The big news of the week on the Boston religious scene was the announcement that the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, after consulting with public health officials about ways to slow the spread of swine flu, is recommending that parishes suspend the practice of sharing consecrated wine with laypeople during Communion and that laypeople stop shaking hands or embracing one another as a sign of peace at Mass. Several Protestant denominations had already recommended an end to the use of a common cup for Communion during this pandemic; the local Greek Orthodox Diocese, by contrast, is defending the practice, even during flu season.

The Archdiocese of Boston's announcement on Tuesday was followed the same day by the same recommendations in the Worcester Diocese. The next day, the bishop of Fall River, George W. Coleman, went slightly further than Boston Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley, by declaring (rather than simply recommending) a suspension of sharing consecrated wine with laypeople at Communion, and by suggesting that parishes also suspend the entire sign of peace ritual (in Boston, O'Malley is recommending retaining the ritual, but urging people to bow toward one another or lock eyes for a moment, rather than having physical contact). On Thursday, the bishop of Providence, Thomas Tobin, joined in, "strongly recommending" that parishes discontinue the sharing of consecrated wine with laypeople, and that they either suspend the sign of peace ritual or urge worshipers to avoid touching one another while exchanging greetings. The Springfield diocese is the lone local holdout -- its guidelines, issued in September, continue to say that "reception of Holy Communion under both kinds is generally encouraged but is not a necessity."

All of the dioceses have strongly recommended that priests and other Eucharistic ministers pay more attention to their own hygiene before distributing Communion during flu season.

All this talk of hygiene and ritual caused quite a bit of chatter among the churchgoers in my world, and there were two questions that kept recurring: why don't Catholics use individual disposable plastic cups, like many Protestants, and what about the theory that it's not possible to get sick from Communion because Jesus is present? I posed these questions to the Rev. Jonathan Gaspar, co-director of the Office of Worship and Spiritual Life for the Archdiocese of Boston. Here are his answers:

Q: Why don't Catholics use individual disposable cups for Communion, like some Protestants do, and is that a possible change in the future?

A: The reason Catholics will not use individual disposable cups for Communion is because of the doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharistic species, which is quite different from the beliefs of many Protestant groups who have Communion services. We believe that during the Mass the bread and the wine become the Body and Blood of Christ, and so the vessels we use to contain the Eucharistic species are considered sacred vessels which are held in special honor. The General Instruction of the Roman Missal clearly sets the guidelines for the sacred vessels: “Sacred vessels are to be made from precious metal. If they are made from metal that rusts or from a metal less precious than gold, then ordinarily they should be gilded on the inside." For the dioceses in the United States, sacred vessels may also be made of other precious materials, such as ebony or other hard woods, “provided that such materials are suited to sacred use and do not easily break or deteriorate." However, chalices made of ebony or other hard woods are to have bowls of nonabsorbent material.

1. We wouldn’t distribute Holy Communion in disposable cups because a disposable cup could never be considered a sacred vessel. We don’t dispose of sacred vessels.
2. We wouldn’t distribute the Precious Blood in individual cups because of the theological concept of “one bread, one cup.” The Holy Eucharist is a sacrament of unity, and we are all meant to partake of the one bread and the one cup, as St. Paul exhorts us in his letter to the Corinthians: “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.” (1Corinthians 10, 16-17)

Q: Some Catholics have told me they always understood that the church believed that one could not get germs from Communion wine once it had been consecrated -- that the transubstantiation meant the wine could do no harm. Is that an understanding of the church, and how does this recommendation fit with that?

A: Though this belief has never been officially or doctrinally stated by the Church, there are many Catholics who believe germs cannot be transmitted through a common cup. The Eucharist has often been described as a remedy, the medicine of immortality, because when we receive Holy Communion we are receiving Christ, the Paschal Lamb who died and now lives to take away our sins. This great mystery contains the whole spiritual wealth of the Church, and we revere the Eucharist as the Most Blessed Sacrament.

The decision to temporarily discontinue the practice of distributing the Precious Blood from the chalice was a result of recent conversations with medical authorities and specialists in infectious disease, who believe that sharing a “common cup” can possibly spread communicable illness. We have taken this sensible step out of caution and concern for the health of our Catholic people. Our decision to temporarily discontinue this venerable practice does not diminish our reverence for the power of this great Sacrament.

Catholics believe that Christ, whole and entire, is received even under only one species. This is a belief defined in the sixteenth century by the Council of Trent. When Catholics receive the Eucharist in the form of the consecrated host, we are receiving the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, in an effort to help stop the spread of swine flu, is recommending that parishes stop offering laypeople consecrated wine at Communion and also discourage laypeople from hugging, shaking hands, or otherwise having physical contact during the "sign of peace" at Mass.

The steps, which are supposed to take effect Saturday, are among the broadest recommendations to date by a large Massachusetts institution to change public practices in an effort to stem swine flu, which is now spreading widely throughout New England and the nation. An estimated 294,000 people attend Catholic Mass in the Archdiocese of Boston each weekend.

In addition to recommending a suspension of Communion from the cup, and the change to the sign of peace, the archdiocese is also urging parishes to more regularly and carefully disinfect holy water fonts in churches. Communion from the cup is thought to pose a potential health risk because multiple worshipers drink from the same chalice; the exchange of peace can pose a risk as worshipers touch one another's hands, and the fonts are a concern because worshipers dip their hands in the water.

The disease, caused by the H1N1 virus, can be spread through hand-to-hand contact or contact with objects that have recently been exposed to the germ.

"Given the extraordinary precautions being taken across the nation to prevent the spread of the H1N1 influenza, the Archdiocese has instituted a series of steps to be followed for the time being during the celebration of the Mass," the Rev. Jonathan Gaspar, co-director of the archdiocesan Office of Worship and Spiritual Life, said in a statement. "We thank our priests, deacons, religious and parishioners for their understanding and support of these directives, which aim to protect the health of our people."

The archdiocese said it had made the decisions in consultation with public health officials, and said the recommendations would be lifted whenever the risk of flu infection subsides.

Here is the text of the archdiocesan recommendations, which were sent to parishes over the weekend:

• The Holy Water fonts are to be drained, cleaned with a disinfecting soap, and re-filled with holy water on a regular basis. Please note that old holy water should be disposed of in the sacrarium.

• The distribution of the Precious Blood for the faithful is suspended, with the exception of those who must receive from the cup due to medical reasons. The faith of the Church teaches that Christ, whole and entire, is received even under only one species.

• The exchange of the Sign of Peace is to be offered without any physical contact. If the priest celebrant chooses to extend the invitation for the sign of peace, the faithful, instead of a handshake, may bow to the persons nearby.

• While the faithful retain the option of receiving Holy Communion on the tongue or in the hand, all ministers of Holy Communion are advised to distribute the consecrated hosts with care, being cautious not to touch the tongue or the hand of the communicant.

• Parishioners should be reminded that if they are ill or suspect they are ill with a contagious illness, they are not bound by the Sunday Mass obligation. They should remain at home and return to church when they are well.

(Photo at top, by John Tlumacki/Globe staff, shows Northeastern University student Rebecca Thibault dipping her fingers in holy water before the start of the midday Mass today at the St. Francis Chapel at the Prudential Center in Boston. The Rev. Craig MacMahon of the chapel staff said that the chapel will now change the holy water daily.)

Newt Gingrich came to town yesterday. In the morning, he spoke to a breakfast gathering in Boston hosted by Catholic Citizenship; in the evening, he was at Harvard to speak at the Kennedy School. Gingrich, of course, is an interesting figure for a lot of reasons; I wanted to talk with him about his recent conversion to Catholicism, and the film he is now making about Pope John Paul II's 1979 visit to Poland. The interview was pretty limited -- I had seven minutes with him at the venerable Union Club on Beacon Hill -- but here's what he had to say in that period of time:

Q: Can you first tell me why you wanted to become a Catholic?
A: I don't know that I wanted to become a Catholic so much as I became a Catholic. I don't know that it was volitional in that sense. Having gone to the basilica (The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, in Washington) with my wife, who sings in the choir there, for about a decade, I think it gradually grew on me. And when Pope Benedict came to the basilica for vespers with the bishops, and my wife and the choir were singing, and I was allowed to come as a spouse -- I had been talking with Monsignor Rossi, who is the rector of the basilica, for about five years, just about faith, and secularism, the challenges we have in the modern world with our civilization, and that afternoon seeing Pope Benedict XVI fairly close up, and both really believing in his central theme of 'Christ Our Hope,' and seeing the joy in his eyes, fundamentally different than the news media portrait of a severe German intellectual, something in me just was triggered. And I said to Monsignor Rossi that night that I wanted to convert. And we spent the following six or eight months studying with Monsignor Rossi, and it was more a process of becoming more and more comfortable that this was -- this is -- the place that I belong, and the taking of the Eucharist is the experience that enriches my life.

Q: How did you think about Catholicism, growing up among Protestants?
A: I grew up all over the world. I was born in Pennsylvania, and was raised originally as a Lutheran, and then was, my dad was in the Army, so I was whatever the Protestant chaplain was. I was at one point a Presbyterian acolyte. And I think, as a professional historian, you can't study modern European history without some sense of the church, and the sense of the depth and the history of the church. I think, probably from the time I was a child, when my dad was stationed in France…this sense of the -- I may use the word wrong -- but the sense of the magisterium of the church, the sense of the power and majesty of the church, the fact that you're dealing with 2,000 years of history. My dad had studied Augustine in college, and had a copy of Augustine's 'City of God' when I was a child, and you just had this sense of, that you are encountering a continuum of effort to understand God and to explain God to humans, that is pretty overwhelming.

Q: Tell me about how you decided to make a film about a pope as one of your first public acts as a Catholic?
A: Well, we had made a movie, called 'Rediscovering God in America,' which really contextualized American history, in terms of the Washington monuments. Then, we made a film about Reagan, called 'Rendezvous with Destiny,' and in filming the Reagan movie, we had gone to Gdansk, and interviewed Lech Walesa, and we had gone to Prague, and interviewed Vaclav Havel, and both said in their interviews that the decisive moment in the breaking of the Soviet Union was June of 1979, and the pope's 9-day visit. As we thought about that, and began to put it in context, I'd been reading Weigel, starting with 'The Cube and the Cathedral,' and then 'The Final Revolution' and then his biography of the pope, and if you read 'The Final Revolution,' Weigel really argues that the central role of religious belief and the central role of religious organization was at the center of what was happening in Eastern Europe. And then when you interview Lech Walesa, he says, 'You can't understand what happened with Solidarity if you don't understand what the church was doing, if you don't understand what the pope was doing.' And even Vaclav Havel, who is a playwright, was saying – he's not Polish, but he's saying, 'As a neighboring Czech, let me tell you what it meant to us to have a Slavic pope and to have somebody who understood tyranny' and so forth. So I dug into all of that. And then you get to this extraordinary story of the pope, who is born about a year and a half after Poland becomes a country again for the first time since 1793; as a teenager, sees Poland destroyed again by Germany and the Soviet Union; participates in the Rhapsodic Theater at a time when it means a death penalty, in order to sustain Polish culture; enters the seminary for the priesthood at a time when there's a death penalty; becomes a priest under the emerging Communist dictatorship; serves all of his priesthood under the Communists; knew many Jews, understood Auschwitz, has a childhood friend who is Jewish; and this is the man who, in 1978, becomes pope. I mean it is an extraordinary moment in history. And he is an athletic energetic actor who is a charismatic leader. And he has the key underlying insight that you defeat Communism at a cultural level, that you pit the cross against the Soviet emblem, and that the cross ultimately will defeat atheism.

Q: Do you see this as a personal film in any way, or is this purely an academic, documentary exercise?
A: No, I think this which will be -- if we can do it right, and this is a big challenge -- this is a film which I hope will be personal, immediate, people won't walk out and say, 'Gee, that was interesting 30 years ago,' they'll walk out and say, 'What does this mean for my life in my country today.' We hope to translate the film into Mandarin, and we've been asked to translate it now into Vietnamese because there are 5 million Vietnamese Catholics; we hope to translate it into Polish, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, because we see this as a universal film that has an impact for people everywhere on the planet.

Q: So do you still have political aspirations, or is filmmaking now your mission?
A: I think I have a public citizen aspiration. Whether it goes beyond that, we'll find out over the next few years.

(Photos, by David L. Ryan of the Globe staff, show Newt Gingrich at the Union Club in Boston on Oct. 8, 2009.)

All this rain got you down? Here's an invitation -- tomorrow (Sunday, Oct. 4), I'll be leading a pre-matinee discussion about "The Savannah Disputation" at the Boston Center for the Arts with the play's director, Paul Daigneault, and one of its actors, Timothy Crowe, a onetime seminarian who plays a priest in the production. (Crowe talked with me about his journey from seminarian to actor-playing-a-priest in this interview; we'll talk more about it Sunday.)

The play, which is being produced by the SpeakEasy Stage Company, is a comedy about two Catholic sisters in Georgia whose lives are shaken when a perky young evangelical missionary comes knocking on their door. The production stars two of Boston's best-known actresses, Nancy Carroll and Paula Plum.

The pre-show discussion, which begins at 1:30 p.m., is open to Globe subscribers -- you just go to www.bgextras.com to sign up.

(Photo, by Eric Levenson/SpeakEasy Stage, shows Carolyn Charpie and Timothy Crowe in a scene from "The Savannah Disputation.")

Support for abortion rights appears to be slipping, according to a new report being issued today by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. An excerpt:

Polls conducted in 2009 have found fewer Americans expressing support for abortion than in previous years. In Pew Research Center polls in 2007 and 2008, supporters of legal abortion clearly outnumbered opponents; now Americans are evenly divided on the question, and there have been modest increases in the numbers who favor reducing abortions or making them harder to obtain. Less support for abortion is evident among most demographic and political groups.

The latest Pew Research Center survey also reveals that the abortion debate has receded in importance, especially among liberals. At the same time, opposition to abortion has grown more firm among conservatives, who have become less supportive of finding a middle ground on the issue and more certain of the correctness of their own views on abortion.

No single reason for the shift in opinions is apparent, but the pattern of changes suggests that the election of a pro-choice Democrat for president may be a contributing factor. Among Republicans, there has been a seven point decline in support for legal abortion and a corresponding six point increase in opposition to abortion. But the change is smaller among Democrats, whose support for legal abortion is down four points with no corresponding increase in pro-life opinion. Indeed, three groups of President Obama’s strongest supporters – African Americans, young people and those unaffiliated with a religion – have not changed their views on abortion at all. At the same time, fully half of conservative Republicans (52%) – the political group most opposed to abortion – say they worry Obama will go too far in supporting abortion rights.

The shift in opinion is broad-based, appearing in most demographic groups in the population. One of the largest shifts (10 points) has occurred among white, non-Hispanic Catholics who attend Mass at least weekly. Substantial change has also occurred among Democratic men (with support for abortion down nine points), but not among Democratic women.

A few tidbits on attitudes among people of faith:

• "Among religious groups, observant white mainline Protestants and white Catholics (i.e., those who attend worship services at least weekly) each exhibit double-digit declines in support for legal abortion, as do Jews and less-observant white evangelical Protestants. By contrast, the views of black Protestants and the religiously unaffiliated have held steady."
• "Almost two-thirds of white evangelical Protestants (64%) back greater restrictions on abortion, but fewer than half as many white mainline Protestants (27%) and the religiously unaffiliated (23%) say the same. Catholics fall in between, with 44% in support of more restrictions on abortion."
• "Those who attend worship services more often are also more apt to favor restrictions on abortion. A slight majority of those who attend church at least weekly (53%) favor more restrictions, compared with 37% of those who attend monthly or yearly and 28% of those who seldom or never attend."
• "Among religious groups, white evangelicals (and especially those who attend services more often) see the abortion issue critically important (29% overall, and 35% among high attenders) or as one important issue among many (42% each). White mainline Protestants and the unaffiliated, by contrast, are the least likely to say the issue is a critical one (7% each), and most likely to say the issue is not important (60% and 70%). There is also a wide discrepancy between Catholics who attend Mass weekly and those who do not; among the former, 21% say abortion is critical, compared with 4% among those who attend less often. Black Protestants are less likely than white evangelicals to say abortion is critical (17% vs. 29%), but more likely than white mainliners (7%). A plurality of black Protestants (42%) say abortion is not an important issue."
• "Among white Catholics who attend Mass weekly (most of whom oppose abortion), one-in five continue to rate abortion as a critical issue, which is essentially unchanged since 2006. By contrast, among white Catholics who attend Mass less regularly (most of whom support legal abortion), the figure has dropped from 20% to 4%, a decline of 16 percentage points. Similarly, among the unaffiliated, there has been a 19-point drop, from 28% to 7%. Worship service attendance overall is also linked with the change in the perceived importance of the abortion issue. Those who attend least regularly are now 18 points less likely to rate abortion as a critical issue, compared with a six-point drop among those who attend weekly and a 13-point drop among those who attend monthly or yearly."

(Graphics courtesy of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.)

There's quite a conversation going on in the religion blogosphere about the contrast between the case of Roman Polanksi (famed filmmaker, accused of raping 13-year-old girl decades ago, on the lam, and now, after finally being arrested in Switzerland, winning public support from fellow entertainers and European public officials) and that of multiple priests (not famous, accused of abusing minors decades ago, etc.).

The Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a senior fellow at Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University, was first out of the box, posting an item headlined, "Father Polanski Would Go to Jail,'' at On Faith. An excerpt:

Polanski's defenders, including a 2008 HBO documentary, argue that he should not be punished. They say that the girl was willing and sexually experienced and she has forgiven him (after receiving a settlement). They even cite his tragic childhood and life as an excuse. And besides, it is ancient history.

