Sex, drugs & Catholic education

It's hard to talk about college life without covering sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll.

But face it, America's Catholic bishops had other problems in the 1990s. They had to find a way to embrace the pope's "Ex corde Ecclesia (From the Heart of the Church)," a manifesto on Catholic education, while trying not to fan fires of dissent in faculty lounges.

The last thing they wanted to discuss was Friday-night dorm life. So bishops didn't ask and campus leaders didn't tell.

"We know that where most students are losing their faith is not so much in the classroom as in the social atmosphere that dominates their campuses," said Patrick Reilly of the Cardinal Newman Society, a pro-Vatican think tank on education. Curriculum and faculty issues matter, but the "parts of Catholic education that have changed the most have all been related to campus life. ... The culture of students sleeping around and getting drunk is just as big a problem at many Catholic universities as it is at state schools."

There have been some public fights, with headlines about administrators removing crucifixes from classrooms or asking lawyers to finesse questions about campus funds supporting groups that promote anti-Catholic stands on abortion and gay rights.

Other issues loom in the background. Like their secular counterparts, most of America's 235 Catholic colleges and universities now bombard students with information and questions about safe sex, drug abuse, date rape, eating disorders and sexual harassment. These subjects are no longer controversial.

But Catholicism itself is controversial. What would happen if colleges merely taught the church's moral doctrines and asked -- using an honor code -- Catholic students to obey them? What about promoting confession and fasting? Could colleges even try?

That's what the Cardinal Newman Society (www.newmansociety.org) will ask Nov. 10-12, during a conference at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. One session will focus on a "working draft" of principles to guide Catholic campus life. One passage soberly notes: "It is not enough that colleges and universities bearing the name Catholic should cease to serve the culture of death, although merely attaining that goal may prove to be the lifework of Catholic educators of this generation."

An earlier draft even included an "attire" clause opposing "dress that is sexually suggestive or otherwise disrespectful of other students' efforts to live chastely." Another passage said constant "electronically-offered sensory stimulation is a distraction to the mind and, hence, must be subject to regulation."

That kind of language had to go, because it's important to remain realistic, said Reilly. After all, many campus leaders will fight to keep traditionalists from taking any of these "minimalist rules" to Rome.

The document's bottom line: "Catholics abide by rules and standards defined by the Church." Other principles in the 6,000-word draft include:

* "The virtue of temperance disposes us to avoid every kind of excess: the abuse of food, alcohol, tobacco or medicine."

* "The university ... should help students identify alternatives to 'partying' " and find "alternatives to contemporary styles of dating and courtship." Co-ed dorms don't help.

* While allowing lively political discussions, schools "should be careful not to diminish known truth by encouraging debate on settled issues (such as the morality of abortion)."

* "In no case should the university health service, or any campus personnel, encourage or facilitate abortion or the use of artificial contraceptives, nor should students be referred to non-campus" facilities that do.

* "For unmarried students, the state of life should be virginity, primary or secondary." While it's hard to enforce such laws, universities should "forbid extramarital sexual activity by students on and off-campus."

Reilly knows that many Catholic educators will "accuse us wanting to go back to a 'nanny culture.' " Many were "furious that the Vatican thought it had the right to define what a Catholic college is, or is not, in the first place. Now they're going to say we want the bishops to police what goes on in dorm rooms as well as classrooms," he said.

"All we are saying is that our colleges and universities should help students live Catholic lives, or at least stop attacking students that try to do so."

What's so special about Jesus?

Every summer, lots of religious people sit in lots of national conventions and hear lots of leaders with impressive titles deliver lots of long speeches about complicated theological issues.

After a few weeks, people forget 99 percent of what's said during this siege.

But people are still talking about the Rev. Dirk Ficca's "Uncommon Ground" sermon at the Presbyterian Peacemaking Conference in Orange, Calif. It has sparked something unusual -- a hot mainline Protestant story that isn't about sex.

The sound bite was a stunner: "What's the big deal about Jesus?"

Why do so many Christians, asked Ficca, think they need to convert people in other religions to Christianity? Don't they believe their God is powerful enough to work however He sees fit, even through other faiths? Don't they believe in the "sovereignty of God"?

"God's ability to work in our life is not determined by being a Christian," said Ficca, a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) minister who directs the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago. "OK ... if God is at work in our lives whether we're Christian or not, what's the big deal about Jesus?"

