give that child a married couple who will love the child and be loved by the child."

The president responded by praising her "moving words," but added: "We will always have our differences. We will never know the whole truth."

Mother Teresa disagreed. She believed that truth was truth, even if it hurt.

"In a world of doubts and ambiguities and cynicism, she was blessed with certainties, and the certainties that guided her life and her self-sacrifice are ancient, they are noble," said Rep. Henry Hyde, during one of many tributes to Mother Teresa on Capitol Hill. "She believed we are not lost in the stars. ... On the edge of a new century and a new millennium, the world does not lack for icons of evil -- Auschwitz, the gulag, the killing fields of Cambodia, Bosnia, the Great Lakes region of Central Africa. What the world desperately needs are icons of goodness."

Disney II: Protest or dissect?

Four years ago, ABC's "NYPD Blue" started yet another fire fight between Hollywood and the cultural right.

In addition to its violence and profanity, the gritty drama made headlines with a daring move in network TV - glimpses of nudity. This sent many conservatives to the barricades. Their protests led 57 stations, mostly in Bible Belt and Midwestern markets, to nix "NYPD Blue." While conservatives celebrated their moral victory, some of these stations filled this prime-time gap with a sexy syndicated series -- "Baywatch." This drew few, if any, protests. Apparently, Pamela Lee's front side was less offensive than Dennis Franz's backside.

This is the kind of dilemma that haunts religious groups that wade into the media whirlpool. Tell folks to boycott one brand of slimy entertainment and the odds are good they'll channel surf on over and watch something just as bad or worse.

"The message we have to deliver is that there's some good stuff out there and lots of bad stuff and, if people are going to live as mature Christians, they're going to have to learn to tell the difference. The church should help them do that," said Calvin College's William Romanowski, author of "Pop Culture Wars: Religion & the Role of Entertainment in American Life."

Right now, the Southern Baptists, Focus on the Family, the Catholic League, the Assemblies of God and a host of other groups are taking on the Walt Disney Co. The problem, once again, is that it's easier to tell people in the pews to zap Mickey Mouse than it is to ask tough questions about all those other entertainment decisions that shape their lives. So what should religious groups do?

* Comedian Jay Leno is right. The electronic devices in many homes flash one message - "12:00, 12:00, 12:00." It would be a prophetic ministry for congregations to simply teach people how to program their VCRs. Technology already offers many ways to make choices, for good or ill. The goal is for believers to control the media camped under their own roofs instead of letting those devices control them. If conservatives want to shake things up, they would start a national campaign to convince parents to own only one television and to help them set and enforce limits on entertainment.

* Content issues do matter. But it's hard to urge people to support the good and shun the bad without agreeing on some standards. Ministers should promote and use books, magazines, newsletters and Internet resources that critique the media. At the very least, congregations should hold one major media literacy event a year.

* This assumes that clergy pay close attention to how people spend their time and money. Yet this is precisely what missionaries do. They begin by studying a culture's language, symbols, myths, family structures and the institutions to which people turn to for guidance. If pastors did this, they will run smack into the TV and the mall. Seminaries should require at least one core course focusing on the role that mass media play in American culture.

* Yes, it also would help if there were more creative and committed traditional believers in Hollywood. However, most religious colleges and universities major in producing writers and technicians primed to work in a subculture of religious books, magazines, music and video. The bottom line: Media studies departments on most such campuses, if they exist at all, are rigged to produce PR people and fund raisers, not screenwriters and directors. Thus, cultural conservatives are reaping what they have sown.

"Why weren't Christians so entrenched in a company like Disney that it would have been impossible for it to behave in an unseemly way?", asks Bob Briner, an outspoken Christian best known for his work leading ProServ Television in Dallas. "Why are Christians always surprised and outraged to see non-Christians behaving the way non-Christians behave? ... Why is Disney not seen as a mission field rather than as enemy territory? Why do we have compassion for overseas pagans, and none for those in Burbank?"

Disney I: Did the Baptists go far enough?

No one gave it a second thought.