Such arguments from pedophile priests would be laughed out of court and lambasted by everyone, and rightly so. It makes no difference that the girl is willing and sexually experienced, it is a crime. It is the role of the court, not the victim, to decide who goes to jail and for how long.

It is not as if Polanski is the only Hollywood celebrity to be accused of child abuse. Woody Allen and Michael Jackson come to mind. I am sure that with a little research the media could come up with quite a list. The Catholic Church has rightly been put under a microscope when 4 percent of its priests were involved in abuse, but what about the film industry?

The world has truly changed. Entertainment is the new religion with sex, violence and money the new Trinity. The directors and stars are worshiped and quickly forgiven for any infraction as long as the PR agent is a skilled as a saintly confessor. Entertainment, not religion, is the new opiate of the people and we don't want our supply disturbed.

Is there a double standard here? You bet.

Next up was the Rev. James Martin, associate editor of America magazine, writing, "If he were in a collar there would be no boo-hooing about his recent plight. There would be zero pity for him." An excerpt from his post, which was titled, "If Polanski Were Wearing a Collar ":

Can you imagine a petition being circulated among actors, directors and producers in the United States to have a Catholic priest reinstated in his parish after he had abused a 13-year-old child? If you believe this about Polanski--that his good deeds offset his guilt and that enough time has passed--do you believe the same about pedophile priests?

Multiple others are chiming in as well. David Gibson, writing for Politics Daily, also asks, "Comparisons are by their nature invidious. But what if Roman Polanksi were wearing a Roman collar? Would "Monsignor Polanksi" receive the same considerations?" Peter Smith, a religion writer for the Louisville Courier-Journal, wonders, "Let's say Roman Polanski was a priest who, say, fled the country and for decades avoid serving a sentence for statutory rape. Well, the question is a bit obvious. Would anyone sympathize with the end of his longtime fugitive status for his statutory rape conviction? Wouldn't people be indignant if a Catholic organization honored him in exile?" Many other religion writers are asking the same, from USA Today's Cathy Lynn Grossman, to Reuters's Tom Heneghan. And Rod Dreher, blogging as BeliefNet's Crunchy Con, takes the argument even further, writing:

In our culture, when it comes to sex, celebrities are beyond good and evil. At least Polanski isn't a orthodox Catholic or committed Evangelical of any sort. In his cultural milieu, that would be the unforgivable sin.

(Photo, by Sebastien Bozon/AFP, shows the "Free Polanski" sign on a man's shirt at the Zurich film festival on September 28, 2009.)

A dispatch from the Boston-is-a-really-small-town department: Paul G. Kirk Jr., who was named today as the interim US Senator from Massachusetts, is the grand-nephew of Cardinal William H. O'Connell, one of the most powerful figures in local church history, who served as archbishop of Boston from 1907 until his death in 1944. Kirk, 71, is one of five children of Josephine O'Connell, whose father, Edward J. O'Connell, was an older brother of Cardinal O'Connell.

The connection ties Kirk to one of the odder stories now unfolding in town, as the Archdiocese of Boston seeks to disinter the cardinal's remains and remove them from land that the church sold to Boston College to raise money to pay off victims of clergy sexual abuse. The saga of the cardinal's tomb, which has been playing out for five years now, last week moved to Suffolk Probate and Family Court, where Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley, joined by the trustees of Boston College, are suing 30 of O'Connell's living relatives, including Kirk, for the right to relocate the remains.

I last spoke with Kirk about his famous great-uncle about a year and a half ago. Kirk was born in 1938, and the cardinal died in 1944, so they didn't spend a lot of time together, and the memories have faded, but Kirk told me he remembered, as a little boy, visiting Cardinal O'Connell at his grand residence in Brighton (also now the property of BC), and that his most distinct memory was of reciting the pledge of allegiance for his great-uncle. At the time of our interview last year, Kirk was opposed to relocating the cardinal's remains, saying, "I think I speak for the majority of the cardinal's next of kin in saying that we would like him to remain at his chosen resting place.''

Kirk hasn't been taking calls in recent days, but I spoke this morning with his younger brother, Edward W. Kirk, who told me that Cardinal O'Connell presided at the 1934 marriage of the Kirk boys' parents, Josephine O'Connell and Paul G. Kirk, at a chapel at the cardinal's residence in Brighton. The elder Kirk went on to become a longtime Superior Court judge and then a justice of the Supreme Judicial Court, and "was a great admirer of the cardinal,'' Ed Kirk told me. To mark that admiration, the elder Kirk placed two plaques on the flagpole of the Kirk family's summer house on Wequaquet Lake on Cape Cod, one bearing the name of the cardinal, and the other that of the Rev. Jeremiah F. Minihan, an O'Connell aide and Kirk friend who went on to become an auxiliary bishop in Boston. When the Kirk family sold the Centerville house, Paul G. Kirk Jr. removed the plaques for safekeeping, and the O'Connell tributes are now mounted on a flagpole in the yard of the interim senator's own house on Mystic Lake in Marstons Mills.

(Photo at top, from the Boston Globe's archives, shows Cardinal William H. O'Connell of Boston in 1943. Photo at bottom, by Adam Hunger/Reuters, shows Paul G. Kirk Jr. at the State House in Boston on Sept. 24, 2009.)

Boston's SpeakEasy Stage Company tonight opened the local premiere of a comedy called "The Savannah Disputation,'' about a pair of sixtysomething Catholic sisters who are unsettled by visits from a perky young Protestant missionary, and decide to try to trap her into a debate with their local parish priest.

This production is noteworthy because Timothy Crowe, the actor playing the priest, was himself a seminarian many years ago.

I have a preview of the play, focusing on Crowe's role, in the Arts section of today's Globe. The lede:

The weary priest, seated on a deep couch with a drink at hand, pauses for several minutes before responding to the question about how it felt to embrace a life of celibacy. When he answers, he begins with an anecdote, about the period of time just before he took his vows.

“One day, the fact of celibacy just - hit me in the face,’’ says Father Patrick Murphy, one of the central characters in a new play, “The Savannah Disputation,’’ which opens today at the Boston Center for the Arts.

“For the first time, I seemed to really - understand,’’ the priest says, “and I felt extremely free, like I had sidestepped a trap.’’

The character offers the comment as a straightforward confession of a long-buried emotion. But for the actor, Timothy Crowe, the line is rich with irony.

Crowe, 64, faced that same moment of understanding decades ago as a young seminarian in Missouri. But for Crowe, unlike for Father Murphy, sidestepping the trap meant not entering the priesthood.

“It was a very difficult decision,’’ Crowe said in an interview last week. “But I felt incomplete.’’

(Photo, by Eric Levenson/SpeakEasy Stage Company, shows Timothy Crowe, with Carolyn Charpie, in a scene from "The Savannah Disputation,'' running through Oct. 17 at the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts.)

In this morning's Globe, I have a story about the Catholic Church's efforts to relocate the remains of Cardinal William H. O'Connell, who was buried under a small chapel behind his house in Brighton in 1944. Trouble is, the land has since been sold to Boston College, the cardinal's alma mater, and the university has said it doesn't think the campus is the appropriate place for the cardinal's remains. So yesterday, the archbishop of Boston (Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley) and the Boston College board of trustees jointly filed a petition with the Suffolk Probate and Family Court asking for permission to relocate the burial site to the campus of St. Sebastian's School in Needham.

My lede:

The Archdiocese of Boston, writing an epilogue to one of the more colorful stories in the history of Catholic Boston, asked a court yesterday for permission to unearth the entombed body of Cardinal William H. O’Connell and relocate his remains to the grounds of a suburban prep school.

The proposed disinterment is rich with historical irony, because when O’Connell first purchased land in Brighton as a headquarters for the archdiocese, he insisted that the remains of a group of Sulpician priests be dug up and removed from the property.

Now, six decades after his death, the cardinal’s body may be exhumed from the same acreage because his own alma mater, Boston College, has insisted that the archdiocese remove the cardinal’s remains as a condition of the university’s purchase of the Brighton property.

“It is no longer possible to honor the late cardinal’s wishes relative to his burial,’’ Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley and the trustees of Boston College said in a joint filing in Suffolk Probate and Family Court yesterday. “The petitioning parties seek this court’s approval to reinter the cardinal’s remains on a site approved by the court.’’

The good folks at Boston.com have scanned and posted Cardinal O'Connell's last will and testament (a fascinating read) as well as the complaint for relocation of Cardinal O'Connell's burial site for your perusal.

(Photo above, by the Globe, shows the chapel where Cardinal O'Connell was buried in a crypt beneath the floorboards. The photograph was taken on April 28, 1944, just before the cardinal's burial later that same day.)

The Knights of Columbus yesterday hosted a discussion for religion writers, gathered in Minneapolis for the 60th annual convention of the Religion Newswriters Association, about the idea of a conscience right, which is a pretty hot issue in the abortion debate, and has now made its way into the controversy over health care reform.

The speakers, two law professors from the University of St. Thomas and the president of an anti-abortion organization, were urging reporters to pay more attention to this issue, which, at least as they frame it, concerns the rights of health care workers to decline to participate in the provision of services that conflict with their religious beliefs or moral values. There were a couple of interesting moments -- one of the professors, Teresa Stanton Collett, suggested that there is now a trend to view doctors like vending machines, in that they are expected to provide what patients want, without judgment. Charmaine Yoest, the president of Americans United for Life, suggested that "protection of conscience is under attack" as supporters of abortion rights attempt to define abortion as routine health care, and therefore not something a health care provider can avoid providing.

But the most provocative analysis, at least for me, came from law professor Robert Vischer, who noted that here in Minneapolis, there have been recent cases in which Muslim taxi drivers have argued that they shouldn't have to transport passengers carrying alcohol, and Muslim grocery store cashiers have argued that they shouldn't have to handle pork products. But, he said, conscience cases are becoming increasingly complex, pitting several rights against each other. He suggested that there is a general societal consensus that physicians should not be forced to perform abortions, but asked, "what if abortion is now in a pill, and the physician is now a pharmacist?'' He suggested that such a dilemma now pits the right of a customer to have access to health care against the right of the pharmacist to exercise a moral or religious conscience, and the solution depends on how one defines access (does every medication have to be available at every pharmacy, even in a major city with multiple drug stores?) and how one views pharmacists (are they, to use Collett's description, akin to vending machines, or do they have some right of conscience?).

In the analogy of the day, Vischer asked, "What if Tom Cruise wants to open a pharmacy where he doesn't want to sell anti-depressants?"

Food for thought.

(Photo, by Virginia Sherwood/NBC via AP, shows Tom Cruise gesturing toward Today Show host Matt Lauer during a June 24, 2005 interview in which the two discussed anti-depressants and Scientology.)

At a panel on immigration and faith at the Religion Newswriters Association convention Thursday, Luis Lugo, the director of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, made a few interesting observations:

• Immigration is leading to an increase in the number of Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims in the United States, but a large majority of new immigrants are Christian. This stands in contrast to the situation in Europe, where a much higher percentage of immigrants are non-Christian.
• Although Protestants outnumber Catholics in the United States, new immigrants are overwhelmingly Catholic, and as a result, "immigration is tilting the balance within American Christianity in favor of Catholicism." Also, Lugo said, "We're very close to becoming a minority Protestant country.''
• Many of the new immigrants are from Latin America, Africa and Asia. "What we are seeing is not the de-Christianization of America, but the de-Europeanization of American Christianity,'' he said. One effect of this, he said, is a rise in Pentecostal and charismatic worship styles in US churches, because those more expressive forms of worship are often preferred by immigrants from the Global South.
• Nearly a quarter of all Catholics in the United States are foreign born -- the highest percentage among any of the nation's largest faith groups. "To know what the country will be like in three decades, look at the Catholic Church,'' he said.
• The Muslim population in the United States is more diverse, in terms of national origin, than the Muslim population in any other country on earth. No more than 8 percent of American Muslims is from any one country. This, again, contrasts with the situation in Europe, where, for example, many German Muslims are from Turkey, many Spanish Muslims are from Morocco, and many French Muslims are from Algeria.

Another Catholic leader is coming to the defense of the funeral for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

Bishop Robert C. Morlino, the Catholic bishop of Madison, Wisconsin, has penned a column for his diocesan newspaper reflecting on the funeral rites. The quotation that jumped out at me was this one: "The death of Senator Kennedy has called forth at least an apparent rejection of mercy on the part of not a few Catholics." Morlino expresses "contentment" with the church's handling of the liturgy, writing:

The proclamation of God’s Mercy was powerful, the prayer for forgiveness of his past sins was clearly offered, and all of this in a subdued way because of his long-standing and public holding of pro-abortion and other stances which have been a scandal in the literal sense.

The only aspects of the Funeral Rites which were not low key were those on the guest-list, where family preferences are generally granted.

Morlino makes clear his unhappiness with Kennedy's support for abortion rights, but also praises his actions in other areas. Here is an excerpt from Morlino's lengthy column:

I’m afraid...that for not a few Catholics, the funeral rites for Senator Kennedy were a source of scandal — that is, quite literally, led them into sin. From not a few corners has come the question, "how on earth could Teddy Kennedy be buried from the Church?" There have also been expressions from some, that "whatever happens in Church, Senator Kennedy will now face justice, which will lead him inside the gates of Hell."

From the earliest days of the Church it was defined as sinful to enjoy the thought that someone might be in Hell. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit worked powerfully through history so that Hell could be avoided by the proper exercise of human freedom, and to take delight in the perceived foiling of God's plan is wrong.

Pope Benedict XVI has written very beautifully that on the Cross of Christ there was lived out a conflict between God's justice, in that someone who was Himself equal to God had to die in reparation for man's sinfulness, and God's mercy: from the very beginning, the Church believed and taught that Jesus died precisely so that sins might be forgiven. His body was broken and His blood was shed so that sins might be forgiven, so that there might be mercy.

The death of Senator Kennedy has called forth at least an apparent rejection of mercy on the part of not a few Catholics. On the cross of Christ, God's justice came into conflict with God's mercy. God's justice was fully satisfied, but mercy triumphed in the conflict, according to the teaching of Pope Benedict. Without denying any misdeeds on the part of Senator Kennedy, the Church, seeking to reflect the face of Christ, proclaimed God's mercy for the whole world to see in a subdued but unmistakable way. It was more than appropriate.

In the seminary I was taught to speak like a lion from the pulpit — certainly there are those in the diocese who believe that perhaps I do that all too well — but that in the confessional I should be a lamb, reflecting the face of the Lamb of God, who died so that there might be mercy. The funeral rites for Senator Kennedy challenge all of us to question ourselves as to whether we are less eager to grant mercy than God Himself is.

Morlino also comments on Kennedy's relationship with the Catholic church, discussing a meeting between Kennedy and theologians to discuss the abortion issue (I think he must be referring to a gathering in 1964 described by Anne Hendershott in the Wall Street Journal in January):

Senator Kennedy, a good number of years ago, convened a meeting of priests and very high-level theologians to address the issue of Catholic political leaders and their votes with regard to abortion. Obviously, the very convening of this meeting showed that he took his Catholicism seriously and did not consider himself to be an accomplished theologian. Sadly, that meeting simply became another occasion for the development by theologians of the "two-conscience" approach to the faith for Catholic political leaders — that is the approach which says, "privately I’m opposed to abortion, but in the public arena there are other conflicting responsibilities which allow me to vote in favor of legal abortion."

No matter how many theologians get together, the two-conscience theory is irreparably flawed and wrong, and no one can make it otherwise. But if Senator Kennedy was given this advice and this approach, this "catechesis" — false though it is — by prominent theologians, it could at least be said that there was some ground for confusion and ambiguity in his own practice about these matters. The priests and theologians who counseled Senator Kennedy are not free of blame for causing the confusion and the ambiguity through false catechesis.

God forbid that I be taken as making excuses for Teddy Kennedy’s behavior in certain areas, yet Senator Kennedy’s having written a personal letter to our Holy Father during his last days, a letter that was hand-delivered by President Obama, is also an indication that he believed that the pope alone was the Vicar of Christ, and he wanted to make absolutely sure that our Holy Father received his letter. And too, since priests were regularly present to him during his final year and final days, it would be more reasonable than not to believe that he had made a good confession.

Bishop Morlino's full column is here.

(H/T: The Deacon's Bench and Whispers in the Loggia.)

(Photo courtesy of Diocese of Madison.)

I'm tying up a few final loose ends from the Kennedy funeral, and thought I should address Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley's vestments, given the amount of chatter among Catholic bloggers about the significance of what he was wearing. As Webster Bull, writing at Why I am Catholic, observed, "In recent days, we have witnessed a brouhaha over Cardinal Sean O'Malley's presiding 'in choir' at the Kennedy funeral." And at Whispers in the Loggia, Rocco Palmo wrote, "Boston's Cardinal Sean O'Malley took the brunt of criticism from pro-life activists for his decision to preside 'in choir' and lead the final commendation at the liturgy."

Some saw in O'Malley's vestments a signal that he was maintaining a certain distance from the proceedings. Over at GetReligion, Terry Mattingly reprinted a comment from a reader asserting, "Cardinal O'Malley was clad in what is known as choir dress. That means he was neither a celebrant nor a presider. He was there the same as the folks in the pews." And at American Papist, Thomas Peters blogged:

I did not watch the Kennedy funeral, but I gathered from reports that Cardinal O'Malley attended in choir (instead of concelebrating). I thought this was an acceptable compromise approach to making an appearance but not 'endorsing' the proceedings.