Ficca has seen traditional Christian missionary work and he rejects it, outright. Members of other faiths, he said, testify "that when Christians approach them with the sole purpose of converting them to Christianity, it feels like ... a kind of ethnic cleansing. What (missionaries) are saying is: Your religious identity is not acceptable and my job is to eliminate it from the face of the earth."

Presbyterian evangelicals are crying, "foul" -- early and often.

The result has been a clash between traditionalists and leaders of the denomination's progressive establishment. Much of the heat is in cyberspace, but there have been flare-ups in public meetings. Many documents linked to the July 29 sermon can be found through the "Jesus Debate" link at the WWW.PresbyWeb.com news site.

Conservatives are quoting centuries of doctrine and catechisms, such as the Scots Confession, which proclaims: "... For there is neither life nor salvation without Christ Jesus; so shall none have part therein but those whom the Father has given unto his Son Jesus Christ, and those who in time come to him, avow his doctrine, and believe in him." And, of course, they are quoting the Gospel of John: "Jesus answered, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.' "

Ficca reads those passages differently. He dedicated much of his address to undermining what he called the "instrumental view" of Jesus and salvation.

It teaches that "Jesus is the sole and only instrument of God's salvation -- through one person at a certain point in history, who lived and died in a certain way, only through this person does God's salvation come into the world," he said. "Here the Gospel is about Jesus; Jesus, himself, is the Good News. ^?And if Jesus is the sole instrument of God -- if it is only through Jesus that salvation comes -- then the only way for the world to be saved is for everyone to become a Christian."

In place of this view, Ficca advocated a "revelatory view." It teaches that the "Good News is not the good news so much about Jesus, but the good news of Jesus: The Good News that Jesus preached. What this view says is that Jesus reveals how God has been at work in all times in all places throughout history in all people to bring about salvation."

Thus, Christians no longer have to engage in "proselytizing ... for the purpose of converting people to Christianity." God offers believers many religious paths to reach one eternal destination, said Ficca.

Presbyterian evangelicals are urging their denomination to publicly reject this approach -- doctrinally and financially -- as soon as possible.

"Apart from God's unique act of self-identification with fallen humanity in Jesus ... the Christian faith simply has nothing else to say about 'salvation,' " said the leaders of the powerful Highland Park Presbyterian Church in Dallas. "There is no 'Good News' apart from what God has done for us in the life, death and resurrection of Christ."

This is not a religion story

This was the 12th time that Linda Gibbons had violated the 18-meter "bubble zone" that surrounds Canadian abortion clinics, so all the players in the scene knew their roles.

The tiny grandmother sat down and silently began to pray as Toronto police moved in. Sue Careless and two other journalists maneuvered to record the arrest. Careless concentrated on Gibbons, framing her in the camera's viewfinder between a church steeple and the clinic door. She heard an officer reading the familiar pre-arrest litany.

Then a policeman said, "You have to leave." Careless explained that she was a journalist and kept clicking. The last photo she took, before the handcuffs went on, showed the police starting to drag Gibbons across the street. The police confiscated her film.

"In the police van, I kept saying, 'I'm a journalist. ... I had a right to be there,' " said Careless. "One of the officers finally asked me, 'What's your name?' I said, 'Why don't you read it off my press card?' ... So that's what he did."

The police arrested one demonstrator and three freelance journalists.

"The math just didn't add up," said Careless.

But her legal bills quickly started to add up. Careless endured 13 court appearances before the Crown withdrew the charges. Oct. 15 marked the one-year anniversary of the arrests and her lawyer is still working to retrieve her mug shots and fingerprints from police files.

Careless has credentials from the Periodical Writers Association of Canada and the Canadian Association of Journalists and, in the past decade, has written 300-plus articles for 22 secular and religious publications. She is best known for her Canadian Church Press work and, when arrested, was on assignment for The Interim -- a national pro-life newspaper.

"It seemed like nobody, at least in the secular press, wanted to cover this," said Careless. "People said it was just a religion story or it was an abortion story. I kept saying, 'No! This is about freedom of the press. ... I had a press card and they arrested me. That's a story.' "

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects journalists, whether they work in powerful newsrooms or for smaller organizations. The same is true under U.S. law. But police on both sides of the border seem to be cracking down, said Paul McMaster, the First Amendment ombudsman for the Freedom Forum in Arlington, Va.