Season after season, church buses and family minivans made pilgrimages down Florida's highways to find their places outside the sanctuary called Disney World. Religious leaders often scheduled their national conventions in Orlando, knowing this would guarantee a much better turnout than gatherings in more mundane locales.

Then it happened. Families and church groups began to mix with legions of homosexuals and bisexuals at the annual Gay Days festivities at the Walt Disney World Resort. Flocks of folks in born-again T-shirts collided with those wearing pink triangles - creating a media storm.

Thus, the Southern Baptists, Focus on the Family, the Catholic League, the Assemblies of God, the Presbyterian Church of America and other groups have urged their constituents to shun Disney products or, in some cases, even those produced by the 200-plus companies in the Disney empire. For a number of reasons, most linked to sex, these cultural conservatives argue that Disney's leaders have betrayed the trust of millions of parents.

Lost in the shouting is a fundamental question: What were all of those church groups and conservative families doing at Disney World in the first place? Isn't the Magic Kingdom itself little more than a shrine symbolizing the omnipresence of TVs and VCRs in modern homes?

"I have questions about the propriety of denominations or parachurch groups calling for a boycott," said media critic Kenneth Myers, author of a essay on boycotts in a book entitled "Power Religion: The Selling Out of the Evangelical Church?" "But there is an even larger issue here and we shouldn't lose sight of it. The task of the church is to prepare its members to be of such a moral character that they wouldn't want to support a questionable company, anyway."

As a rule, modern churches grow timid when attempting to instruct people about the nuts-and-bolts issues that shape their lives. This is a classic case. Like it or not, entertainment dominates the daily rituals that shape millions of lives. Thus, the big question isn't whether the Southern Baptists and the anti-Disney coalition have gone too far. Have they gone far enough?

"There is no such thing as morally neutral entertainment," stressed Myers. "So it's a good thing when churches start teaching their people to take seriously questions about what they do with their time and their money. So it's good for churches to be upset about what Disney does or what other media companies do. That's fine. But what now?"

There is nothing new about churches meddling in the affairs of multinational corporations. The left has been doing this for years on issues ranging from recycling to racism. It also is ironic to hear progressives cheering for Disney. For years, many have attacked Disney as an icon of American cultural imperialism - that media tidal wave that is washing away folk cultures around the world. Others site Disney as the perfect example of a corporation that earns its billions by addicting children to a romanticized, commercialized, sentimental, materialistic view of life.

However, it's easier for religious institutions to take stands at the national level than it is for them to convince the faithful to make changes that affect wallets, living rooms, couches and TV remotes. Most people go to church on Sunday morning. The principalities and powers of entertainment are always open for business.

"Disney opponents do not argue that Americans should spend their time praying instead of planting themselves in front of 'Beauty and the Beast.' That battle was lost long ago," wrote Marc Fisher of the Washington Post. "No matter how betrayed traditionalists may feel by Disney's expansion into risqu?rime-time fare, R-rated movies and health benefits for partners of homosexual employees, the legacy of 70 years of Snow White and Bambi still rules: Many fundamentalist religious groups no longer struggle against the core of the Disney achievement -- the idea that entertainment is at least as important a part of life as faith, politics, work or family. ... Disney and religion are now competitors. Both sell a vision of reality."

China, Dobson and the Grahams

It's hard to keep personalities out of a global debate when the names are printed in bold on letters being passed around on Capitol Hill.

In this case, the key names are some of the best known in modern Christianity -- evangelist Billy Graham, along with his son, Ned, and Focus on the Family leader James Dobson, along with his colleague Gary Bauer. The question: What should the United States try to do about religious persecution, especially in China?

Leaders on both sides insist they are doing what is best for Chinese believers. Also, there has been an obvious clash of styles. There are the Grahams, with their quiet, diplomatic willingness to work within any political system. Then there is Dobson, whose growing organization has increasingly welcomed clashes with the powers that be, especially on social issues such as China's laws on family planning and forced abortions.