But at the National Catholic Reporter, Michael Sean Winters saw nothing unusual in the cardinal's choice of vestments:

Others have floated the idea that Cardinal O'Malley showed his disdain for the proceedings by presiding but not concelebrating. In fact, a bishop always presides when he is present but if he concelebrates, he is automatically the principal celebrant. For example, when a priest has his first Mass, if a prelate is in attendance, the prelate is "in coro" as O'Malley was, and can preach or not, but he cannot concelebrate or the new priest could not be the principal celebrant. The first time I met Cardinal O'Malley, we were both at a funeral for the mother of a priest. Her son was the principal celebrant and then-Bishop O'Malley was "in coro" as was Cardinal Aponte. At the conclusion of the Mass, Cardinal Aponte put on his cope and miter and conducted the commendation rite as O'Malley did at Kennedy's funeral.

The Archdiocese of Boston repeatedly said that O'Malley had presided at the funeral, but was not the principal celebrant of the funeral Mass. So I asked the archdiocese to explain what O'Malley was wearing, and why, and this is the answer I got:

The cardinal was not the principal celebrant of the funeral liturgy. It is very common, according to local custom, that the bishop attends the funeral Mass and participates from the side of the sanctuary. In this case (top photo), he is considered to be "in choir." In addition to the red "choir cassock" (different from the "house cassock" that is black with red piping and red buttons, seen for example at the Boston College commencement each year) the cardinal is also seen wearing his rochet (a white surplice worn over the cassock) and the mozzetta (a short red cape worn over the shoulders). On his head he wears the zucchetto underneath the biretta. The choir cassock is worn only at liturgical functions.

After Communion the cardinal took off the mozetta and replaced it with the cope and stole (bottom photo). The cope is worn when the bishop leads the prayers of final commendation at the end of a funeral Mass at which he is not the principal celebrant.

(Photo at top shows Cardinal O'Malley at the start of the Kennedy funeral; photo at bottom shows him during the prayers of commendation at the close of the funeral. Both photos were taken by Getty at the Mission Church in Boston on Aug. 29, 2009.)

This morning, a timely reminder that the Archdiocese of Boston does, as it says, allow funerals for both sinners and saints. (For anyone who has been on vacation, this has become an issue after some Catholics objected to the funeral Mass for the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy because of the senator's support for abortion rights; Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley last night blogged, "In the strongest terms I disagree with that position.'')

Today, at St. Leonard of Port Maurice Parish in Boston's North End, the Rev. Antonio Nardoianni presided over a Catholic funeral Mass for Gennaro "Jerry" J. Angiulo, one of Boston's best-known mobsters, who served time in prison for racketeering, gambling, loan-sharking, and obstruction of justice. "We all need forgiveness,'' Father Nardoianni said in his homily.

My colleague, Shelley Murphy, a longtime chronicler of organized crime in Boston, was there, and filed this dispatch.

(Photo, by John Tlumacki of the Globe staff, shows Barbara Angiulo, the widow of former Mafia underboss Gennaro Angiulo, holding the flag that draped his casket as she waits with the last surviving Angiulo brother, Frankie, while the casket is put into the hearse outside St. Leonard's Church in Boston on Sept. 3, 2009.)

Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley of Boston tonight has posted on his blog an unusual statement explaining why he decided to preside at the funeral of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, and what he talked about during his two to three minute exchange with President Obama before the funeral Mass began. The cardinal made the statement after criticism, in the form of phone calls and e-mails to the archdiocese and comments by some bloggers and organizations, lambasting the cardinal for participating in the funeral of a prominent Catholic politician who supported abortion rights. The archdiocese says the cardinal also received multiple expressions of gratitude for his decision to participate in the funeral, but that because of the criticism he wanted to explain his decision.

Here is the statement:

Saturday was the 39th anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood, at St. Augustine’s Church in Pittsburgh by Bishop John B. McDowell, who is still going strong today. In the Church’s calendar, the feast day for August 29 is the Beheading of John the Baptist. People usually take note when I tell them that I was professed to religious life on Bastille Day, July 14, and ordained on the feast of the Beheading. Not that I am superstitious.

On Saturday morning I attended the funeral Mass for Senator Edward M. Kennedy. Father Donald Monan, S.J., former president of Boston College, celebrated the Mass and Father Mark Hession, pastor of Our Lady of Victories in Centerville, preached the homily.

The music was outstanding with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus enriching the liturgy along with mezzo-soprano Susan Graham who later sang an absolutely striking rendition of Schubert’s “Ave Maria.” Cellist Yo-Yo Ma graced us with his beautiful solo performance of Bach and later joined Placido Domingo, who sang the “Panis Angelicus.” Placido has a superb voice. I told him how much I like the Zarzuela, the Spanish classical musical theater productions. His family had a troupe that presented Zarzuelas in Mexico and he promised to arrange a performance.

The venue for the funeral Mass was Mission Church, the magnificent Redemptorist Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

Senator Kennedy prayed often in this church when his daughter, Kara, was stricken with cancer. It is a church where countless faithful have gone to pray and ask for healing, grace and forgiveness.

In light of these themes, I wish to address our Catholic faithful who have voiced both support and disappointment at my having presided at the Senator’s funeral Mass.

Needless to say, the Senator’s wake and Catholic funeral were controversial because of the fact that he did not publically support Catholic teaching and advocacy on behalf of the unborn. ­­­Given the profound effect of Catholic social teaching on so many of the programs and policies espoused by Senator Kennedy and the millions who benefitted from them, there is a tragic sense of lost opportunity in his lack of support for the unborn. To me and many Catholics it was a great disappointment because, had he placed the issue of life at the centerpiece of the Social Gospel where it belongs, he could have multiplied the immensely valuable work he accomplished.

The thousands of people who lined the roads as the late Senator’s motorcade travelled from Cape Cod to Boston and the throngs that crowded the Kennedy Library for two days during the lying in repose, I believe, were there to pay tribute to these many accomplishments rather than as an endorsement of the Senator’s voting record on abortion.

The crowds also were there to pay tribute to the Kennedy family as a whole. On the national political landscape, if Barack Obama broke the glass ceiling of the presidency for African Americans, Jack Kennedy broke it for American Catholics.

As a young lad, I saw photographs of both Pope John XXIII and President John Kennedy hanging in the thatched cottages of County Mayo and heard the Gaelic greeting, “God and Mary be with you.” Three of the Kennedy brothers died in service of our country in the prime of life. And Eunice Shriver, who died just a few weeks ago, was an outspoken defender of the unborn and an apostle of the Gospel of Life. She taught us all how to love special children and to make room for everyone at the table of life. In 1992, Eunice petitioned her party’s convention to consider “a new understanding” of the issue, “one that does not pit mother against child,” but instead seeks “policies that responsibly protect and advance the interest of mothers and their children, both before and after birth.”

Much of what is noble in the politics and work of the Kennedys had its origins in the bedrock of the faith of Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. As a young woman she had a profound experience of God’s love that transformed her life. She strove to communicate that faith to her large clan. Since the time of her funeral Mass I have kept her memorial prayer card, inscribed with Rose Kennedy’s own words:

"If God were to take away all His blessings, health, physical fitness, wealth, intelligence, and leave me but one gift, I would ask for faith – for with faith in Him and His goodness, mercy, love for me, and belief in everlasting life, I believe I could suffer the loss of my other gifts and still be happy – trustful, leaving all to His inscrutable Providence."

There are those who objected, in some cases vociferously, to the Church’s providing a Catholic funeral for the Senator. In the strongest terms I disagree with that position. At the Senator’s interment on Saturday evening, with his family’s permission, we learned of details of his recent personal correspondence with Pope Benedict XVI. It was very moving to hear the Senator acknowledging his failing to always be a faithful Catholic, and his request for prayers as he faced the end of his life. The Holy Father’s expression of gratitude for the Senator’s pledge of prayer for the Church, his commendation of the Senator and his family to the intercession of the Blessed Mother, and his imparting the Apostolic Blessing, spoke of His Holiness’ role as the Vicar of Christ, the Good Shepherd who leaves none of the flock behind.

As Archbishop of Boston, I considered it appropriate to represent the Church at this liturgy out of respect for the Senator, his family, those who attended the Mass and all those who were praying for the Senator and his family at this difficult time. We are people of faith and we believe in a loving and forgiving God from whom we seek mercy.

Advocating for the dignity of life is central to my role as a priest and a bishop. One of my greatest satisfactions in my ministry thus far was helping to overturn the abortion laws in Honduras. The person who answered my call for help with that effort was Dr. Bernard Nathanson, who had been a prominent leader in NARAL and the abortion rights movement. His own change of heart led Dr. Nathanson from a practice of providing abortions to becoming one of the most eloquent exponents of the pro-life movement.

Helen Alvaré, who is one of the most outstanding pro-life jurists, a former Director of the Bishops' Pro-life Office and a long standing consultant to the USCCB Committee for Pro-Life Activities, has always said that the pro-life movement is best characterized by what it is for, not against. We are for the precious gift of life, and our task is to build a civilization of love. We must show those who do not share our belief about life that we care about them. We will stop the practice of abortion by changing the law, and we will be successful in changing the law if we change people’s hearts. We will not change hearts by turning away from people in their time of need and when they are experiencing grief and loss.

At times, even in the Church, zeal can lead people to issue harsh judgments and impute the worst motives to one another. These attitudes and practices do irreparable damage to the communion of the Church. If any cause is motivated by judgment, anger or vindictiveness, it will be doomed to marginalization and failure. Jesus’ words to us were that we must love one another as He loves us. Jesus loves us while we are still in sin. He loves each of us first, and He loves us to the end. Our ability to change people’s hearts and help them to grasp the dignity of each and every life, from the first moment of conception to the last moment of natural death, is directly related to our ability to increase love and unity in the Church, for our proclamation of the Truth is hindered when we are divided and fighting with each other.

President Obama and three former presidents attended Senator Kennedy’s funeral. I had the opportunity to speak briefly with President Obama, to welcome him to the Basilica and to share with him that the bishops of the Catholic Church are anxious to support a plan for universal health care, but we will not support a plan that will include a provision for abortion or could open the way to abortions in the future. The President was gracious in the short time we spoke, he listened intently to what I was saying.

Democrats and Republicans sat side by side in the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, praying for Senator Kennedy and his family. It is my sincere hope that all people who long to promote the cause of life will pray and work together to change hearts, to bring about an increased respect for life, and to change laws so as to make America a safe place for all, including the unborn.

The cardinal's statement appears to have been provoked by the widespread discussion among Catholic opinion leaders and writers about how the church should have responded to Kennedy's death, given that the senator was a member of the most prominent Catholic family in American history, and a champion on many elements of Catholic social teaching, but also a supporter of abortion rights as well as an advocate for gay rights and a man whose personal failings had also been well chronicled.

There has been ample criticism of the hierarchy's role in the Kennedy funeral rites. Raymond Arroyo, the news director at Eternal Word Television Network, blogged:

The prayer intercessions at the funeral mass, the endless eulogies, the image of the Cardinal Archbishop of Boston reading prayers, and finally Cardinal McCarrick interring the remains sent an uncontested message: One may defy Church teaching, publicly lead others astray, deprive innocent lives of their rights, and still be seen a good Catholic, even an exemplary one. The casual viewer is tempted to think that Catholicism has become a Church of externals where core doctrines and major teachings are as malleable as they are in the nearest Protestant community. Or worse, to think it all a hollow show.

Elizabeth Scalia, over at First Things, was also concerned, writing, "By all means, the good done in every life should be remembered and celebrated, but in the twenty-first century it is a problematic hagiography that dismisses some genuinely deleterious public behavior with a shrugging, 'as we’re all flawed, let us on this be silent!'"

Harsher criticism came from groups including such as Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, whose executive director, C.J. Doyle wrote, the day of the funeral:

No rational person can reasonably be expected to take seriously Catholic opposition to abortion when a champion of the Culture of Death, who repeatedly betrayed the Faith of his baptism, is lauded and extolled by priests and prelates in a Marian basilica. This morning's spectacle is evidence of the corruption which pervades the Catholic Church in the United States. The right to life will never be recognized by secular society if it is not first vindicated and consistently upheld within the institutions of the Church itself.

And the Rev. Brian Harrison, writing at LifeSiteNews.com, offered a similar critique:

For to those innumerable viewers and listeners of many religions (or none) who were aware of Sen. Kennedy's public, straightforward, radical, long-standing, and (as far as we know) unrepented defiance of his own Church's firm teaching about the duty of legislators to protect unborn human life and resist the militant homosexual agenda, this morning's Mass, concelebrated by several priests, presided over Cardinal Sean O'Malley, Archbishop of Boston, and adorned by a eulogy from the aforesaid U.S. President, effectively communicated a tacit but very clear message: the Church does not really take too seriously her own 'official' doctrines on these matters!

A few groups opposed the idea of granting Kennedy a Catholic funeral at all -- the president of the American Life League, Judie Brown, wrote Cardinal O'Malley before the funeral, saying, "If this funeral Mass proceeds as planned, Senator Edward Kennedy will have spit one more time on Christ, this time from a casket.'' The Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer, president of Human Life International, wrote that, "To honor this 'catholic' champion of the culture of death with a Catholic funeral is unjust to those who have actually paid the price of fidelity."

O'Malley's blog post tonight is his first statement about the late Senator Kennedy since August 26, when the cardinal issued a brief statement about the senator's death:

Today we mourn the passing of Senator Edward M. Kennedy and we extend our heartfelt prayers and sincere condolences to his wife Victoria and their children, Kara, Edward, Patrick, Curran and Caroline. Senator Kennedy was blessed with a dedicated and loving family who stood by his side, particularly during the past year as he faced his illness with courage, dignity and strength.

We join with his colleagues in Congress and the people of Massachusetts in reflecting on his life and his commitment to public service. For nearly half a century, Senator Kennedy was often a champion for the poor, the less fortunate and those seeking a better life. Across Massachusetts and the nation, his legacy will be carried on through the lives of those he served.

We pray for the repose of his soul and that his family finds comfort and consolation in this difficult time.

Two of the three other Massachusetts bishops also expressed condolences, without mentioning the abortion issue. The bishop of Worcester, Robert J. McManus, issued the following statement:

It is with great sadness tempered with Christian hope in eternal life that we turn to almighty God in prayer for our departed senator and brother, Edward M. Kennedy. His dedication to public service for nearly fifty years and his zealous advocacy for so many issues of social justice, which benefited not just our Commonwealth but the entire country, will truly be missed. Our hearts and prayers go out to the members of the Kennedy family at the death of a man who cared so much for them as loving father, brother, uncle, and friend. May God bring them his peace and consolation in this time of loss and grief. May Senator Kennedy's soul and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

And the bishop of Fall River, George W. Coleman, also issued a statement:

The Fall River Diocese mourns the loss of Senator Edward M. Kennedy who, throughout his life, enjoyed spending time on Cape Cod. We join with others across our state and nation in remembering him for his many years of service in the U.S. Senate, where he was a strong proponent of efforts to help the poor and disadvantaged. We offer our prayers for the repose of his soul and extend to his wife, children, and entire family our sympathy and prayerful condolences.

The bishop of Springfield, Timothy A. McDonell, did not issue a statement about Kennedy's death.

In this morning's Globe, I have a story about the exchange of letters between Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and the Vatican. An excerpt:

Scholars generally agree that Kennedy’s letter to Pope Benedict XVI, which had remained secret from the time of its delivery July 10 until the time it was read aloud at his burial Saturday, revealed a man eager to explain how he reconciled his public actions with his private beliefs, and hungry for the prayers and support of his church.

The response, in turn, revealed the top echelon of the church to be far less conflicted and chastising than some of its American adherents, offering comfort rather than confrontation.

“The letters reflect the cordiality and mutual respect that ought to characterize relationships within the Catholic community, even when there are serious differences,’’ said the Rev. Thomas P. Rausch, a professor of Catholic theology at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angles. And the Rev. Richard P. McBrien, a theologian at Notre Dame, said, “The Vatican’s warm reply to the senator’s letter was in striking contrast to the harshly negative rhetoric some of his critics have directed at him, even in death.’’

You can read the whole story here. And I've posted on this blog a transcript of Cardinal McCarrick's remarks at the burial, including the excerpts of the letters.

(Photo, by Dina Rudick of the Globe staff, shows a scene from the burial of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy at Arlington National Cemetery on Aug. 29, 2009.)

Some items on my reading list this Tuesday morning:

Old-school seminary: Eric Gorski, a national religion reporter for the Associated Press, visits a Neocatechumenal Way seminary in Denver. The enticing lede: "The seminarians' wallets are empty, except for driver's licenses and insurance cards. To buy cigarettes or clothes or anything else, they must ask their superiors for money — an exercise in obedience and a reminder that material things are not important."

Gene Robinson in England: The Guardian newspaper has a lengthy interview with the Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire with lots of interesting personal detail, but the newsiest bit is his reaction to the idea of a two-tiered Anglican Communion: "I can't imagine anything that would be more abhorrent to Jesus than a two-tier church."

More on Protestants and homosexuality: On today's Globe op-ed page, scholars Wendy Cadge of Brandeis and Laura Olson of Clemson take a look at the battles over gay rights in Protestantism, and observe that, "Mainline Protestant denominations in particular are slowly, but deliberately, adopting more tolerant stances - leaving conservatives rather than liberals to split off from their churches."

Obama's faith office: Dan Gilgoff of U.S. News takes a look at how the Obama Administration's faith-based office differs from that of the Bush Administration and concludes that "President Obama's faith-based office has given religious figures a bigger role in influencing White House decisions."