"A journalist is a journalist," he said. "It's not the government's job to credential some journalists and not others. ... Clearly, the whole point was to intimidate Sue Careless and the other journalists who were out there covering a controversial event."

Sadly, he added, this is probably a "win-win situation for the police. After all, who cares what happens to reporters?"

Careless noted that many other journalists -- even some who defend abortion rights -- cared enough to contribute to her legal defense fund. After all, there is nothing unusual about journalists getting caught in the tense territory between police and demonstrators. And the number of "alternative journalists" is rising, since the World Wide Web is allowing many secular and religious advocacy groups to create their own niche-news operations.

If a pro-life journalist could get arrested at an abortion-clinic protest, then a Mennonite journalist might be arrested outside a nuclear-weapons plant. A Wiccan website reporter might get handcuffed because she saw police break up a sit-in that was stopping loggers from entering a sacred forest. A Southern Baptist journalist might face arrest for photographing gay and lesbian protestors that disrupted a convention of evangelical sex therapists.

"It does not matter which media outlet sends the reporter, or what the personal sympathies are of the photographer, or what the politics are of the demonstration," argued Careless, in an essay for the Globe and Mail in Toronto. "As long as the journalist is working as a professional journalist, and not an activist, the police should not interfere with the news-gathering process.

"I and other freelance journalists must not be so intimidated by these arrests that we will retreat to only the safe subjects or flower shows. We must continue to gather news in the danger zones of public opinion."

Prophets and politicos in the public square

In the summer of 1964, President Lyndon Johnson sent his right-hand man to visit Fannie Lou Hamer of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.

It was a high-stakes trip, because Hamer and her flock were challenging the state's all-white slate of delegates to the Democratic National Convention. Johnson feared an ugly floor fight and hoped that Hubert Humphrey could convince Hamer to back down.

The future vice president opened the negotiations by asking what she wanted.

"The beginning of a New Kingdom, right here on earth," replied Hamer.

Anyone looking for the line between political rhetoric and Christian prophecy can find it right there, argues Yale Law professor Stephen Carter, in "God's Name in Vain," his latest book on modern tensions between church and state.

The stunned Humphrey pleaded with Hamer. Couldn't she see that her stance would hurt the Democrats? "Fannie Lou Hamer, who had survived beating and torture in a Mississippi jail for insisting on her constitutional rights, was unimpressed," noted Carter. "Hamer sought justice. Humphrey sought political victory (with justice as a possible, but not certain, side effect)." Hamer concluded: "I'm gonna pray to Jesus for you."

American politicians always get nervous when passionate religious voices start preaching in the public square, noted Carter, in a recent the Ethics and Public Policy Center forum called "Does God Belong on the Stump?" But there's no reason for religious people to be singled out for condemnation by the powers that be in media, academia and politics, said Carter.

Some folks get especially nervous when mainstream political candidates start spouting "God talk" during national campaigns. This time around, the designated preachers are Gov. George W. Bush and Sen. Joseph Lieberman. This controversy flares up, like clockwork, every four years. And, every four years, the experts are shocked -- shocked -- to discover that faith plays a major role in American life and, thus, in politics.

But if politicians are going to talk about their faith, it's crucial for someone to push them to probe deeper, past sound bites about compassion, values and spirituality.

"I think the candidate who is going to talk about his own faith owes us more than just saying, 'Isn't it neat that I'm a religious guy?' That candidate owes us at least some discussion of how that religiosity affects his decision-making, his reasoning, his thinking about public issues. It is only in that way that we can judge its relevancy," said Carter.

This is crucial, because if religious faith is real, "if it has bite," then that tradition will affect how a person lives his or her life, he said. A faith that does not affect actions and decisions is meaningless. This means there will be times, unless a politician "is a member of a extraordinarily convenient religion," when tensions exist between his beliefs and the policies he must accept or advocate.

Yet candid discussions of these tensions are politically risky -- entering the minefield between politics and prophecy.

The British writer C.S. Lewis once noted that it would be unwise to attempt to form a "Christian political party," noted Carter. If it were truly Christian, it would preach the whole package of the Christian faith and, thus, would be too demanding to succeed at the ballot box. But if it were truly a political party, added Lewis, it would be driven to make the kinds of compromises that were necessary to win elections. Thus, it would not be truly Christian.