The conflict surfaced before the June vote that renewed China's most-favored-nation trading status. Now, Dobson's September newsletter says he will press on, focusing on the next MFN vote and on events supporting the Freedom From Religious Persecution Act of 1997. A crucial date is Nov. 16, which an ecumenical coalition has designated as an International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church.

The sharpest criticism he has received, wrote Dobson, has come from "the president of a well-known ministry outreach to China" who accused him of being more interested in bashing Beijing and raising money than in getting his facts straight and helping the Chinese church.

"It is puzzling why anyone who purports to be an authority on China would deny the brutality that is occurring there," wrote Dobson. "The statements I made about Chinese persecution are irrefutable, and if anything, were understated to avoid depressing my readers. No less an authority than the U.S. State Department ... has since issued a 'devastating' report that criticizes the Beijing government for its religious persecution. ...

"Why, indeed, would the leader of a Christian missionary outreach to China be angry at those of us who have called attention to the plight of our brothers and sisters in that country? I have no idea."

That missionary was Ned Graham, president of East Gates Ministries, International. Another symbolic detail: Billy Graham's wife, Ruth, was born into a missionary family in China. In his most recent statement, Ned Graham openly questioned the motives of those -- on both the left and right -- seeking sanctions against nations such as China.

"Is the motive behind a coalition such as this the propagation of the gospel of Jesus Christ?", he wrote. "Perhaps not. Could the possible motives be: (1) the political advancement of an individual or organization, (2) the overthrow of a sovereign government, (3) the financial gain for those who raise money from others' suffering, (4) a protectionist move by U.S. unions, or (5) the manipulation of evangelicals for the national security of another country? Who knows?"

The younger Graham doesn't deny that problems continue in China. But he insists that reports of arrests, torture and murder have been exaggerated. China is a maze of contradictions and conflicting reports. Christians are jailed in some places, yet hold tent revivals in others. He argues that diplomacy is yielding results, while political threats only hurt the church. These statements echo decades of similar words by his father.

Dobson and others openly fighting religious persecution say it is na? to trust positive reports from Chinese churches sponsored and controlled by the Communist government. Meanwhile, the anti-persecution coalition uses as its model earlier international efforts on behalf of Soviet Jews and South African blacks. Above all, its leaders say it is time to take a stand.

In their own way, the Grahams are doing just that.

"It is not my intention to become involved in the political aspects of this issue," wrote Billy Graham, in a letter pro-China legislators distributed during the MFN debates. "However, I am in favor of doing all we can to strengthen our relationship with China and its people. ... Furthermore, in my experience, nations respond to friendship just as much as people do."

Religious liberty is messy

It's a weekday morning in Dallas and, as the office crew gathers in the coffee lounge, a staff member hands out invitations to a seminar called "Moses and Jesus Were Frauds."

A hypothetical case, but one that echoes real life. Would this be religious harassment? What if the person was plugging a revival at First Baptist?

More questions: A third-generation Russian Pentecostal pastor asks an American megachurch for help. Is this an attack on Mother Russia? Or an underground Catholic priest in Beijing insists that Pope John Paul II is the true vicar of Christ. Is this a subversive act?

These are busy times for those who monitor clashes between the laws of heaven and earth. As always, one person's gospel is another's heresy and believers keep shooting at each other's sacred cows. Meanwhile, consumers in the spiritual marketplace are searching for answers. This raises questions about tolerance. For starters, is it safe to let politicians, police or even priests judge whether a man with a megaphone -- or an Internet site -- is a prophet or a lunatic? What if your children want to join his flock?

"This is definitely a worldwide phenomenon. We are seeing these kinds of conflicts from Saudi Arabia to Israel, from Russia to China and right here in the United States," said Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. "The big question seems to be: how do you treat religious minorities fairly if they seem to impinge on a society's core image of itself?"

It's impossible to legislate patience and understanding - even in free societies. Yet governments are being asked to take sides, often to defend the powerful or to appease those offended by aggressive religious faith. Here are a few snapshots from the front lines.