Douthat on Kennedys: Ross Douthat's column in Sunday's New York Times about differences on abortion between siblings Ted and Eunice Kennedy, both of whom died last month, is occasioning a lot of chatter. He writes, "It’s worth pondering how the politics of abortion might have been different had Ted shared even some of his sister’s qualms about the practice."

The big news of the day in Catholic America was the resignation of Bishop Joseph F. Martino of Scranton, Pa. This is not ordinarily a diocese that attracts national attention, but Martino had managed to change that with his sharp criticism of his diocese's most famous son, Vice President Joe Biden, as well as various local Catholic institutions, primarily over the abortion issue.

Then today, not only did Martino quit, citing fatigue, at an invitation-only news conference held at a secret location, but his auxiliary bishop also quit, and the cardinal brought in to restore some order, Cardinal Justin F. Rigali of Philadelphia, declined to reappoint the diocese's controversial episcopal vicar. The purge, if that's what it was, is triggering quite a bit of chatter about whether the Vatican (which has been conspicuously warmer toward the Obama administration than have some American bishops) is concerned with the tone of dialogue among bishops stateside.

Martino acknowledged the unhappiness in his diocese, saying, "For some time now, there has not been a clear consensus among the clergy and people of the Diocese of Scranton regarding my pastoral initiatives or my way of governance,'' and blamed his "sorrow" over the situation for causing him health problems.

By far the best summation of the Scranton situation that I've seen comes from David Gibson over at Politics Daily, who writes, "Martino became for many the angry face of the anti-Obama wing of the Catholic hierarchy thanks to his intemperate blasts about pro-choice politicians and an overweening administrative style that irritated the flock and even his brother bishops." It's well worth reading in full, but here is an an excerpt:

In February, Martino warned Irish-American groups that he would close the city's cathedral on St. Patrick's Day if any of them honored a politician who Martino said would be considered "pro-abortion." That was seen as a shot across the bow against inviting Joe Biden; in past years, the Scranton Irish-Americans had honored both Obama and then-Senator Hillary Clinton...

But it was the presidential campaign last year that brought Martino to national prominence, and seemed to bring out the more volatile aspects of his personality.

In September, as Biden was barnstorming Pennsylvania -- the vice president was born and baptized Catholic in Scranton before moving to Delaware later in life -- Martino declared that Biden would be denied communion if he tried to receive at a church in the Scranton diocese. "I will be truly vigilant on this point," Martino said. It was a step not even Biden's own bishop in Delaware would take.

Then in October, Martino had priests read a letter during all Sunday masses in the diocese telling Catholics that voting for a pro-choice politician was equivalent to endorsing "homicide."

Martino also called on priests and anyone who distributes communion to act on their own to deny the Eucharist -- the central sacrament of Catholic belief and worship -- to anyone who they believe publicly supports pro-choice policies. Martino even rebuked Pennsylvania's Democratic Senator Bob Casey, a pro-life Catholic who supported Obama, suggesting he may be denied communion if he came to Scranton.

But it was an event in late October last year, on the eve of the presidential vote, as religious rhetoric was growing white-hot, that may have pushed Martino over the line in the eyes of many.

A parish was holding a regular voter-education forum on the election, featuring discussion of a document, "Faithful Citizenship," the election guide endorsed almost unanimously by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, or USCCB. Martino showed up at the parish hall unannounced, causing a stir. Then he took the microphone and proceeded to critique the organizers for not using his own letter on abortion as the basis of the discussion.

When a nun at the forum reminded Martino about the document of the entire bishops conference Martino responded: "No USCCB document is relevant in this diocese. The USCCB doesn't speak for me. The only relevant document ... is my letter. There is one teacher in this diocese, and these points are not debatable."

There are lots of dots to be connected -- or not -- here, but for those inclined to see a push toward more civil dialogue, there is not only Martino's resignation but also the Vatican newspaper's relatively warm tone toward President Obama, and the decision of two cardinals, Sean P. O'Malley of Boston and Theodore E. McCarrick of Washington, to oversee the key funeral rites for the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy, as well as the fact that Pope Benedict XVI responded to a plea for prayers from the dying senator with a note expressing "spiritual closeness" and bestowing an apostolic blessing. And last week Archbishop Michael J. Sheehan, the respected archbishop of Santa Fe, suggested that most bishops were not on board with the heated denunciations of Notre Dame earlier this year for choosing Obama as its commencement speaker. "Hysterical activity doesn’t bear fruit, and there’s been some hysteria in these areas,'' Sheehan told the National Catholic Reporter.

Gibson's conclusion about the Martino matter: "His resignation may be further evidence that the U.S. hierarchy is divided between moderate voices and a more strident conservative minority that is struggling in the wake of Obama's success with Catholic voters." And Mark Silk, over at Spiritual Politics, writes, "Martino often seemed out of control, if not off his meds. ...While no one would say that a strong liberal wing is blowing from Rome, there seems little question that the message for the day is moderazione."

(Photo, by Bradley C. Bower/AP, shows Bishop Joseph F. Martino in Scranton on Oct. 1, 2003.)

In today's Globe, health/science reporter Liz Kowalczyk takes an interesting look at the increase in demand for chaplains at Boston hospitals. An excerpt:

The number of requests from patients, families, and staff for spiritual guidance in one of the country’s most technology-rich medical hubs has soared, as hospitals have expanded the role and number of chaplains.

Since 2004, requests for chaplains at the Brigham have jumped 23 percent. At Massachusetts General Hospital, requests have grown 30 percent since the hospital began tracking visits in 2006. And at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, which expanded its pastoral care program last year, monthly visits are expected to rise to at least 540 this month, a 10-fold increase over the same time last year.

“Visits are just going through the roof,’’ said the Rev. Julia Dunbar, director of pastoral care and education at Beth Israel Deaconess.

Chaplains and doctors said requests - from both religious and nonreligious patients and families - are growing in part because hospitals are caring for sicker patients who are more often grappling with questions about aggressive care and death. The number of Latino patients also has grown, chaplains said, and many of these patients are deeply religious.

Also, as hospitals have expanded the role and number of chaplains, which include priests, ministers, rabbis and imams, they’ve become more visible and available. Last year, Beth Israel Deaconess hired a full-time Catholic priest and six part-time chaplains and began asking all patients whether they want a visit during their stay. Mass. General has assigned its chaplains to specific units to increase their visibility.

(Photo, by John Tlumacki of the Globe staff, shows a Jesuit priest/hospital chaplain, the Rev. George Winchester, talking with patient Bob Perry of Lowell at Brigham and Women's Hospital on Aug. 20, 2009.)

A question for the readers of this blog: have you ever written to the Vatican, and, if so, did you get a response? I'm interested in hearing about your experience; if you've corresponded, or tried to correspond, with Rome, please shoot me a note.

Several readers who watched the funeral of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy Saturday have written to ask me whether Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley snubbed the vice-president of the United States, Joe Biden, who happens to be an abortion rights supporting Catholic. The question/observation was prompted by the scene shown in the video at left (courtesy of NECN), which shows O'Malley talking to President Obama and then shaking the hands of several other dignitaries (Michelle Obama, President Carter, Rosalynn Carter, and Jill Biden), but not the hand of the vice-president.

I have to say that this idea of a snub didn't ring true to me. As someone who covers the cardinal fairly regularly, my own observation is that he can be socially awkward at times -- he is clearly not cut from a politician's cloth -- but not intentionally rude, and it's a bit difficult for me to imagine him intentionally refusing to shake the hand of the vice-president of the United States.

There's another factor that might surprise some folks who are aware only of the cardinal's concerns about the Democratic party and abortion. The cardinal's communications director is a man named Terrence C. Donilon, who is from a family that is quite active in Democratic politics at the national level. As it turns out, Terry's brother, Michael (Mike) C. Donilon, is a longtime Biden aide who now holds the job of Counselor to the Vice-President. And Terry's sister-in-law, Catherine (Cathy) M. Russell is a former Biden aide who is now chief of staff to Jill Biden, the wife of the vice-president. (Russell is married to another Donilon brother, Thomas E. Donilon, who is deputy national security advisor in the White House.)

So I called Terry to ask what happened Saturday morning. He was at the funeral, and had spoken to both Biden and O'Malley that day, and assures me that the cardinal and the vice-president had a full conversation earlier in the morning. "The cardinal spoke to the vice president before the Mass for a few minutes, and shook hands,'' Donilon said. "I spoke to the vice-president and his wife, and they were very gracious and pleased to see the cardinal.'' Donilon also told me that the cardinal again shook hands with the vice-president during the Exchange of Peace. I called Ted McEnroe, the director of digital media over at NECN, who was kind enough to go through the pool footage for me, and came up with video proof of a Biden-O'Malley conversation (you can even see the two men sharing a laugh). So for any of you who still have doubt, take a look at the second video at left.

In today's paper, and with a lot of help from local priests and church officials, I attempt to answer many of the most commonly asked questions about Catholicism and the death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy. The full article is here, but here is the bulk of it:

Q. Why was the funeral at the Mission Church?

A. Senator Kennedy, before he died, chose the Mission Church, formally known as the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, as the site for his funeral. The church has an icon that Catholics pray before when seeking healing, and the senator had frequently prayed there when his daughter, Kara, was being treated for lung cancer at Brigham & Women’s Hospital. He also visited the church when he was diagnosed with cancer last year. The church also is large, so it had space for the funeral, and it is located in a diverse and long-struggling neighborhood, calling attention to the senator’s concern for the poor.

Q. How was this Mass similar to, or different from, ordinary funeral Masses?

A. The liturgy was the same, in terms of the prayers and rituals, but there were fewer hymns, more speeches, and, obviously, more famous people in the pews.

Q. Wouldn’t Chappaquiddick, or Senator Kennedy’s divorce and remarriage, or his support for abortion rights, disqualify him from a Catholic funeral?

A. The Catholic Church teaches that all of us are sinners and that sinfulness does not disqualify one from a funeral Mass. “It’s not a canonization - if you’re a member of the flock, you have a right to a Catholic funeral,’’ said the Rev. James A. Field, a former director of the archdiocesan Office for Worship. “He was a faithful, baptized member of the church who hadn’t left or been thrown out, and he had a right to a funeral Mass.’’

Q. What was Cardinal O’Malley’s role at the funeral?

A. O’Malley was present to represent the Catholic Church of Boston, and because he is the archbishop of Boston, he was considered the presider. He was not the principal celebrant of the Mass (that was the Rev. J. Donald Monan, chancellor of Boston College), and he was not the homilist (that was Rev. Mark R. Hession, the family priest on Cape Cod). But that was not unusual; bishops often allow other priests to lead weddings or funerals, even when the bishop is present, if there are priests who had closer relationships with the person being married or buried. O’Malley’s most visible role was to offer the prayers of commendation, after the Mass, when he commended Senator Kennedy into the hands of God, and asked God’s blessing on the mourners. During that ritual, O’Malley also honored the body with incense in a sign of God’s blessing.

Q. Doesn’t the church prohibit so many speakers at a funeral?

A. Yes. The Archdiocese of Boston guidelines are quite clear, reading, “only one speaker, a member or a friend of the family, may speak for not more than five minutes in remembrance of the deceased.’’ Other speeches are supposed to take place during a wake. This policy has often been unpopular, and it’s not clear how evenly enforced it is, but Cardinal Bernard F. Law famously insisted on the one-speaker restriction at the funerals of House Speaker Tip O’Neill and US Representative John J. Moakley. There were three speakers at yesterday’s funeral - the two Kennedy sons and President Obama. The archdiocese says an exception was made by Father Monan, the celebrant, and the Redemptorist fathers, who oversee the basilica.

Q. Why was there so little singing?

A. The congregation sang twice, at the beginning (“Holy God We Praise Thy Name’’) and the end (“America the Beautiful). That was significantly less singing than at most contemporary Catholic funerals, where the responsorial psalm, the Allelulia, and the acclamations would be sung. The Kennedy funeral, however, had more choral and instrumental music, led by some famous musicians, including the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, the tenor Placido Domingo, the mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, and members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Q. Who was allowed to take Communion?

A. Communion in Catholic churches is restricted to Catholics in good standing, but no announcement was made, there was no reference to a restriction in the program, and anybody who came forward would receive Communion. Camera angles were restricted so that they did not show exactly who took Communion, but the prominent non-Catholic elected officials, such as President Obama, remained in their pews during Communion.

Q. Is Senator Kennedy going to heaven?

A. Catholic theologians say that is a question for God, not church officials or any of Senator Kennedy’s fans or foes. An archdiocesan official says, “The purpose of the funeral liturgy is to pray for the soul of the deceased person. Our prayer is inspired by our hope in God’s mercy and forgiveness. Senator Kennedy, like any person, was imperfect and in need of God’s mercy.’’

(Photo, by Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images, shows the funeral of Senator Edward M. Kennedy at the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Boston on August 29, 2009.)

One last surprise from the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy: at his burial service in Washington tonight, Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick read excerpts from the exchange of letters between the dying senator and the Vatican. The letters are extremely revealing, both of the importance of Catholic faith and the Catholic Church to Kennedy, and of the pastoral response from the pope even to a politician with whom the church had serious disagreements.

Here is the text of Cardinal McCarrick's remarks:

There is a certain fittingness in having a burial at the dying of the day, because we know that the sun will come back again tomorrow. And as we think of Teddy, we know that his new life begins. And as we look at this great family, we're sure that new life is already beginning, and that new great things are happening.

Mr. Vice President; Vicki; members of the family: It is for all of us a very special time, in our own lives, in your life, and the life of our country. And so we begin in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. (Amen)

Dear friends in Christ, in the name of Jesus and his church, we gather together to pray for Edward Moore Kennedy, that God may bring him to everlasting peace and rest. We share the pain of loss, but the promise of eternal life gives us hope. And therefore, we comfort one another with these words.

(Kara Kennedy, Senator Kennedy's daughter, then read from the Letter of Paul to the Philippians, after which Cardinal McCarrick resumed:)

May I, for just a moment, be the voice of so many, all around the world, to pay a final tribute to Senator Ted Kennedy, and to offer our heartfelt condolence, to his wife Vicki, to his sister Jean, to his children and grandchildren, and to all the Kennedy family, as also to that extended family that must probably include most of America.

May I also add a word that we who were privileged to watch the very beautiful funeral Mass this morning had to be touched by the wonderful part in that liturgy played by the younger generation of Kennedys. The warm and very personal tribute in the elegies of Teddy's sons, and even that of the president of the United States, whose warmth and whose friendship for Ted is obviously so powerful. That, together with the splendid homily of Father Hession, Ted's parish priest, made our farewell to Senator Kennedy unforgettable.

On learning of his death last Wednesday morning, tributes to his half-century of leadership in American life and politics came in from all over the globe. May I offer my own short one again.

They called him, "The Lion of the Senate," and indeed that is what he was. His roar, and his zeal for what he believed, made a difference in our nation’s life. Sometimes, of course, we who were his friends and had affection for him would get mad at him when he roared at what we believed was the wrong side of an issue, but we always knew, and were always touched by, his passion for the underdog, for the rights of working people, for better education, for adequate health care for every American. His legacy will surely place him among the dozen or so greats in the history of the Senate of the United States.

Shortly before he died, Senator Kennedy wrote a very moving letter to the Holy Father, and took advantage of the historic visit to the Vatican of President Obama to ask the president if he would deliver it personally, which Mr. Obama gladly did. A couple of weeks later, the pope replied with a fatherly message of concern for the senator’s illness, and a prayer for his progress.

When Vicki and I and others began to talk about the organization of this brief service, the happy thought emerged of using part of these two letters to commemorate the faith of Ted Kennedy, and the warm and paternal spirit of Pope Benedict XVI. I want to quote from that letter. It begins:

"Most Holy Father, I asked President Obama to personally hand deliver this letter to you. As a man of deep faith himself, he understands how important my Roman Catholic faith is to me, and I am so deeply grateful to him.

"I hope this letter finds you in good health. I pray that you have all of God’s blessings as you lead our church and inspire our world during these challenging times.

"I am writing with deep humility to ask that you pray for me as my own health declines. I was diagnosed with brain cancer more than a year ago, and although I continue treatment, the disease is taking its toll on me. I am 77 years old, and preparing for the next passage of life.

"I have been blessed to be a part of a wonderful family, and both of my parents, particularly my mother, kept our Catholic faith at the center of our lives. That gift of faith has sustained, and nurtured, and provided solace to me in the darkest hours. I know that I have been an imperfect human being, but with the help of my faith, I have tried to right my path.

"I want you to know, Your Holiness, that in my nearly 50 years of elective office, I have done my best to champion the rights of the poor, and open doors of economic opportunity. I’ve worked to welcome the immigrant, to fight discrimination and expand access to health care and education. I have opposed the death penalty and fought to end war. Those are the issues that have motivated me and have been the focus of my work as a United States senator.

"I also want you to know that, even though I am ill, I am committed to do everything I can to achieve access to health care for everyone in my country. This has been the political cause of my life. I believe in a conscience protection for Catholics in the health field and I will continue to advocate for it as my colleagues in the Senate and I work to develop an overall national health policy that guarantees health care for everyone.

"I have always tried to be a faithful Catholic, Your Holiness, and though I have fallen short through human failings, I have never failed to believe and respect the fundamental teachings of my faith. I continue to pray for God’s blessings, on you and on our church, and would be most thankful for your prayers for me."