It's spiritually dangerous for prophets to try to function as politicians. Carter noted that the lofty and idealistic vision of the Civil Rights Movement faded when the black church all but married the Democratic Party. Today, it's clear that the Religious Right has watered down its prophetic moral messages in an attempt to please the Republican hierarchy.

"The world of politics tends to be the world of the short run, the compromise that lets you win in the here and now," said Carter, after the forum. "Prophets rarely win in the short run. But, thank God, prophets are rarely the kind of people who focus on the short run. They tend to care about the long run -- eternity."

The confessions of Harry Stein

Life was simpler back when journalist Harry Stein knew his place.

If asked to define "politically correct," he could quickly answer: "A term used by the right to smear decent people working hard for social change." The religious right? "A bunch of crazed zealots out to impose their repressive, intolerant theocratic values on the rest of us."

That was the old Harry Stein, a hipper-than-thou child of the 1960s and '70s. Everyone he knew believed the world's problems could be solved with liberal doses of compassion, tax dollars and sex, although not always in that order.

Then Stein got married, became a father and discovered that his wife wanted to stay home with the baby. Soon, strange words started coming out of his mouth. Today, the new Stein defines "politically correct" as a "term properly describing a 'progressive' worldview of litmus tests for right thinking." The religious right is "a bunch of crazed zealots who pretty much kept to themselves until 'progressive' zealots started imposing THEIR values on them and theirs via popular culture and the schools."

Life grew more complex. Friends and family didn't know what to think, especially when Stein came out of the closet with a riotous memoir called "How I Accidentally Joined the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy (and Found Inner Peace)." And to tell the truth, Stein isn't always sure what he thinks, these days.

Take the God question. Please. Stein is a conservative and a Jew, but that doesn't mean he is a conservative Jew. He's worried that Americans are befuddled on moral issues, but he isn't sure what he thinks about "sin," "repentance" and "atonement." He didn't know what he would be doing during the High Holy Days, which end with Yom Kippur on Monday.

"It would be incorrect to say that I am religious," said Stein, after a recent speech to the Independent Women's Forum. "After all, I grew up as an agnostic and my parents were Communists. But I am more spiritual now than I used to be, it's safe to say. ... And to the extent that I was totally skeptical before, I'm not anymore."

Stein said he realized that his moral and cultural views were changing while he was writing an ethics column for Esquire magazine, creating a witty persona that his editor once dubbed "Shecky Spinoza." By it's very nature, this assignment forced him to ask probing questions and to seek ethical standards that have stood the test of time.

In his book, Stein concedes: "Subtly, though even I was unaware of it at the time, a theme began to run through those pieces: that some of the moral precepts people like me had so casually jettisoned in the sixties as woefully antique -- like, oh, the more demanding of the Ten Commandments -- have served humanity pretty well, after all."

Before he knew it, the questions raised by his day job and the lessons he was learning as a father pulled him into a stream of hot social issues -- such as debates about day care and the so-called "Mommy Wars." Then his wife dropped out of "Women Against Right-Wing Scum," a support group for New York media professionals. Then stunned colleagues started calling them "a traditional family."

Then, at a dinner party, Stein said he believed it's bad for children to grow up without fathers. A friend went nuclear, exclaiming: "Jesus Christ, when did you become a fascist?!" There was no turning back after that.

Stein also began to ask what happens when a culture loses its ability to teach that some acts are always evil, no matter what the cultural context or the circumstances. But if there are eternal rights and wrongs, where do such standards come from?

"I do believe that each of us has an innate sense of what is right and wrong," he said. "But there has to be more to this than feelings. This must be predicated on traditional moral truths. ... I think we all know, deep in our hearts and our souls, that it is these bedrock truths are what make it possible for us to have happy and productive lives. To deny that is insane."

The Episcopalians vs. the Anglicans

The voices on the telephone sound angry and anxious and they keep calling Charles Nalls at the Canon Law Institute and telling him sad stories that he has heard many times before.

They have been faithful. They have filled their pew for decades. They receive Holy Communion on kneelers covered with their own needlepoint and the prayer books are dedicated to their loved ones. They have washed altar cloths and signed checks. Now they're asking hard questions because they aren't sure what their church teaches, anymore.

They have decisions to make and the clock is ticking.