* Russian President Boris Yeltsin vetoed a recent bill to severely restrict the freedoms of Protestants, Roman Catholics and other groups said to threaten the "spiritual culture in the society," granting a virtual monopoly to Russian Orthodoxy. Talks continue about a slightly revised bill.

* Conservative religious-rights groups have circulated appeals on behalf of Mark Harding, a Canadian Christian arrested for "hate speech" after making inflammatory public statements and circulating tracts claiming that "Muhammad was a false prophet." His allies are raising money to defend his free-speech rights, while also contacting the U.S. Senate's foreign relations committee.

* Israeli leaders continue to discuss an "Anti-Missionary Bill" that would essentially ban all efforts linked to religious conversions. This would severely restrict the work of traditional Christians, "Messianic" Jews who claim Jesus as Messiah and even outreach programs by non-Orthodox Jews.

* In the United States, a broad coalition of religious groups remains concerned about Supreme Court's June ruling against the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. That bill had required the government to show a "compelling interest" before taking actions that infringed on the religious practices of individuals or groups.

There are, on occasion, quiet victories in these conflicts -- when people strive to balance the rights of believers with loud voices with those who have thin skins. Last week, President Clinton ordered federal agencies to guarantee the religious rights of their workers, hopefully establishing a standard to guide the private sector. The new guidelines address issues ranging from religious apparel to handling holy days, from water cooler debates about abortion to supervisors inviting employees to church.

One crucial passage notes: "Employees are permitted to engage in religious expression directed at fellow employees, and may even attempt to persuade fellow employees of the rightness of their religious views, to the same extent as those employees may engage in comparable speech not involving religion. Some religions encourage adherents to spread the faith at every opportunity. ... But employees must refrain from such expression when a fellow employee asks that it stop or otherwise demonstrates that it is unwelcome."

And there's the rub. To give believers the right to speak their mind, others will need to tolerate a few highly opinionated messages. Some religious groups will face competition in the marketplace of ideas. Religious liberty is messy, but it beats all the alternatives.

Another departs the empty church

The year is 2012, as the joke goes, and two Anglo-Catholic priests in the back of National Cathedral are watching the Episcopal presiding bishop and her incense-bearing lover process down the aisle behind a statue of the Buddha, while the faithful sing a hymn to Mother Earth.

"You know," one traditionalist whispers, "ONE more thing and I'm out the door."

Yes, mainline Protestant conservatives have struggled trying to draw their doctrinal lines. After all, they may be ordered to cross them. Then what? No one has stated the problem more poignantly than Thomas Reeves, in "The Empty Church: The Suicide of Liberal Christianity."

"Millions of mainline Christians have spent all or much of their lives worshipping in the same congregation, and in many cases their ancestors also belonged," said the historian, a traditionalist Episcopal activist for two decades. "For better or worse, their faith is intimately linked with a specific denomination and a particular building within that tradition. To be cast from it could be personally devastating."

Reeves called his final chapter "Renewing the Mainline." The paperback edition comes out soon and he said he isn't making any changes -- even though he escaped into Roman Catholicism on July 31. His conversion came days after the Episcopal Church's 72nd General Convention, which ordered traditionalist dioceses to begin ordaining women and rejected pleas to allow conservative parishes to freely form sacramental ties with sympathetic bishops. The convention also allowed dioceses to extend insurance coverage to clergy and lay "domestic partners," declined to forbid same-sex unions and elected as its next presiding bishop a key progressive on issues of sex and liturgy.

The irony is that the famous historian exited just as the tiny Episcopal Synod boldly informed the Anglican Communion that it was starting an autonomous North American province to shelter those who reject recent doctrinal innovations. The conservative American Anglican Council pledged to stand with the synod. The AAC includes many that support the ordination of women, but believe the synod should not be crushed.

This will soon lead to legal battles over millions of dollars worth of buildings and endowments. Meanwhile, it is only a year until Anglican bishops hold their once-a-decade global Lambeth Conference in Canterbury -- a setting in which conservative Third World voices could speak out.