Two weeks later, the reply came back from the Vatican, and in part, it read as follows:

"The Holy Father has read the letter which you entrusted to President Obama, who kindly presented it to him during their recent meeting. He was saddened to know of your illness, and asked me to assure you of his concern and his spiritual closeness. He is particularly grateful for your promise of prayers for him, and for the needs of our universal church.

"His Holiness prays that in the days ahead you may be sustained in faith and hope, and granted the precious grace of joyful surrender to the will of God, our merciful Father. He invokes upon you the consolation and peace promised by the risen savior to all who share in his sufferings, and trust in his promise of eternal life.

"Commending you and the members of your family to the loving intervention of the blessed Virgin Mary, the Holy Father cordially imparts his apostolic blessing as a pledge of wisdom, comfort and strength in the Lord."

That's the end of the quotation.

With the prayers of our Holy Father, Pope Benedict, added to our own prayers, we entrust the body of Edward Moore Kennedy, Senator Ted, to his resting place, until the Lord calls us forth, until the end of time. Amen.

And now, let us pray.

For those of us on the O'Malley beat, there were lots of interesting moments this morning, but none more so than the lengthy greeting that Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley had with President Obama. O'Malley, of course, is the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Boston and has been sharply critical of Obama's support for abortion rights ("This man has a deplorable record when it comes to prolife issues,'' O'Malley told me after the election).

I asked O'Malley's spokesman, Terry Donilon, what the two men talked about, and he e-mailed back, "If he chooses to speak about it, he will in the blog, but it was a pleasant and gracious chat." He said the conversation lasted two to three minutes, and that the cardinal welcomed the president to Boston and the basilica. He would not say whether there was a more substantive exchange.

O'Malley technically presided over the Mass, but he was not the principal celebrant or the homilist, and he was visible mostly at the end, as he said the final prayers of commendation over the late senator's body. O'Malley's tone, even on the happiest of occasions, is somber, and he added a funereal touch to the funeral's close as he honored the body with incense, a sign of respect for the body and also a sign of God's blessing.

UPDATE: There is strong praise for O'Malley from the Rev. James Martin, associate editor of America magazine, who blogs:

Cardinal O'Malley's decision to attend the funeral is largehearted, compassionate, pastoral, sensitive and, above all, Christian. In this overheated environment, when some in the church are ready to condemn and anathematize, the calm presence of the leader of the Boston archdiocese at the funeral of a man--though the cardinal fiercely disagreed with him on many things--whose led a life of faith, is something that places our church in the best possible light. Kennedy's parish priest noted the senator's deep faith; his children and grandchildren noted his service for the poor; his biographer has spoken of his love of the Gospels, most especially the Sermon on the Mount. Cardinal O'Malley has been clear about his strong opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage, his simple presence at the funeral shows his support of forgiveness, compassion and that quality perhaps most missing in today's church: mercy.

Here is O'Malley at the start of the Mass, as the casket arrives. The cardinal is vested in the red robes that signify his willingness to die for the church:

And here is O'Malley during the prayers of commendation, now wearing a cope because the Mass has ended, honoring the body with incense:

(Photos all taken today at the funeral of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy at the Mission Church in Boston. Photo at top, of Obama and O'Malley, by Getty; photo at right, of Obama and O'Malley, by Reuters. Third photo, of O'Malley at the start of Mass, by Getty, and fourth photo, of O'Malley at the end of the funeral, by AP.)

This morning the Rev. James A. Field and I hosted a chat with Boston.com readers about the funeral Mass for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. Father Field is the former director of the Office for Worship for the Archdiocese of Boston, and now the pastor of Incarnation Parish in Melrose. The chat is now over, but you can read our conversation here:

Good morning. Guests have already begun arriving for this morning's funeral for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy at the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help (the Mission Church) in Boston. Music, performed by members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, is to begin at 10 a.m., and the funeral Mass is to begin at 10:30 a.m. and is expected to end by 1 p.m.

I have a story previewing the funeral here. I will be liveblogging the funeral with the Rev. James A. Field, a former director of the Office for Worship at the Archdiocese of Boston, and we'll be welcoming your questions about the liturgy and other religious aspects of the funeral, so feel free to join the conversation starting at 10:30 here at Boston.com.

Here is a detailed program for the funeral Mass:

10:30 a.m. - FUNERAL PROCESSION BEGINS

Entrance Hymn: “Holy God We Praise Thy Name”

Celebrants:

• Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, archbishop of Boston


• Rev. J. Donald Monan, chancellor of Boston College (Former president of Boston College and a Kennedy family friend. Monan is the principle celebrant of the funeral Mass.)


• Rev. Gerard "Gerry" Creedon, pastor of St. Charles Borromeo Church in Arlington, Virginia. (Longtime Kennedy family friend.)


• Rev. Percival D’ Silva of Holy Redeemer Church in Kensington, Maryland. (Kennedy family friend and priest that performed the Blessed Sacraments for Caroline and Curran Raclin while at Blessed Sacrament Church in Northwest Washington.)


• Rev. Mark R. Hession, pastor of Our Lady of Victory Church in Centerville. (Senator and Mrs. Kennedy’s priest on Cape Cod and close friend. Fr. Hession offered mass for Senator Kennedy nearly every Sunday this year.)


• Rev. Donald MacMillan, campus minister, Boston College. (Family friend, who frequently celebrated mass for Senator Kennedy.)


• Rev. Raymond Collins, pastor of the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

First Reading: Curran Raclin (stepson) The Book of Wisdom 3:1-9

Responsorial Psalm: Kara Kennedy (daughter), Psalm 72

Second Reading: Caroline Raclin (stepdaughter), Letter of Paul to the Romans 8:31b-35, 37-39

Gospel: Father Hession, Matthew 25:31-32A, 34-40

The Prayers of the Faithful: Kiki Kennedy, Kiley Kennedy, Grace Allen, Max Allen, Jack Schlossberg, Robin Lawford, Kym Smith, Anthony Shriver, Rory Kennedy and Teddy M. Kennedy II (Readers will be reading excerpts of the Senator’ own words.)

Offertory: The Senator’s grandchildren

At Offertory: J.S. BACH Sarabande from Cello Suite No. 6 performed by Yo-Yo Ma, cello

At Communion: FRANCK “Panis Angelicus” performed by Placido Domingo, tenor, Yo-Yo Ma, cello, and James David Christie, organ; BRAHMS “Let Nothing Ever Grieve Thee,” performed by Tanglewood Festival Chorus, John Oliver, conductor, James David Christie, organ; and SHUBERT “Ave Maria,” performed by Susan Graham, mezzo-soprano, James David Christie, organ.

Remembrances: Ted Kennedy, Jr. and U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy (sons)

Eulogy: President Barack Obama

Final Commendation: Cardinal O’Malley

Recessional: “America the Beautiful”

After the funeral, the plan is to fly the senator's body from Hanscom Air Force Base, in Massachusetts, to Andrews Air Force Base, in Maryland. There will be a motorcade from Andrews, past the U.S. Capitol, to Arlington National Cemetery, where at 5:30 p.m. Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, the archbishop emeritus of Washington, will preside over a private burial service. Senator Edward M. Kennedy will be buried next to his brothers, President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

(Photo, by Darren McCollester/Getty, shows a billboard outside the Mission Church, where Sen. Kennedy's funeral will be held, on Aug. 28, 2009.)

It turns out that Cardinal O'Malley will not be alone in presiding over a portion of the funeral rites for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy: Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, the archbishop emeritus of Washington, is going to preside over the burial at Arlington National Cemetery tomorrow.

McCarrick had a long relationship with Kennedy from the days when the archbishop headed the domestic and international policy committee for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. And for five years Kennedy co-hosted, with Republican Representative John Boehner of Ohio, an annual fundraiser for inner-city Catholic schools in Washington.

Interestingly, McCarrick headed the USCCB's task force on Catholic bishops and Catholic politicians, which advised bishops not to honor politicians who support abortion rights. But a church official tells me that a funeral and a burial are not considered honors.

(Photo, by Matthew J. Lee of the Globe staff, shows Cardinal McCarrick speaking at Boston College on March 3, 2005.)

BREAKING NEWS:

Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley of Boston will preside at the funeral of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy tomorrow at the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help (the Mission Church). The Rev. J. Donald Monan, a Jesuit priest who was the longtime president of Boston College and is now the chancellor, will be the principal celebrant. And the Rev. Mark R. Hession, pastor of Our Lady of Victory Parish in Centerville, will deliver the homily.

PROGRAM DETAILS:

First Reading: Curran Raclin, stepson
Responsorial: Kara Kennedy Allen, daughter
Second Reading: Caroline Raclin, stepdaughter
Homily: Rev. Mark Hession
Intercessory Prayers: Kennedy's four grandchildren, and the youngest grandchild of each of his siblings, will read quotes from his speeches. (The family chose to honor the youngest children because Kennedy was the youngest in his family.)
Offertory: Grandchildren
Music by Yo-Yo Ma
Communion
Music by Placido Domingo accompanied by the Tanglewood Festival Chorus
"Ave Maria" by Susan Graham of the Metropolitan Opera
Tribute: Edward M. Kennedy Jr. and US Representative Patrick J. Kennedy (sons)
Eulogy: President Obama
Song: America the Beautiful

ANALYSIS:

The family and church officials have essentially chosen to split the roles three ways. Cardinal O'Malley, because of his role as the archbishop of Boston, will technically preside over the funeral, but Fathers Monan and Hession, who had closer relationships with Senator Kennedy, will be far more visible to casual viewers of the liturgy. Monan will celebrate the Mass, which will include presiding over the congregation and reciting the prayers of the Mass and being at the center of the altar during the Eucharist. Hession will deliver the homily, and his task will be to take the readings of the day and apply them to the moment. This is a very typical arrangement, not only at large-scale funerals but also liturgies such as the first Mass of a new priest, in which a bishop will step aside to allow a close friend of the person being honored to celebrate the liturgy.

WHY FATHER MONAN?

Monan, a Jesuit priest, was the longest serving president in the history of Boston College, serving from 1972 to 1996; he is a respected figure in Boston and was a transformational leader for BC, shepherding the institution through a period of enormous growth in endowment and reputation. Kennedy, although not a BC alumnus, was a longtime friend of the institution: he received an honorary law degree there in 1966 (see photo below), and he served as a university trustee from 1976 to 1991. JFK also received an honorary degree from BC, in 1956, and RFK received an honorary degree there in 1960.

Boston College issued a brief statement from Monan just now: "I have known Sen. Kennedy for 35 years as a close friend, as a trustee of Boston College and a person who certainly was one of the strongest advocates for the value of higher education. It is an honor to me to celebrate the Mass," he said. Monan previously celebrated funeral Masses for two other significant American politicians, House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O’Neill, Jr., in 1996, and U.S. Sen. Michael J. "Mike" Mansfield, in 2001.

(Photo, courtesy of Boston College, shows Sen. Edward M. Kennedy receiving an honorary
degree from Boston College President Rev. Michael Walsh at BC in 1966.)

Details about tomorrow's funeral at the Mission Church are starting to dribble out.

Father Philip Dabney, of the church staff, told Globe reporter David Abel this morning that cellist Yo-Yo Ma and tenor Placido Domingo are expected to perform at the funeral Mass, and a renowned soprano will perform Ave Maria. President Obama will deliver a eulogy (even though some Catholics balk at that word -- technically there is not supposed to be a eulogy, but words of remembrance, at a Catholic funeral).

The family has not yet announced who is celebrating the Mass, although multiple priests are expected to concelebrate.

And one question still looming over the Mass is whether Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley will preside -- the archdiocese will not say whether O'Malley will be at the funeral or not, but if he is, he would likely defer to someone closer to Kennedy to celebrate the Mass and deliver the homily, while O'Malley would give a final commendation and farewell.

Among the many questions I keep getting in response to today's story about Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and Catholicism: what about his divorce? The answer is that Kennedy's first marriage, to Joan Bennett, ended in divorce; the marriage was reportedly annulled, and his second marriage, to Victoria Reggie, although conducted as a civil ceremony, was "blessed by the church,'' according to Kennedy's office. This is not particularly unusual -- there were 46,000 annulments in just one year (2002), according to the Vatican. Some people argued that Kennedy and other Catholic politicians should not receive Communion because of their support for abortion rights. Kennedy, obviously, did not share that view and Kennedy's bishop, Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley of Boston, has repeatedly asserted that it is not the place of a priest to deny Communion to a politician; that it is up to individual Catholics to wrestle with their own consciences and to decide whether to present themselves for Communion. Kennedy regularly sought and received Communion at churches in Washington and Massachusetts; he was seen taking Communion at his mother's funeral in 1995, and I myself saw Cardinal Law give him Communion earlier this decade.

(Photo, by Ollie Noonan, shows Sen. Kennedy receiving Communion at the funeral of his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, in 1968.)

As the world anticipates tomorrow's funeral for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, and a eulogy to be delivered by President Obama, Globe editor Roy Greene has pulled together a nice look back at some of the eulogies Kennedy himself delivered over his long career.

(Photo, by AP, shows Sen. Edward Kennedy eulogizing his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York on June 8, 1968.)

I'm getting lots of e-mail in response to today's story about Kennedy and Catholicism, with many questions and observations, some of which I'll try to share over the course of the day.

Among those who e-mailed was Mitchell Garabedian, the Boston lawyer who represented scores of victims of clergy sexual abuse, who wanted to share a little about Kennedy's response to the abuse crisis. Here's what Garbedian told me:

A few years ago Senator Kennedy, while traveling to a meeting concerning the conditions at Guantanamo Bay, personally called me to express his support for clergy sexual abuse victims and for my legal representation of clergy sexual abuse victims.

While speaking with Senator Kennedy about the the harm to clergy sexual abuse victims I could sense a genuineness in his heart and a sincerity in his soul. He was very easy to talk to. It was like discussing the matter with the concerned neighbor next door. Senator Kennedy was not in a rush to end the conversation. In our discussion, Senator Kennedy stressed the continuing need to help those less fortunate.

Several scholars I spoke with yesterday pointed out to me that Kennedy, despite being repeatedly criticized by the Catholic right, never fought back by criticizing the church. I took a look in our clips to see what Kennedy said about the abuse crisis.

In February of 2002, Kennedy said Cardinal Law should not resign over the abuse crisis. "What I'm most interested in is those families, their needs, and their tension and their anxiety, their pain, is attended to, and that we're going to develop within this whole archdiocese an accountability and a responsibility," he said.

But when Law did resign, in December of 2002, Kennedy said the resignation was the "right thing to do for the victims, their families, the church and the whole of the Catholic community. Real closure is far off for the victims, their families and all that are hurt by the terrible pain of this ordeal. But today is the first step toward a new dawn in our hearts and in our church."

(Photo, by Bill Greene of the Globe staff, shows Cardinal Law and Sen. Kennedy in Boston on March 2, 1987.)

In this morning's paper, I take a look at the relationship between Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and the Catholic Church. Here is the lede:

He was, at the same time, the scion of the most storied Catholic family in American history, and the bane of the Catholic right.

By championing the poor, the disabled, the immigrant, and the elderly, his politics often embodied Catholic social teaching, but with his personal failings and, especially, his strong support of abortion rights, he drew legions of often furious opponents who wanted him excommunicated.

As Boston prepares for tomorrow’s funeral of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the nation is getting a very public reminder of the predominantly private way in which Catholicism was woven through the life of Massachusetts’ longtime senator, a man who went to Mass daily for a year after his mother died, who sought help from a “healing priest’’ when he was diagnosed with cancer, who on his deathbed consulted with a local priest, and who, for his funeral, chose the basilica where he had regularly prayed for a miraculous cure for his cancer-stricken daughter.

But the elaborate mourning rituals - starting with the vigil that began on Cape Cod yesterday and ending with the burial in Washington tomorrow - are also reigniting the debate over Kennedy’s place in Catholic history.

“The common thread that runs through everything he accomplished was his belief in building things for the benefit of others, particularly those most in need,’’ said Dr. Patrick Whelan, a pediatrician at Massachusetts General Hospital and president of Catholic Democrats. “I believe this is the essence of being a good Catholic, and I think it’s right at the heart of Senator Kennedy’s entire legacy.’’

But others offered a far more critical appraisal.

“He will be remembered as one of the most scandalous Catholics in the history of the church,’’ said Judie Brown, president of the American Life League, an organization that repeatedly, and unsuccessfully, called for Kennedy to be excommunicated. “I’m horrified by him getting a Catholic funeral, because he spit at the church regularly.’’

For historians and church officials, there are simply no easy answers: Kennedy’s legacy as a Catholic is complex and debatable.

“If you look back over his long career, most of his life was taken up with domestic social policy and social welfare issues, and on those issues the church had a lot of overlap with him,’’ said the Rev. J. Bryan Hehir, a top official of the Archdiocese of Boston. “But it was no secret, and should not be overlooked, that there was direct conflict on the prolife issues.’’

Read the whole story here.

(Photo, by David L. Ryan of the Globe staff, shows Senator Edward M. Kennedy lying in repose at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum on August 27, 2009.)

The motorcade carrying Senator Kennedy's body passed in front of the Globe (which is located in Dorchester, across the way from the JFK Library) this afternoon. I shot this video from a roofdeck outside our cafeteria; the building on the other side of the street is the Jesuit-run BC High School.

The priest who said the private Mass for the Kennedy family in Hyannis Port today was the Rev. Don MacMillan (above left), a Jesuit priest who serves in campus ministry at Boston College. MacMillan has for years spent summers assisting at Our Lady of Victory Parish in Centerville, and got to know the Kennedy family through that service, according to BC spokesman Jack Dunn.