"They just feel shattered," said Nalls, whose non-profit institute handles legal disputes in many ecclesiastical settings, including the Episcopal Church. "I tell them, 'For God's sake, revise your wills! Do it, literally for God's sake and your own sake.' ... There are millions and millions of dollars worth of buildings and endowments and trusts that are at stake and people need to do whatever they can to stay out of the court battles that are dead ahead."

In recent weeks, Nalls has heard from three dozen parishes that are considering severing ties to the Episcopal Church, in part due to last summer's landslide House of Bishops vote acknowledging that many believers live in "life-long committed relationships," outside of Holy Matrimony. The bishops pledged to provide "pastoral care" for these Episcopalians, but stopped just short of authorizing rites to bless sexual unions outside of marriage.

Most of these parishes, said Nalls, seek ties with two bishops who were consecrated last January -- by a global coalition of Anglican prelates -- as missionaries in America during a time of doctrinal and pastoral crisis. Bishop Chuck Murphy III of Pawleys Island, S.C., serves under the Anglican archbishop of Rwanda and Bishop John Rodgers of Ambridge, Pa., fills the same role for the Anglican Province of Southeast Asia. Together, they have formed the "Anglican Mission in America" and hope to oversee up to 80 parishes by next summer.

Meanwhile, other parishes want to align with "continuing" Anglican bodies that left the Episcopal Church during earlier battles over a modernized prayer book and the ordination of women. Others are investigating Eastern Orthodoxy, on one side of the ecclesiastical spectrum, or opting to become "independent Episcopal churches," on the other side.

The response of most Episcopal leaders at the national and diocesan level has, understandably, been chilly silence or fiery condemnation. The bottom line: See you in court. The national and local hierarchies will continue to insist that they own the buildings and endowments of congregations that choose to depart. The majority of the people in those pews will continue to disagree.

The colonial and contemporary legal issues are stunningly complex and recent actions by the overseas primates could inspire new questions and legal scenarios. Would the opinions of the Archbishop of Canterbury, for example, have any standing in an American court? What would happen if a global gathering of primates voted to censure or even amputate the Episcopal Church from the body of worldwide Anglicanism?

Already, there are two competing ecclesiastical bodies on America soil that are recognized as valid by segments of the Anglican Communion -- the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Mission in America. What will happen when a procession of archbishops and bishops from Africa, Asia and other parts of the world testify in court that parishes exiting the Episcopal Church are merely seeking to follow the tradition and doctrine of the global Anglican hierarchy?

Who wins in a battle between the Episcopalians and the Anglicans?

Once, Communion existed at four levels -- parish, diocese, national and global. Now, the American hierarchy is convinced that Episcopal traditions, doctrines and laws are best defined by diocesan and national authorities. Meanwhile, the rebel parishes in America believe that courts should validate the views of Anglicans voiced in local parishes and at international conferences.

Nalls concluded: "Are there really two traditions, one for the Episcopal Church and one for the rest of the Anglican Communion? That's a scary question and I am sure there are a lot of Episcopal bishops who don't want to have to answer that question, right now."

The man who didn't disappear

NEW YORK -- The formal interview was over, so Richard Nixon propped his feet on his desk while the journalist lingered in the former vice president's Manhattan office.

"He just wanted to shoot the breeze a bit," recalled John McCandlish Phillips, who was the New York Times reporter on the other side of the notebook that day. This was during the mid-1960s, when political consultants were creating the "New Nixon" who would reach the White House.

Nixon talked about TV, the press and much more. But the reporter's spirit was troubled.

"He started talking about the art of not being himself. ... He meant the art of being sincere on camera, in front of an audience, without really being sincere," said Phillips, letting out a long sigh. "I held my tongue, but I should have said to him, 'You think that no one sees that, sir, but there are some who see through it, immediately.' "

In interviews, Phillip remained polite and, for the most part, silent. But he saw everything and sensed even more, during a brilliant two-decade Times career. His gentle questions and empathetic use of silence inspired people to confess the details of their lives.

The reporter wrote it all down and returned to his desk, his Bible and his typewriter. He rarely spoke in the newsroom either, which was unusual in a world of rattling keys, howling voices, police radios and titanic egos. Phillips did his talking in ink.