While many continue to try to use positive, optimistic language, key leaders have made clear how the two camps view each other's doctrines and demands.

The synod's executive director said the General Convention has "passed judgment upon itself" and "become the Unchurch." National church's leaders, added Father Samuel Edwards, now promote a worldview "derived from the kingdom of sin and death" and, instead of presenting the church as the bride of Christ, appear anxious to model something "off the rack at Frederick's of Gomorrah."

In his swan song, Presiding Bishop Edmond said his church has been sidetracked on sex because of "fear, and -- let me name it -- by hate. And I have wondered if this diversion does not come from the evil from which we pray daily for God's deliverance." Once, "biblical literalism" was used to justify slavery and sexism, he said. Now, conservatives use "the Bible to create prejudices against our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters."

Reeves has seen and heard enough. "The key was the lack of tolerance. We have been banned in our own church," he said. "I decided that it was time to go. ... We were drowning and we've been lifted safely into the bark of Peter and we're extremely grateful."

The crucial question is not how the establishment will react to the synod. The question is whether Episcopal conservatives are truly serious and will hold their ground, when the legal wars begin. Reeves is convinced it would be better for Anglo-Catholics to simply swim the Tiber, rather than become another high-church splinter.

"I know Roman Catholicism has its problems, today. But you are not dealing with anarchy," said Reeves, who lives in the progressive Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee. "There are rules. There is authority. You can defend the catechism and know you are not alone. ... I don't have to be ashamed about being a Catholic, anymore. I'm through hiding."

True Love vs. the culture

It was two or three years ago that some of the teen-sex statistics began to dip, followed by telltale ripples in mass media.

Suddenly, people didn't laugh so hard when youth minister Richard Ross and other True Love Waits leaders told kids they could find romance and intimacy through lifelong fidelity. A few people began using words like "chastity" without smirking. And the telephone calls picked up, from the likes of CNN and "Nightline," USA Today and The New York Times, Vogue and Playboy. A few virgins showed up in prime time.

The good news was that there were signs of change. The bad news was that things didn't change very much. The result was usually a more nuanced version of the gospel of sexual freedom. Maybe true love waits for a year or two or true love waits until a guy whispers the magic word "commitment."

"What the culture is saying these days is that abstinence is an option teen-agers should pay attention to," said Ross, one of the founders of the Southern Baptist Convention's True Love Waits program. "Young people are no longer being told, outright, that they're strange and weird if they choose abstinence. ... You may even see some signs that the media and politicians are willing to affirm kids who make that choice."

Saving sex until marriage is now an option. But there are, of course, many other options. The message written between the lines of most sex education texts is this: wait until after high school. Meanwhile, Hollywood has offered a few cautionary sermons on promiscuity. But sex and romance -- divorced from marriage -- remain at the heart of most scripts.

"Young people today are hearing many messages from our culture," said Ross. "But here is what they WILL NOT hear. They will not hear anyone clearly say that it is morally wrong for them to have sex before they are married. And they won't hear anyone explain the painful emotional and spiritual consequences of that decision to become sexually active. ... No one is telling kids about the cost of forming that kind of bond and then ripping it apart."

Nevertheless, pro-chastity leaders believe they are making progress. This past weekend, 300 gathered in Washington, D.C., for a summit meeting sponsored by the Medical Institute for Sexual Health in Austin, Texas. One topic of discussion was a new set of government statistics showing that, in 1995, 50 percent of girls ages 15 to 19 said they'd had sex. That was down from 55 percent in 1990 - the first drop since 1970. At the same time, birth rates fell 8 percent and abortions declined among teens.

There is no way to prove this had anything to do with programs such as True Love Waits, which is known for its media-friendly events such as the 1994 posting of 211,000 pledge cards in Washington, D.C., or a 1995 rally with 350,000 cards stacked in Atlanta's Georgia Dome. Last year, 400,000 students took part in Valentine's Day activities and the 1998 goal is student-led programs in 56,000 secondary schools. The project's most symbolic work takes place in churches, where teens often sign pledge cards in rites that include gold rings -- signs of a commitment to remain chaste until marriage.