Here's MacMillan's bio from the BC web site:

Fr. Don is a Boston native, graduate of BC High, BC '66 and BC '72 ---three times an Eagle!---who came to Campus Ministry in 1995 after twenty-four years as a teacher and administrator at three Jesuit high schools. In addition to counseling, some retreat work and Sunday liturgies, he coordinates the Urban Immersion program, the Arrupe Immersion program in Cuernavaca, Mexico and the Ignatian Family Teach-In/School of Americas Vigil. He is Advisor to the Bands Program and a member of the Critical Incident Stress Management Coordinating Committee.

(Photo courtesy of Boston College.)

In today's paper, I have a profile of the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, commonly known as the Mission Church, which is the church Sen. Edward M. Kennedy chose for his funeral. The lede:

For years, thousands of Bostonians have sought healing by praying before a golden image of the Virgin Mary in a shrine on Mission Hill. They kneel before the painting, leave flowers by the rail, deposit notes in a glass bowl, turn on electronic candles, even drop off crutches or braces as a sign of a miraculous cure.

Many of the petitioners are poor and powerless.

But over the years, Senator Edward M. Kennedy also came to the shrine seeking healing, and now his family has chosen the landmark basilica in which the shrine is located as the site for the senator’s funeral Saturday.

Kennedy visited the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help daily in 2002, while his daughter was being treated for lung cancer at the nearby Brigham and Women's Hospital, praying before the icon and meeting with a priest thought to have a healing touch. And the senator again visited the basilica last year, after he was diagnosed with brain cancer.

“The senator wanted to be buried from the basilica because of a deep connection developed here during his daily visits while his daughter, Kara, was going through cancer treatment,’’ said Scott Ferson, a former Kennedy staffer who is helping the family with funeral preparations. “Because of her recovery, it remained an especially sacred place for him.’’

In yesterday's paper, I had a story about a prominent local survivor of clergy sexual abuse who is getting a kidney transplant from another abuse survivor. The lede:

First, he asked his brothers.

Then he turned to extended family.

It was only after it became clear that no one in his family qualified to donate a kidney that Phil Saviano realized he might die.

And then he turned to the one larger community that he has embraced for nearly two decades: survivors of clergy sexual abuse.

Across the country, thousands of men and women who years ago were molested by priests opened their inboxes to find an e-mailed plea to help a fellow survivor.

Seven of them offered up a kidney to keep Saviano alive.

And today, at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, physicians will transplant a kidney from Susan Pavlak, a 55-year-old Minnesota woman who says that years ago she was molested by a former nun at a Catholic high school, to Saviano, a 57-year-old Roslindale man who says that as a boy in Central Massachusetts he was repeatedly abused by a priest who turned out to be a serial pedophile.

“He is another member of the family of the harmed,’’ Pavlak said yesterday, explaining why she would give a kidney to a man she had never met or even heard of. “One way I can respond is to give what I have to give.’’

David Clohessy, the national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, and Dr. Martha Pavlakis, the nephrologist, tell me that the procedure went well. Saviano and Pavlak are now recovering at Beth Israel Deaconess.

(Photo, by Essdras M Suarez/ Globe Staff, shows Phil Saviano and Susan Pavlak in Brookline on Aug. 24, 2009.)

I'm compiling here statements from religious leaders about the death of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. Check back for updates -- I'll add the statements as they come in.

From Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Boston:

Today we mourn the passing of Senator Edward M. Kennedy and we extend our heartfelt prayers and sincere condolences to his wife Victoria and their children, Kara, Edward, Patrick, Curran and Caroline. Senator Kennedy was blessed with a dedicated and loving family who stood by his side, particularly during the past year as he faced his illness with courage, dignity and strength.

We join with his colleagues in Congress and the people of Massachusetts in reflecting on his life and his commitment to public service. For nearly half a century, Senator Kennedy was often a champion for the poor, the less fortunate and those seeking a better life. Across Massachusetts and the nation, his legacy will be carried on through the lives of those he served.

We pray for the repose of his soul and that his family finds comfort and consolation in this difficult time.

From Barry Shrage, president of Combined Jewish Philanthropies:

Like so many people, I mourn the loss of Ted Kennedy. Ted and his brothers were heroes to me, giants in the fight to make a better world of equality, justice and caring.

I’ve never forgotten the first time I met Ted Kennedy. I was 40 years old and brand new to Boston and Ted Kennedy appeared at a CJP event. Steve Grossman introduced us and we spoke. Actually Ted Kennedy spoke - I was speechless. I was speechless because Ted Kennedy was the living embodiment of my best dreams for America and for the world. He was a great leader all by himself but also a symbol of something that powerfully changed my life and the aspirations of my generation.

These changes started with JFK. I never met John F. Kennedy though his picture was on my desk from the day he was murdered in 1963 until I graduated from social work school in 1970. I handed out campaign fliers on the Grand Concourse and Fordham Road in the Bronx when he ran for President. I was 13 and it was 1960. His election taught me something about ideas and the possibility of change.

I did meet Robert Kennedy. During the middle of the Cuban missile crisis, he came to speak at a Democratic Party fundraiser at the Concourse Plaza Hotel where I was working at the time. I was 15 and scared out of my mind.

Robert kept the dream alive. When he ran for the US Senate from New York in 1965, I chaired Students for Kennedy at City College, and I worked for him again when he ran for President in 1968…..a last hope for peace and justice at a time when I was obsessed with both. His assassination, like his brother’s, was shattering.

By the time I met Ted Kennedy, most of my political energy was focused on our Jewish community and its hopes and dreams, for Soviet and Ethiopian Jewry, for a strong Israel, and for justice for the poor and forgotten of our community and of the broader community within which we live.

And whenever the Jewish community needed help, Ted Kennedy was always there. Ted Kennedy was a tireless advocate for Soviet Jewry and went to the Soviet Union to meet with refuseniks on many occasions. Ted Kennedy advocated for their freedom and he advocated for Israel. Through war and peace he always listened. He was always there. He never refused a meeting and he always stood up for Israel.

Ted Kennedy despised anti-Semitism and all forms of hatred bigotry and racism. Ted Kennedy was our own Massachusetts hero and a symbol of the determination of Americans and Jews everywhere for justice and righteousness.

If his brothers were the symbol of the dream that drove and continues to drive my generation, Ted represented the hard work required, day in and day out to turn those dreams into reality. Boston, Massachusetts, our people, the Jews of Greater Boston and all the oppressed of the earth will all miss him.

Our condolences are extended to his entire family.

From the Rev. Peter Morales, president of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA):

I am saddened by the news of Senator Edward Kennedy’s passing and express my condolences to the Kennedy family. Our country has lost a great leader who tirelessly defended the basic rights of all Americans and stood on the side of those people who were most vulnerable. He devoted his decades-long career in the U.S. Senate to advancing the causes of economic justice, immigration reform, and universal health care. His dedication to making government more just and compassionate has been an inspiration to Americans of many faith traditions. Senator Kennedy had a gift for reaching out to religious people and lifting up our shared commitment to equality and the betterment of humanity. We can honor Senator Kennedy by carrying forward his legacy of working on behalf of those who are marginalized in this country. We must – and we will – continue advocating for the living wage, immigration reform, and health care for all. By giving our resources and commitment to the causes of fairness and equality, we move toward realizing the American dream to which Kennedy dedicated his years of public service.

From the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston:

The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston (JCRC) is deeply saddened by the passing of Senator Edward Moore Kennedy. A model of dedication to the Commonwealth and the nation as a whole, Senator Kennedy embodied the values that our community stands for - social and economic justice, and the fair treatment for all Americans, including its most vulnerable citizens. His ability to create unlikely alliances allowed for a legacy of significant accomplishments in the Senate that have improved the lives of countless Americans. Senator Kennedy was also a true and loyal friend to the State of Israel and provided unwavering support to her in her quest for peace over the years. His leadership in these areas and more will be sorely missed.

Nancy K. Kaufman, Executive Director, said, "Ted Kennedy, who was my Senator from the time I could vote, exhibited his commitment to core Jewish values. Senator Kennedy has worked tirelessly with us on major issues such as health care reform, care for the poor, disabled, and elderly, advocacy for former Soviet Jewry, and support for Israel." Ms. Kaufman stated, "We will all miss his passion and his commitment to democratic issues and values, and we must continue his legacy of advocacy for social justice. May his memory be for a blessing always."

Our thoughts and prayers are with the Kennedy family and all the individuals who were touched by the work and compassion of Senator Kennedy.

From the Anti-Defamation League's New England region:

The Anti-Defamation League New England mourns the death of long time friend Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) following his long and courageous battle with brain cancer.

We mourn the passing of the Senator, a great American, a master legislator and a passionate champion of our nation’s democratic values and fundamental commitment to equality and fair treatment to all.

Senator Kennedy’s leadership on immigration reform was instrumental. Upon the 50th anniversary of his brother, President John F. Kennedy’s essay, "A Nation of Immigrants," ADL reissued the book. Senator Kennedy wrote in the introduction, "The urgent issue before us is about the future of America. It is about our pride for our immigrant past and our pride for our immigrant future."

Esta Epstein, Regional Board Chair and Derrek Shulman, Regional Director praised the work, legacy and the path that Senator Kennedy brought to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the world. "We will continue to champion his values and work as we move forward."

From Jim Wallis, president of Sojourners, a progressive evangelical organization:

In the aftermath of the 2004 Presidential elections, the Democrats were roundly accused of losing the "moral values voters" in America, and of being the party of "secularists" who were hostile to faith and religion. The very first Democrat to call me and ask to talk about that accusation and how to change the moral debate in America was Ted Kennedy. He invited me to his home, where he, and his wife Vicki, engaged me in a long and very thoughtful conversation, into the night, about the relationship between faith, morality, and politics. Their own deep Catholic faith was evident and their articulation of it very impressive. Our discussion was not partisan at all--it was not about how to win religion back for the Democrats. Rather, we focused on the great moral issues facing the nation, and how we as people of faith needed to respond to them.

On the occasion of his death, I pray that God may now move us as a nation to address the greatest commitment of Senator Kennedy's life--the need for a comprehensive reform of the health care system in America--as a deeply moral issue and one that calls forth the very best that is within us. May we honor the life and death of Senator Edward Kennedy by laying aside the rancor, lies, fear, and even hate that has come to dominate the health care debate in America this summer; and regain our moral compass by recovering the moral core of this debate: that too many Americans are hurting and suffering in a broken and highly inequitable health care system; and that it is our moral obligation to repair and reform it--Now.

From Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good:

It is with great sadness that we mourn the loss of Senator Edward Kennedy. Senator Kennedy, a man of deep and abiding Catholic faith, dedicated his life to noble public service. In pursuing the common good and advocating for human dignity around the globe, Senator Kennedy’s 46 year career was a reflection of the core values of the Catholic Social Tradition. He championed the cause of justice for the poor, the immigrant, and the most vulnerable and throughout his career demonstrated the value of civility, compassion, and compromise on matters of critical public concern. May Senator Kennedy’s deep faith and commitment to the common good serve as a model for us all.

From Catholic Democrats:

Catholic Democrats mourns the death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA), one of the most important Catholic political leaders in our country's history. The third longest serving member of the Senate, Kennedy's life exemplified a commitment to public service. His irreplaceable brand of leadership in Congress and to the nation led to the passage of unprecedented landmark legislation that covered a broad range of social justice issues which reflected both Catholic Social Teaching and his deep personal faith. He touched the lives of hundreds of millions of people, providing for their fundamental human needs, opening doors of opportunity, and helping create a more just society.

"Senator Kennedy's Catholicism was at the core of his identity," said Dr. Patrick Whelan, president of Catholic Democrats. "The common thread that runs through everything he accomplished was his belief in building things for the benefit of others, particularly those most in need. I believe this is the essence of being a good Catholic, and I think it's right at the heart of Senator Kennedy's entire legacy."

"The 'Lion of the Senate', Senator Kennedy brought the passion of his beliefs to, in his own words, "all those whose cares have been our concern" while at the same time reconciling differences between his colleagues from both sides of the aisle. He was both a fighter and a healer. He fought for universal health care, "the cause of my lifetime" he said, until the very end of his life. Both Republican and Democratic leaders will greatly miss his leadership in making universal health care a reality," said Whelan, a pediatric specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital.

"Senator Kennedy's passing is an immeasurable loss to our country and the world. He inspired liberals and earned the respect of conservatives. He was the conscience of our nation, particularly on the necessity of providing health care to all and on behalf of the poor and disadvantaged," said Steve Krueger, national director of Catholic Democrats. "His remarkable life's journey - one of overcoming insurmountable challenges through faith - provides inspiration for all of us in our own personal journeys and in serving the common good."

"We offer our most heartfelt prayers to the Senator's family in this time of sadness. There will never be another Ted Kennedy," said Whelan.

(Photo of Cardinal O'Malley taken in Cuba by AFP/Getty Images on August 18, 2009. Photo of Barry Shrage courtesy of Combined Jewish Philanthropies. Photo of Rev. Morales courtesy of the Unitarian Universalist Association. Photo of Nancy Kaufman taken in Boston by Janet Knott of the Globe staff on August 19, 1999. Photo of Jim Wallis taken in Boston by Wiqan Ang for the Boston Globe on February 11, 2008.)

Good morning. I'm back from vacation, and yesterday afternoon I drove out to Weston to check out a gathering assembled to hear from Roy Bourgeois, a Maryknoll priest who, according to his order, has been automatically excommunicated for refusing to recant his views supporting the ordination of women.

I had read a little about Bourgeois's recent activities. But still, I was struck by his fiery certainty. Rather than backing down, or quieting down, he is becoming more forceful. "I have no choice,'' he told me. "I have a deep love for my church and my ministry, but at the same time, I know an injustice when I see it.''

Even though poll after poll shows that large majorities of American Catholics support women's ordination, stories about the subject draw as much criticism from readers as anything I write about, and I gave some thought as to whether to cover this gathering at all, given that it was a relatively small group (about 100 people) in a non-Catholic setting (viewed as non-Catholic by church officials, they meet in a United Church of Christ church) that does not seem likely to have much impact on the thinking of the hierarchy (which has consistently declared that women can not be ordained). However, I concluded that given the prominence of Bourgeois (best known as the founder of the School of the Americas Watch, and the first priest in good standing to break so publicly with the hierarchy over women's ordination) and the fact that the gathering was hosted by a congregation formed by a former staffer for the Archdiocese of Boston (Jean Marchant, who claimed ordination as a priest in 2005, quit her post with the archdiocese a year later, and was automatically excommunicated herself) the event was worthy of coverage. And when I realized that there were at least three archdiocesan priests present to listen to the conversation, I felt affirmed in my decision that the event was interesting and important enough to be worthy of contextualized coverage. Mindful of the firestorm that greeted my last foray into this subject, I tried to be clear as possible about what the Archdiocese of Boston and the Vatican have said about women's ordination (they say it's not possible), and about the fact that the ordination ceremonies in which Bourgeois and Marchant participated are considered invalid by church officials.

And the double-decker headline seems to me to reflect the story fairly: "Priest takes church to task for not ordaining women; Won’t recant despite excommunication.'' (A reader e-mailed me bright and early this morning to ask about whether Bourgeois is still a priest -- I'm not a theologian or a canonist, but my understanding is that he is -- the excommunication affects his right to administer and receive sacraments, but not his status as a cleric.) You can read the story yourself here.

(Photo, by Maisie Crow for the Boston Globe, shows Roy Bourgeois speaking to the Spirit of Life Community at the Congregational Church of Weston on Sunday, August 23, 2009.)

In a blog posting last night, Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley of Boston reflected on his relationship with the late Eunice Kennedy Shriver and her husband, Sargent Shriver, as well as the role of the Catholic faith for the family:

Yesterday (Thursday) I went to Our Lady of Victory Church in Centerville and there presided over the reception of the body of Eunice Kennedy Shriver in an intimate ceremony with the pastor, Father Mark Hession, and the members of the Kennedy and Shriver families.

The parking lot was crowded with media trucks and people. The afternoon viewing afforded the opportunity for thousands of people to file through the church and pay their respects to this great Catholic woman. I was happy to be able to be a part of this simple prayer service in which her family placed the pall and crucifix on her coffin, prayed and reflected on the Scripture.

I was very pleased to be able to see Sargent Shriver after so many years. With his Alzheimer's, it was difficult to know exactly how much he understood of the day's events and I did not know if he would recognize me. It had been many years since I had last seen him, but I was very moved when he immediately kissed my ring.

I was touched by how solicitous the family was for him, especially Gov. Schwarzenegger, who is obviously a very devoted son-in-law.

Some of the Shriver children remembered the time I celebrated Mass for the Shrivers, Cesar Chavez and about 100 farm workers in their patio back in the 70s. The Shrivers were living in Maryland at the time and I was at the Centro Católico in Washington. I joked with them, "I think we destroyed your garden!"

That work with the farm workers was just one more indication of the profound commitment of Eunice and Sargent Shriver to the social doctrine of the Church. She was preeminently prolife, against abortion and there to protect and underscore the dignity of every person. This, of course, manifested itself in her love for children with disabilities.

In that regard, she reminds me very much of Jean Vanier who founded the L'Arche movement in Canada. That movement was born out of the Church's teachings on the dignity of every human person as a treasure made in the image and likeness of God and of our obligation to care for each other and to recognize the gift in each person.

Certainly, what Eunice Shriver did made a positive impact in so many ways and was a very strong witness of her Catholic faith.