"He was the Ted Williams of the young reporters. He was a natural," the legendary reporter Gay Talese once said, describing a staff that included the likes of David Halberstam, Richard Reeves and J. Anthony Lukas. "There was only one guy I thought I was not the equal of, and that was McCandlish Phillips."

Phillips arrived in 1952 and landed a copy-boy job a day after, he said, God ordered him off the train he was riding home to Boston. A year later, he looked around the Times newsroom and realized he was the only conservative Christian there. So he stayed. He walked away in 1973, at the peak of his writing powers, to become a Pentecostal preacher with a small urban flock.

A lengthy New Yorker profile of Phillips called him "The Man Who Disappeared." But the man didn't disappear. The reporter did.

The 72-year-old Phillips has disappeared in the same way that a seed disappears in the soil. Friends on New York sidewalks know that "Pastor John" has invested his life in new believers, including more than a few journalists.

"Phillips is not interested in winning a Pulitzer Prize," Talese told the New Yorker. "He is not interested in demeaning people. ...He wants to redeem people. Talk about marching to a different drummer. Phillips is not even in the same jungle."

If Phillips walked into the Times newsroom, few, if any, journalists would know his name. The same is true of New York's giant churches. The skinny six-foot-six reporter is now an even thinner preacher, a decade after a knock-down battle with pneumonia. You can hear that when he laughs, with a squeeze-box wheeze that is both joyful and painful.

Phillips has lived in two radically different worlds. Few journalists appreciate what goes on in churches, he said, and few church people understand what goes on in newsrooms. He believes that this warps the news.

Reporters collect symbolic stories, like parables. Phillips recalled that, back in 1959, he told his editors that something big was happening in Brooklyn, where a Pennsylvania preacher named David Wilkerson was working with addicts and gang members. The editors weren't interested. For years, Phillips pushed this story, while Wilkerson built a ministry that eventually expanded around the world. After a decade, Phillips got to write that story.

"The New York Times could not see ... the importance or the validity of this approach to any issue as serious as addiction. Editors said, 'You can't put a few religious ideas up against something as real as addiction and expect any results,' " said Phillips.

"Well, the results were there. ... This was just a story about a young preacher who had found an approach to drugs and gangs that was proving demonstrably effective in changing lives. It was worth attention. It was news. We miss too many stories like that and that's a shame."

Ted Turner, meet John Paul II

Pope John Paul II, this is Ted Turner.

Ted Turner, will you please introduce yourself to Pope John Paul II?

What? Yes, surely he has heard your joke about the Polish mine detector. But the pope needs to hear more about your Aug. 29 sermon at the United Nations. That was the one in which you warned that faiths that claim exclusive truths about heaven and hell are preaching hate and intolerance and that their doctrines could cause a global nuclear holocaust.

Turner and John Paul would have a lot to talk about right now if they met. They are addressing some of the same questions, but offering radically different answers. The Vatican released a major document focusing on truth and salvation just one week after Turner spoke at the Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders, which was the brainchild of the CNN founder and billionaire U.N. benefactor.

From Turner's point of view, "Dominus Jesus (Lord Jesus)" is heresy.

It proclaims: "The Church, guided by charity and respect for freedom, must be primarily committed to proclaiming to all people the truth definitively revealed by the Lord, and to announcing the necessity of conversion to Jesus Christ and of adherence to the Church through Baptism and the other sacraments, in order to participate fully in communion with God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit."

So it's wrong, argues the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to say that all religions are true, even if their teachings contradict one another. It's wrong to say that Christianity offers one path to salvation, among many. "Dominus Jesus" argues: "One can and must say that Jesus Christ has a significance and a value for the human race ... which are unique and singular, proper to him alone, exclusive, universal and absolute."

Press coverage of this document has focused on the Vatican's renewed claims that Roman Catholicism is the true and fullest expression of Christianity. But, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger told the Italian press, it was primarily a response to pluralists -- inside and outside the church -- who view Christian claims of exclusive truth as "a bit of fundamentalism which is an attack on the modern spirit and a menace to toleration and liberty."

Turner would certainly number himself among those critics. In his speech to 1,000-plus clergy at the U.N., he attacked precisely this kind of truth claim. Once upon a time, stressed Turner, he was a Bible Belt boy who wanted to be a missionary. But then he decided that his tiny sect was wrong.