It's crucial, said Ross, that congregations become more involved in complex issues linked to sexuality -- such as crisis pregnancies and the fact that signing a pledge card often isn't the end of the story. But some clergy continue to duck sexual issues because they're afraid to offend grown-up sinners who happen to be married, divorced or single. Truth is, churches that can't talk about sin and repentance can't talk about healing and forgiveness.

"Jesus was as clear-cut as he could be about this," said Ross. "Whenever he dealt with people who had failed sexually, his goal was always forgiveness and restoration. ...We have to be able to tell young people that God still has a plan for their lives of teenagers, even though they have messed up. If we can offer forgiveness, we can help them get back on track."

For my father, a pastor

Anyone who grew up in a parsonage knows that "PK" stands for "preacher's kid."

Very early on, I rebelled against that label. But I wasn't rejecting my father, my family or the faith. When people called me a "preacher's kid," I bluntly told them my father wasn't a preacher - he was a pastor. There's a difference.

My father turned 81 this week and I thought this would be a good time to say that I'm still proud of his line of work. Of course, it's been some time since the Rev. Bert Mattingly retired from the pastorate and from his post- retirement work as a hospital chaplain. That doesn't matter. In Texas Baptist lingo, he's still "Brother Bert."

My father preached, but that wasn't what defined him. The joy, and burden, of the job is that there's more to it than that.

It's tough work and seems to be getting tougher. Ask Jim Dahlman, who recently edited the first-anniversary issue of the Focus on the Family magazine called Pastor's Family. He had only been on the job a few weeks when he read some response letters that left him weeping. Some pastors weren't burning out -- they were crashing in flames.

"I read one letter after another from pastors or their wives talking about this overwhelming sense of loneliness and isolation," he said. "Over and over, they'd write things like, 'We're totally alone. We can't talk to anyone about what's going on in our lives or the pressure we're under. We're out here twisting in the wind.' "

The big pressure is for pastors to always be available to handle each and every crisis, no matter how minor. With family and friends far away, who do people call? Oprah? The all-night therapist? Yet Dahlman said people also expect pastors to be "lifestyle role models" with perfect homes and perfect spiritual lives. But it's a problem if the pastor spends too much time at family events or on prayer retreats. And church members expect well researched, practical and, preferably, entertaining sermons. But it's a problem if the pastor spends too much time studying and writing. The clock is ticking.

I'm convinced the main reason stress levels are so high is that too many people -- in pews and pulpits -- have forgotten that pastors are defined by who they are and what they stand for, not what skills they possess and what tasks they perform. Pastors can't be shepherds if people expect them to be superheroes.

So why was I proud to be a pastor's kid? This may sound simplistic, but I believe many churches need to hear it.

* He was a pastor -- not a preacher, CEO, entertainer, clinical counselor, self-help guru or crisis-management consultant.

* He preached the Bible, not his feelings and experiences. Today, many urge pastors to make their lives open books - often forcing a faked extroversion that has little to do with reality. This has more to do with an era of mass-media confessions than solid teaching or evangelism.

* My parents have been married 57 years and I'm proud of their love and mutual commitment to ministry. Today, many churches are placing so much pressure on clergy schedules and spirits that they are weakening the very foundations of their personal lives. This has led to divorce rates that are as shameful as in society as a whole.

* He wasn't a workaholic. It wasn't until college that I talked with other clergy children and discovered how unusual it was that I spent many, many hours with my father. I'm convinced this was linked to a more balanced, realistic approach to ministry.

* My father kept on loving God, his work and his people. I have never known a pastor who didn't wrestle with fits of melancholy. Pastors are, by nature, realists who know the reality of pain and sin. And many heap criticism on them, micromanage their lives and expect miracles.

I rarely saw my father move mountains. But I did see him preach, teach, pray and embrace sinners. I was proud that he was a pastor. I still am.