Her sister, Rosemary, who was mentally retarded, opened up a whole reality that led Eunice to be such a pioneer and allowed her to make such a mark on history with the Special Olympics. It has been my experience that when a family has a child with a mental disability or Down Syndrome, the siblings often learn more about compassion and understanding than they would have if they did (not) have that exceptional child.

Rosemary was undoubtedly a great blessing in Eunice's life who allowed her to discover, in faith and in love, the beauty of her sister. It was that relationship with Rosemary that was later extrapolated to all the children who experience similar types of challenges.

While Eunice's works were remarkable, I don't want to lose sight of the fact that her Catholic faith and education was a very important part of what motivated her and helped her to interpret reality, particularly the reality of disability and retardation. I think this article by her son, Timothy Shriver, speaks volumes about the importance of her faith in her life. It was certainly the soil out of which grew her passion and dedication to the less fortunate and those who are challenged by disabilities and mental retardation.

(Photo, by David Ryan of the Globe staff, shows Cardinal O'Malley arriving at Our Lady of Victory Church in Centerville on August 13, 2009.)

In Monday's paper, I had a story about the planned resumption of perpetual adoration at the St. Clement Eucharistic Shrine in Boston. The feedback from readers has been mixed -- I have received a number of e-mails from people pleased with the story, but also a number critical of one aspect of it: my use of the word 'wafer.' Among the critics is Terry Mattingly over at GetReligion.org.

Just to be clear: multiple mainstream dictionaries identify the altar bread most commonly used in Catholic churches as a wafer. Here, from Dictionary.com, is the second definition of wafer: "a thin disk of unleavened bread, used in the Eucharist, as in the Roman Catholic Church.'' Although some of the commenters complained that the word is pejorative, so far as I can tell dictionaries do not describe it that way, and a quick Google search suggests that the word is widely used in the Catholic context.

Furthermore, I need to be clear about how I see my role here: I'm a religion writer for a secular newspaper; I am not an apologist or an evangelist for Catholicism or any other religion. Part of my job is to try to describe what is going on in the world of religion using language that is clear, descriptive, and understandable, to readers of a variety of faiths and to readers of no faith. It is not my job to stake out, or to state, a position on what takes place metaphysically during a Catholic Mass or any other religious rite -- in this story I described, to the best of my ability, what the Catholic Church says takes place, but it is not my role to simply assert, as some readers suggested I should have, that God is present in the consecrated bread. That is a belief, and one that I respect, but when I am describing a religious practice I am attempting to describe the tangible and visible aspects of that practice in language that readers can clearly understand, and I rely on worshipers, religious leaders, and academics to describe what believers understand to be happening spiritually or supernaturally.

(Photo, by David L. Ryan of the Globe staff, shows the consecrated wafer in a monstrance at St. Clement Eucharist Shrine in Boston on August 5, 2009.)

Last Sunday was the 25th anniversary of Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley's ordination as a bishop, and he celebrated with a Mass at St. Patrick Parish in Natick (above), dinner and a cake with the Franciscan friars at the St. Anthony Shrine in Boston, and a commemorative edition of the Pilot. The big archdiocesan celebration will be next month (Sept. 16), when O'Malley will headline a "priest appreciation dinner" as a fundraiser for the cash-strapped priest pension funds.

For the anniversary, O'Malley wrote a survey of his own career for the Pilot and his blog. By far the best nugget is his characteristically wry description of how he felt in 2003 when he got the call telling him he was being named archbishop of Boston:

"My family took me out to dinner on my birthday, June 29. The phone rang. It was Archbishop Montalvo (the papal nuncio) telling me that the pope wanted me to be Archbishop of Boston. I dropped the cell phone on the ground. I thought, 'I really need to get caller ID on this thing'."

There are other moments of humor in the narrative; O'Malley writes, "Had I known I was going to be a bishop, I would have studied much harder in the seminary.'' He also observes that, after he was first informed in 1984 that he was going to be named a bishop in the Virgin Islands, "there was a total eclipse of the sun, which I was at a loss as how to interpret.''

He reflects briefly on his career cleaning up dioceses wracked by abuse scandals (Boston is his third such diocese, after Fall River and Palm Beach). He claims that, when he arrived in Palm Beach, where both of his predecessors had been accused of abuse, "I was fingerprinted, and, at the press conference, one of the reporters asked me if I was a pedophile," and writes that, when he was assigned to Boston, "the climate in Boston could not have been more negative."

"I told the priests that I used to think that a vow of poverty meant that you did not own anything, but that was before I owed hundreds of millions of dollars to impatient creditors,'' O'Malley writes.

Summing up his experience, he writes:

FULL ENTRY

For those of us who love maps, Gallup today has put out a nifty set illustrating the differential religious makeup of the American states. The maps are based on new data -- survey research conducted earlier this year -- but there's no big news here: the Northeast is the most Catholic region, the South the most Protestant, Utah the most Mormon and New York the most Jewish. And the Pacific Northwest and northern New England have the biggest percentages of non-religious folks. Here is Gallup's analysis of what it calls a "remarkable pattern of religious dispersion in the U.S.,'' with an interesting unanswered question about Vermont:

"A good deal of the religious dispersion across the states is explainable by historical immigration patterns -- particularly the impact of the large waves of European Catholics and Jews who came through ports of entry in the Middle Atlantic states in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The geographic concentration of Mormons in and around Utah reflects the cross-country migration of that group in the mid-1800s from Illinois and other Eastern states to their new home. The fact that certain states like Oregon and Vermont consist disproportionately of residents with no religious identity is more difficult to explain, with hypotheses focusing on the particular and idiosyncratic cultures of those states and/or the migration of certain types of Americans to those states over the decades."

Here's the map about Catholicism:

And Protestantism:

FULL ENTRY

Belatedly, I wanted to make note of the recent death of the Rev. William McCarthy -- the Father Bill of Father Bill's Place, a homeless shelter in Quincy. He was 82.

From the Globe's obituary:

As he noticed more people coming to his church’s doorstep in the late 1970s and early 1980s needing a place to stay, the Rev. William McCarthy, better known as Father Bill, made a few phone calls.

Within a few weeks, one of the area’s first shelters was created.

Aptly named Father Bill’s Place, it was the start of a network that would eventually serve homeless veterans, battered women, and teens tossed from their homes. As this network took root throughout the South Shore, the longtime pastor of St. John the Baptist in Quincy took heat for bringing in a population that was less than popular in some areas. Just as he persuaded hesitant abutters that ‘love your neighbor’’ was more powerful than any not-in-my-backyard sentiments, he had a way with potential donors that led them to hand over thousands of dollars to cover the costs of keeping his various projects running.

“Very few people say no to me,’’ he told the Globe in 2007. But he also did not say “No,’’ to anyone, reaching into his pockets to help families buy sheets or fix a boiler.

A parishioner once asked him why he never wore her late father’s cashmere coat that she gave him. He explained that he had given it away. “Someone came to the rectory door and needed it and I didn’t.’’

Here is an appreciation by the Globe's Bella English, an obituary that ran in The Pilot, a homily by a blogging deacon, Greg Kandra, and a post on Whispers in the Loggia.

(Photo, by Suzanne Kreiter of the Globe staff, taken on July 12, 2005.)

Mark Silk at Trinity College makes an interesting, if counterintuitive, observation: the more Catholic a state's population, the more likely its residents are to support same-sex marriage. From Mark's blog, Spiritual Politics:

"Six of the eight states where 50 percent or more of the public supports gay marriage are the states with the highest proportion of Catholics, ranging from Rhode Island at 46 percent to New York and California at 37 percent. Meanwhile, the eight states most opposed to gay marriage include six of the seven with the lowest proportion of Catholics, from Alabama at six percent to North Carolina at nine percent. In other words, support for same-sex marriage is directly related to the proportion of Catholics in a given state."

It's not entirely clear to me what this means. Mark takes a dig at the Catholic hierarchy, saying, "Way to go, bishops!", but over at USA Today's Faith & Reason blog, Cathy Lynn Grossman points out that, "The bishops have campaigned long, loudly and clearly against same-sex marriage but the Catholic Church also offers a pervasive message of social justice, an umbrella many liberal Catholics stand under when they argue for marriage equality or life issues such as abortion, contraception and end-of-life decisions." There's much for social scientists to mull over here -- I suspect that the states that rate high in support for same-sex marriage also have high levels of support for other liberal causes, and whether that is because of, or in spite of, the religious makeup of the population strikes me as an unanswered question. Also, here in New England, which is a region with high Catholic population, the legalization of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts clearly had an impact on views in neighboring states, so it's possible that for some states the religious makeup of the population is less important than proximity to Massachusetts. Still, food for thought.

(Photo, by Spencer Platt/Getty, shows a couple on their motorcycle in the annual New York City Gay Pride March on June 28, 2009.)

Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Boston, is expressing opposition to a possible cut to state-subsidized health insurance coverage for some legal immigrants.

Here's the relevant portion of his most recent blog entry:

"As I do upon occasion, before I get to the events of my week, I would like to comment on an issue that is of great importance to me.

The Governor and the Legislature in the commonwealth face excruciatingly difficult choices this week. Final decisions about the budget bring together the fact of an economy in deep recession, declining state revenues and multiple human needs among the citizens of the commonwealth. Those human needs — for nutrition, housing and health care — must be a high priority for the Church and its ministry.

Our agencies — Catholic Charities, the Caritas Health Care System and the Office of Planning and Urban Affairs — are stretched to the limit these days, but that is the work we should be doing.

A particular issue of concern to me is the possibility that funding for health coverage for 28,000 legal immigrants may be cut in whole or in part. The Church, through Catholic Charities and through our parishes, is in direct and regular service of the immigrant community.

My hope and my request is that a way can be found to sustain health coverage for these legal members of our community. Their resources are few and their support system is always stretched thin. The commonwealth has done a very commendable job of providing health care to the citizens of Massachusetts. It would be a tragic mistake to let these 28,000 members of our community lose access to the precious good of health care."

(Photo, by John Blanding of the Globe staff, shows Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley of Boston in Gloucester on June 28, 2009.)

Last night I went to see the premiere of a new play, "What is the Cause of Thunder,'' at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, and once again was struck by how much religious questions permeate American culture.

The play, by Noah Haidle, is about a longtime soap opera actress who confuses her on-screen and off-screen existences, with serious consequences for her mental health and her relationship with the only other real person in her life, her pregnant daughter. The soap actress, Ada, played by Wendie Malick, prays relentlessly, even obsessively, but isn't sure she's being heard, or whether there is even anyone to hear her. The play opens with a scene in which a nun proclaims that God has died, and then sets off on a comedic journey through Ada's soap scenes, her interactions with her daughter, and her heavenly dreams, through all of which Ada repeatedly questions why life on earth is miserable, and imagines that God might apologize for what God has and has not done.

As always, I'll leave the review to the critics (and I think the Globe will have a review soon), but if you're in the Berkshires over the next week and interested in these questions, you might want to take a look.

(Photo, by T. Charles Erickson/Williamstown Theatre Festival, shows Wendie Malick and Betty Gilpin in "What is the Cause of Thunder?")

Voice of the Faithful isn't closing its national office after all, at least not now. The organization, which on July 13 warned that it might have to shutter its Needham headquarters absent $60,000 to survive the summer, yesterday said it has raised the money it needs to pay its staff until the organization comes up with a plan for its longer-term survival.

Here is the statement from Voice of the Faithful:

"One week after announcing an urgent need for financial support, Voice of the Faithful reports that donors have responded with more than $63,000 to date and still coming.

'We are deeply grateful to our many generous donors and encouraged by their sentiments of support,' said Bill Casey, Chairman of the Board of Trustees. 'Their response is a testament to the important work that Voice of the Faithful does. It also reinvigorates the organization as we work toward the release of new initiatives aimed at transforming the Catholic Church.

'Now we begin to build a stable base of predictable income to sustain our ongoing operations. We will invite our members to support that effort when we roll out the Strategic Plan in early August.'

VOTF members are also completing plans for the 2009 National VOTF Convention in Long Island, New York, October 30-31—an event that will bring members together in a national gathering."

Two 17th century beaded wampum belts made by Native Americans in New England for French Jesuit missionaries as expressions of Catholic faith have been shipped from a cathedral in France to a museum in Vermont where they are now on display.

Alexis Berthier, the spokesman for the Consulate General of France in Boston said the belts were given to the missionaries "as a sign of friendship" and that "they also signaled the conversion of some of these Native American people."

Here is some more detail from the Shelburne Museum, where the belts are on display until July 31:

"Wampum Belts from Chartres Cathedral Treasury showcases two rare masterpieces of Native American art on loan from the Bishop of Chartres and the Musee des Beaux-Arts de Chartres and on view in the United States for the first time. The belts will be on exhibit from July 2 through July 31.

'These belts are a symbol of the rich history of our region and demonstrate the historic connection between the French in North America and their relationship with the Abenaki and Huron peoples,' said Shelburne Museum Director Stephan Jost. 'The caliber of craftsmanship is truly extraordinary and reflects the sophistication of the people who created them.'

Wampum belts are traditional to native peoples from the Eastern woodlands and are an art form used to record important events such as engagements, marriage, funerals or treaties. The two belts on view at Shelburne were made in the 17th century. The Huron belt was made in 1678 and the Abenaki belt was made in 1691 or earlier. Noting the conversion to Catholicism by some of the native peoples, the belts were given to the French Jesuit order. The belts were taken to France and placed in the Cathedral Treasury of Chartres in acknowledgment of their importance."

Museum spokeswoman Leslie Wright tells me that the Latin on the belts "dates to the time of the druids, who predated the Jesuits at Chartres." She said the Huron belt, which is made of shell, glass, and natural fiber or animal hide, translates, "From the Hurons to the Virgin about to give birth,'' and the Abenaki belt, made of the same materials, translates, "To the Virgin Mother, Abenaki"

(Images, courtesy of the Shelburne Museum, are of the Huron Wampum Belt on loan from the Bishop of Chartres and the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Chartres.)

Faithful readers of this blog will recall my struggles with the Pope John Paul II hybrid tea rose bushes that I won at a silent auction at last fall's convention of the Religion Newswriters Association and planted alongside my driveway. One of the bushes has since, sadly, gone to meet its maker, but the other one, I am happy to report, has produced a single bloom:

The Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, has given a warm review to "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,'' praising the film for its “clear line of demarcation between good and evil, making clear that good is right, and that in some cases this involves hard work and sacrifices.”

It must be said that much of the past Christian criticism over the Potter series has come from evangelical Protestants, who have focused on its positive representation of sorcery and witchcraft. But the Catholic Church has produced its share of Potter critics, including not only a Wakefield priest who pulled Potter books from his parish school library, but also the current pope, Benedict XVI, who in 2003 (before he was pope) wrote a supportive letter to a critic of the Potter series, declaring, "It is good that you enlighten us on the Harry Potter matter, for these are subtle, barely perceptible seductions, and precisely because of that they have a profound effect and can corrupt the Christian faith in souls even before it (faith) is able to properly grow."

There has also been plenty of support for the Potter series from Christian writers -- Catholic and Protestant -- who have focused, as the current Vatican review does, on the series's depiction of the battle of good versus evil, and on Harry's clear sense of morality. The Vatican paper itself even ran a pair of dueling analyses of Potter last year, although the critique, saying that the Potter books promote "a grave lie,'' got much of the attention.

The current enthusiastic review in the Vatican newspaper of the latest Potter film may represent a change in attitude toward popular culture -- the paper also gave a surprisingly sympathetic review to "Angels and Demons" earlier this year. Or it might simply reflect an overall change in tone, or even significance, of the newspaper, which was long viewed as a semi-official voice of the church, but which has come under increasing criticism from the Catholic right for its warm coverage of President Obama. The Catholic World News says the review is "continuing an editorial trend that has bewildered many readers and roused many critics.''

The Times of London has a field day with the Vatican rave, running a story with the headline, "Not so immoral after all,'' and listing other "religious conversions" beginning with the church's change in position about whether the earth revolves around the sun.

(Photo, courtesy of Warner Brothers, shows ominous clouds over London in a scene from "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.")

Talk about taking your faith seriously: Domenico Bettinelli, Jr., a staffer at the Archdiocese of Boston, has named his baby Benedict. As in, Benedict XVI, who, as careful readers of this blog are undoubtedly aware, is the current occupant of the chair of Peter (the pope!).

I e-mailed Dom, whose official title is manager of gifts processing and donor relations at the Catholic Foundation, to ask about the name choice. Here's his response:

"We had several reasons for choosing the name Benedict Joseph, which I guess is not unlike the experience of most parents. As active Catholics who are serious about our faith, we love the idea of naming our son after the several saints named Benedict, including St. Benedict of Norcia, whose feast day is Saturday, and St. Benedict of Poland, whose feast day was (July 9), my son's birth day.

Then there is our current Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI. Melanie and I are both big fans of the Pope, ever since he was still Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. Of course, as much as we love our Pope, if he had picked as a pontifical name something a little less common like Pius, Urban, or Innocent I don't think we'd have saddled our son with it. But like my many friends who showed their esteem for Pope John Paul by naming their sons after him, I think this trend is continuing with our present Holy Father and we're happy to be part of it.

And then the third reason is that my father-in-law's middle name is Benedict, which was his Confirmation name and his religious name as a secular Carmelite. So we did it to honor him as well.

I'm still holding out hope to name a future son Pier Giorgio after my favorite beati Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati, but Melanie still needs some convincing on that one."

Of course, I learned about this from Dom's blog, which brings up another point: the real saint in the family must be his wife, because not only did Dom liveblog the birth (sort of), but he also tweeted, facebooked, and flickr'd his way through it.