"I studied Christianity and I studied the world's great religions," he said. "I was always thinking. What disturbed me is that my religious Christian sect was very intolerant. Not intolerant of religious freedom for other people, but we thought that we were the only ones going to heaven. ... It just confused the devil out of me because I said heaven is going to be a mighty empty place, with nobody else there."

Turner eventually reached the very conclusion rejected by "Dominus Jesus." He decided, "Instead of all of these different gods, I thought maybe that there's one God who manifests himself and reveals himself in different ways to different people. What about that?"

For Turner, it's the true believers who are convinced they worship the one true Savior, who has revealed to them the one true path to heaven, who have been the primary source of evil and bloodshed throughout history. It's dangerous, he said, for powerful people to hold such beliefs in a world containing "nuclear weapons and poison gas and land mines."

So here is Turner's final word for the pope and others who cling to traditions built on claims of absolute, transcendent truths. The modern world cannot afford to tolerate their ancient doctrines.

"There is only one God who manifests himself in different ways," said Turner. "It's time to get rid of hatred. It's time to get rid of prejudice. It's time to have love and respect and tolerance for each other. Care about each other. Work together to survive. I can't believe that God wants us to blow ourselves to kingdom come."

Prayers in Catholic schools?

It was a Catholic campus, so the history professor was free to voice a prayer before every test on behalf of his nervous students.

"Father," he always said, "we pray for your assistance this morning for each student in keeping with his level of preparation. Amen."

So meditate on that, undergraduates, while you grip your No. 2 pencils. The students knew their professor's goal was to communicate a sobering message to each of them, as opposed to reaching an Academic Authority on high. It was not a prayer intended to provide comfort or to inspire thanksgiving.

This was one of many stories that philosopher Gregory Beabout heard when he asked colleagues if he should start his Saint Louis University classes with prayer. This is the kind of question that lingers in the minds of some religious-school teachers at the start of each new school year.

Some professors told Beabout that pre-class prayers were shallow and theatrical and might even violate warnings by Jesus against hypocritical public prayers. Many said classroom prayers would violate the rights of non-religious students, even though the classes were not in a public school. More than a few worried that friends who taught at secular schools would laugh, or be condescending, if they heard that prayers were common in Catholic classrooms.

One professor challenged Beabout to produce some good reasons that teachers and students should pray together. This approach left the philosopher puzzled.

"Are we to set up a chart with the reasons 'pro' on one side and the reasons 'con' on the other side, and do a utilitarian cost-benefit analysis to determine if prayer in the classroom at a Catholic university is appropriate?", asked Beabout, in a journal article on this topic. "Is the burden of proof on the side of prayer?"

In the end, he decided to open his classes with the Lord's Prayer. He feared, at first, that a student might complain to the campus newspaper or the administration. Beabout said he wasn't worried about what would happen in classes such as "Catholic Social Thought" and "Christian Existentialism," since they tended to attract religious students. But he also taught a survey course entitled "Historical Introduction to Philosophy," which was a required course for nearly all undergraduates.

But most students simply bowed their heads and prayed, with no great fanfare. Several Protestants said they welcomed the chance to say the Lord's Prayer, although one said he didn't want to have "to pray to Mary or something." A devout Jew said he wasn't offended, because he knew that Christians who chose to attend a Yeshiva would hear Hebrew prayers. Muslim students said they did not feel uncomfortable, since they did not have to join in the prayers. They were perfectly capable of watching members of another faith pray.

The only objections that reached Beabout came from people whom he described as "liberalized or secularized" Christians. A few were offended, even if they merely heard about the prayers second-hand. Meanwhile, many more academics greeted his decision with "raised eyebrows" and wry smiles, as opposed to open opposition.

"I think many people are simply embarrassed to talk about this," he said, looking back over five years of praying in the classroom. "What seems to bother them is the very idea that something that is supposedly private, such as prayer, might in some way be related to something that is public, such as education. ... Yet this attempt to divide the public and the private is simply foreign to the Catholic tradition. We are supposed to be building institutions in which we can face these kinds of issues -- together."

Whatever misgivings he had vanished after one memorable class. Beabout arrived late and rushed into his lecture. A student raised her hand and said, "We forgot to pray." Before Beabout could make the sign of the cross and start to pray, she added: "My godmother just found out she has a brain tumor. ... Can we pray for her?"

What was the philosopher supposed to say?

The student is now at Harvard Law School and she still stays in touch. The godmother's tumor was benign.