(Photo, of baby Benedict and father Dom Bettinelli, courtesy of the proud father.)

Voice of the Faithful, the Catholic reform group founded in Wellesley at the height of the sexual abuse crisis, is running out of money and warning that it may close its national office absent an infusion of funds. The organization has had three goals -- supporting abuse victims, supporting "priests of integrity,'' and 'to shape structural change within the Catholic Church.'' That third goal has made it the subject of criticism from some conservatives, and its affiliates have been barred from meeting on church property in some dioceses. But the organization has also been welcomed by some Catholics distraught by what they learned about their church during the abuse crisis and eager for a forum to discuss possible changes.

UPDATE: I just spoke with Bill Casey, the chairman of the VOTF board, who tells me the existence of the organization is not in doubt, but that at stake is the organization's national headquarters, which recently moved from Newton to Needham in an effort to save money. He said the organization needs $60,000 to maintain the office through the summer, at which point it plans to fundraise based on a new strategic plan; if the group can't raise the money, it will close the national office and continue as an all-volunteer network of organizational affiliates. Currently, he said, the organization has 30,000 to 35,000 names in its database, of which it has e-mail addresses for about 20,000 folks, and there are between 60 and 70 parish or diocese-based affiliates or chapters.

Here is the announcement the organization e-mailed its members today:

"With great heaviness of heart, we write to inform you that VOTF is at the crossroads of financial survival and we need your immediate help in order to keep it going.

No U.S. business or organization (from the biggest corporate entity to the smallest non-profit) has been immune from the devastating downturn in the economy over the past 1-2 years. As we know all too well from unyielding media reports, that downturn has rippled into communities and households, confirming worst expectations and fears.

During the past two years, the Board of Trustees approved substantial reductions in VOTF's operating budget as decreases in revenue reflected the emerging and now full economic downturn in our country. Between FY 08 and 09, the Board approved a budget reduction of over 30%. As the economy and our revenue stream worsened appreciably, in April 2009, the Board reduced the FY 09 budget by another 35% (nearly $235,000 more). To accomplish this huge drop, the Board made painful cuts in staff salaries and contractor support; relocated the office to a smaller facility at about half the monthly rental costs; and curtailed costly mailings intended to raise revenue. Throughout this period, staff, contractors and volunteers demonstrated remarkable resolve in doing even more with less.

At the same time, the Board continued an aggressive outreach to members, friends, and donors to raise more revenue, as you are no doubt painfully aware from a variety of appeals and fund-raisers communicated in emails and editions of In The Vineyard.

Cash reserves allowed VOTF to continue operations but only by a very thin margin. The Board's plan was to generate a substantial infusion of revenue when the Officers rolled out a comprehensive Strategic Plan in early August. Based on the enthusiastic response from dozens of VOTF members who have been bringing the Strategic Plan to life for several months, we expected that it would result in a revitalization of members' energy at regional and local levels, and with it, a level of necessary revenue as members and donors recognized the opportunity for a renewed voice and influence in achieving VOTF's mission and goals. Previews of the Strategic Plan have been included in several recent editions of In The Vineyard.

Unfortunately, our financial condition has deteriorated before the rollout the Strategic Plan. As of early July, VOTF's reserves have all but been depleted, and it faces the prospects of not being able to pay for recurring costs during July and beyond. After meeting in an emergency session on July 9, the Board foresaw two realistic options: (1) declare that VOTF could not continue to operate and begin to wind it down, or (2) appeal to members to fund operations in the short term and seek sustained funding based on an anticipated enthusiastic response to the Strategic Plan. If the latter is successful, the Board will develop a downsizing plan commensurate with sustained funding expectations, supplemented where feasible with additional volunteer help.

Many of you have labored tirelessly since 2002 and given generously of your time and treasures to sustain the dream of VOTF's mission: To provide a prayerful voice, attentive to the Spirit, through which the Faithful can actively participate in the governance and guidance of the Catholic Church. We can make the difference in supporting that dream, but only if collectively we raise the revenue to do so.

As a result, the Board is soliciting from its members (and any friends or supporters that you can reach) a short-term infusion of $60,000 by the end of July (our current monthly costs run about $30,000 per month). We know this is a painful choice for you, especially in a very short time, but we ask you nonetheless to go to www.votf.org, click Donate at the top of the page, and make whatever generous contribution you can make, NO LATER THAN JULY 31. Or you can mail a check to VOTF, P.O. Box 423, Newton, MA 02464 (same address as previous facility until it is changed later).

If we receive this level of funding by the end of July, we will be able to continue operations for July and August, disseminate the Strategic Plan in the first week in August, and generate what we hope will be renewed energy and revenue based on the attraction of that plan. Going forward, membership will include an annual financial commitment—a feature common to most other similar organizations.

If reality dictates otherwise, either by July 31 or in response to the Strategic Plan, the Board will exercise its fiduciary responsibilities to begin the steps necessary to close the national office, yet seek to continue VOTF's mission and goals through volunteers, affiliates and members at the national and local levels.

In any event, the conference scheduled on Long Island in October will continue since the Long Island affiliate will administer it as it has done with annual conferences on Long Island for several years.

With great hope in the Spirit to lead us,

Dan Bartley, President
Bill Casey, Chair of the Board of Trustees"

The Catholic Key Blog, by the staff of the newspaper for the Diocese of Kansas City - St. Joseph in Missouri, posts an item headlined, "VOTF is in the Tank - Revenue Slides,'' and blogger Jack Smith opines, "I suspect that more than the economy, decline in receipts for VOTF is reflective of the fact that most big priest sexual abuse cases are now settled. Being able to stage a protest / press photo-op on the front steps of any chancery in the U.S. whenever a settlement is close seems to be a lot more lucrative than holding conferences on church management structure."

In the Ideas section of today's Globe, I have a story looking at medical miracles and the canonization process in light of the Vatican's recent announcement that the healing of a local man's back pain was a miracle attributable to Cardinal John Henry Newman, who died more than a century ago and is now a candidate for sainthood. An excerpt:

"The very idea of miracles may seem deeply at odds with modernity - the word, for many, conjures up images of biblical events like the parting of the Red Sea, or the raising of Lazarus; or paranormal phenomena, like weeping statues and apparitions of the Virgin Mary. But miracles remain an official part of the church bureaucracy, in large part because two official miracles are necessary before someone can be declared a saint - one for beatification, and the second for canonization.

Pope John Paul II, in fact, canonized people at a record-breaking rate, and Benedict, although acting at a slower pace than his predecessor, is still declaring saints in historically high numbers. So over the last several decades, there has been a paradoxical confluence of two phenomena: at the same time that medical science has become increasingly adept at explaining how the human body heals, the Roman Catholic Church is in need of - and finding - an increasing number of inexplicable healings. The result is an unusual process, in which the Vatican has had to develop a medical expertise to help separate remarkable but understandable recoveries from those healings for which medicine has no explanation."

The Rev. James Martin, an associate editor at America magazine and the author of "My Life with the Saints,'' is quoted in the story; today he blogged about his own views on miracles, writing:

"To my mind--and I'm being serious here--I figure that if God can create the heavens and the earth, raise his son from the dead, and so on (to say nothing of what his son's miracles during his earthly ministry) then something like healing someone from an incurable disease in the modern world is, by comparison, relatively easy. Plus, I've read plenty of medical reports surrounding the many verified miracles at Lourdes. And I've also seen and heard about what I would call 'minor' miracles in people's lives that remain inexplicable.

But belief in miracles raises a very difficult question for those who believe in them (including me): Why is one person "cured" while another remains ill? This is where those who do not believe in miracles have a very strong case: for if you admit of the possibility of miracles, then you have to grapple with the question of whether this means that God plays favorites. And many of my friends simply cannot abide that image of God."

Several folks have now asked about the photo of Michelle Obama dressed in black and wearing a veil while visiting the pope today, and it's triggering a bit of discussion on-line. I've poked around and am not coming up with an entirely satisfactory explanation, other than that the veil is a sign of respect and a nod to tradition. The practice is not universally honored -- Raisa Gorbachev once caused a bit of a stir by greeting the pope dressed in red -- but the archives show a lot of examples of prominent women who have followed the practice, including the photo above, which shows Pope Benedict XVI earlier this week arriving for a meeting with some of the First Ladies taking part in a G8 summit in L'Aquila, Italy.

Here's a photo of Michelle Obama, with her husband and the pope, at the Vatican today:

FULL ENTRY

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the ailing scion of the nation's most famous Catholic family, drafted a personal letter to Pope Benedict XVI that was hand-delivered to the Vatican today by President Obama.

Although neither the Vatican nor Kennedy's office released details of the letter, and the White House said the president hadn't read it, the missive immediately captured the imagination of Catholics, reinforcing both the sense of the senator as someone reaching out for help, and reminding the nation of the special place the Kennedys have held in American Catholic lore.

The president, who has become a close ally of Kennedy since the storied Massachusetts Democrat endorsed his presidential campaign, asked the pope to pray for the senator during a meeting at the Vatican, and then, after the meeting ended, phoned the senator and talked with him for ten minutes to fill him in on the conversation.

"I find it quite moving,'' said the Rev. Robert P. Imbelli, a Catholic theologian at Boston College. "Clearly, when one Catholic asks another to pray for him, this is a sign both of vulnerability and of trust. To have the opportunity to ask that of the pope is, in addition, a sign of devotion and respect for the one Catholics hold to be the successor of St. Peter with a special role in maintaining the unity and apostolic tradition of the church.''

And R. Scott Appleby, a historian at the University of Notre Dame, said, "Catholicism as a cultural and ethnic identity clearly runs deep in the Kennedy clan. Among individual members, the depth of commitment to the Church itself varies—as with many Catholic families. It seems clear, and it is poignant and instructive, that Senator Kennedy seeks peace and reconciliation with 'Holy Mother Church' as he nears the end of his earthly life."

Kennedy's office declined to release the letter or discuss its contents; his spokeswoman, Melissa Wagoner, e-mailed, "It's a personal letter. End of story."

But the act of reaching out to the pope, while the senator is struggling with brain cancer, is in many ways a traditional act of a religious person reaching out to a spiritual leader, particularly when struggling with illness or other trouble.

"Catholics, and so many others, reach out for prayers in their time of need, as Senator Kennedy does so now,'' said Sister Mary Ann Walsh , the spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "The entire Catholic community prays at Sunday Mass for the sick and for government leaders during the Prayer of the Faithful and their prayers are with him. Senator Kennedy recognizes the prayerfulness of the Holy Father and his reaching out to the head of the Catholic Church is a very understandable human and Catholic action."

The Rev. Thomas J. Reese , a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University, also noted that the delivery of the letter reflects the president's acknowledgment of the role played by the pope for Catholics.

"This kindness to Kennedy shows that Obama recognizes the pope is a pastor and not just a world leader,'' Reese said.

The Kennedys have long had a special relationship with the Catholic Church by virtue of their prominence in American politics. Kennedy's father, Joseph P. Kennedy , was an ambassador to Britain when he represented the United States at the coronation of Pope Pius XII back in 1939, and since that time many members of the Kennedy family have met with various popes. When Senator Kennedy's older brother, John F. Kennedy , was running for president in 1960, he had to battle anti-Catholic allegations that he would be controlled by the Vatican; he famously overcame such concerns to become the nation's first Catholic president, a fact the White House cited yesterday in announcing its delivery of a letter from the senator to the pope.

"The president delivered a letter from Senator Kennedy to the Holy Father,'' Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough , whose brother is a priest and who has talked in recent days about the impact of Catholic social teaching on his own views, told reporters aboard Air Force One after the meeting. "He also asked that the Holy Father pray for Senator Kennedy, who as we all know is ill, and whose brother obviously broke an important barrier in our country by being the first Catholic president elected of the United States."

Senator Kennedy is at once one of the most prominent and most controversial figures in American Catholicism -- prominent because of his brother's place in history, and his own lengthy career as the leading liberal lion of the senate, but controversial because of his support for abortion rights and gay rights and occasionally because of his own personal failings and misdeeds. But he has largely ignored the periodic denunciations of his Catholic-ness from conservatives within the church. After his mother died, he attended daily Mass for a year; before he got sick, he periodically attended Mass in Washington and on the Cape, and attended key ceremonies of the Archdiocese of Boston and other major church events, including the funeral of Pope John Paul II in Rome.

In 2005, when Benedict -- then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger -- was elected to the papacy, Kennedy issued a congratulatory statement, saying, "Vicki and I congratulate Pope Benedict XVI and pray that his pontificate will bring healing to the entire world and to all people of every faith."

Then last year, when Benedict visited the United States, Kennedy issued a statement welcoming him, and attended the papal Mass at Nationals Park in Washington, declaring, “Pope Benedict’s visit to the United States and our capital city is an extraordinary opportunity to strengthen and reflect on the power of faith during this difficult time for our country and for the entire world.”

(Photo, by Getty Images, shows Pope Benedict XVI greeting First Lady Michelle Obama and President Obama at the Vatican today, July 10, 2009.)

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs and Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough just briefed the news media aboard Air Force One (en route from Rome to Accra) about today's meeting between President Obama and Pope Benedict XVI. Note that the president gave the pope a letter from Senator Kennedy (deep in transcript):

"MR. McDONOUGH: Hey, everybody. We just had a short talk with the President about his meeting with the Holy Father. Before the President met with the Holy Father, he spent about 10 or -- yes, about 10 minutes with Cardinal Bertone. They talked about a range of issues. The Cardinal also, underscoring the fact that they had little -- insufficient time, underscored that he would share a longer note with the President, which he looks very much forward to receiving. FULL ENTRY

The pope and the president have met. I'm still waiting for the statements and briefings, but in the meantime, here's a photo of the happy pair, plus first lady Michelle Obama, posing for photographers after their conversation at the Vatican:

My editor asks why Michelle Obama is dressed in black and veiled. Here's an attempt at an answer from USA Today, tackling the same question when first lady Laura Bush visited the pope in 2006. Bottom line: tradition.

(Photo by Jason Reed/Reuters)

Tomorrow (Friday) is the much-anticipated first meeting between President Obama and Pope Benedict XVI, and there's lots of discussion about what to expect. The two men have shared interests in economic and environmental issues, but those have generally been overshadowed by the abortion divide, which has dominated reaction to the Obama presidency by the Catholic church hierarchy in the United States.

This afternoon, Catholic Democrats held a teleconference to talk about the pope's recent encyclical and tomorrow's meeting; while on the phone, I asked US Representatives Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Rosa L. DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat, whether they view the pope-president meeting as largely symbolic, or as having some more substantive significance.

Here's what McGovern, who represents central and southeastern Massachusetts, including Worcester, had to say:

"In the past, they have been symbolic meetings that have amounted to more than photo ops and a nice press release. But my sense of President Obama is that he doesn't do symbolism. He's not going through the motions. This is a man who ran for president with a deep desire to change the world for the better, and I believe that he really wants to change things. And I think this pope, with the encyclical that he has issued, has put forward a framework, not just for the US, but for the world. I have high expectations for this meeting. I believe this meeting has the potential to have a lasting impact, not only to inspire, but to provide political cover to move forward in some areas that have been difficult for politicians to deal with – the delicate crisis in the MidEast, or poverty, or hunger. My hope and my expectation is that it will be about real things, and results-oriented. I'm very, very hopeful.''

And here's DeLauro, who represents south central Connecticut, including New Haven:

FULL ENTRY

There was a minor bombing (if there is such a thing) of a Catholic parish in Brockton over the weekend. Globe correspondent Matt Collette talked with Brockton Fire Chief Ken Galligan, who described the damage as minor, but said the explosives could have caused serious damage had they not burned out on their own. There is no indication of a motive -- this could be an act of vandalism, or some kind of hate crime. Here's what Galligan said:

"After the 7:30 a.m. Mass on Sunday, someone discovered two Molotov cocktails – described as glass bottles filled with paper towels and a flammable liquid – between a row of pews on the floor of the St. Edith Stein Church (left) in Brockton. What it looks like now is somebody from outside threw these Molotov cocktails through the window onto the wooden floor. The floor was scorched, but the Molotov cocktails apparently burned themselves out."

The church’s co-pastor, the Rev. Brian P. Smith, declined to comment and referred questions to the Archdiocese of Boston. Archdiocesan spokesman Terrence C. Donilon e-mailed a statement:

"Brockton Police and Fire are investigating an incident which occurred this weekend at St. Edith Stein Church. Because of the ongoing investigation we respectfully decline comment at this time. We are grateful that no injuries and no damage was sustained and we pray for those responsible for this unfortunate incident this past weekend."

The Brockton Enterprise has a story with further details on its web site.

(Photo courtesy of the Archdiocese of Boston.)

The Massachusetts Bible Society, marking 200 years of handing out millions of Bibles to the poor and the imprisoned, this afternoon staged a small-scale re-enactment of its founding in the warm embrace of the round blue state Senate chamber.

A few dozen supporters of the organization, some dressed in knickers, top hats, bowties or bonnets, read from the founding documents, now tinged with irony, about the aspirations and arguments of Protestant denominations that then wielded considerable power and influence in the Bay State.

The event featured readings from early writings of the Bible Society’s while male Protestant founders, most of them Harvard-educated, who could hardly have imagined the organization's leadership of today: the Bible society’s current president is a Catholic priest, the Rev. Walter H. Cuenin, and its executive director is a woman, the Rev. Anne Robertson (above), who is a Methodist minister. But two centuries of modernization has not changed all atop Beacon Hill: as the clergy and lay people of today held their re-enactment, a small gray mouse darted out from beneath the golden drapes behind the podium and scurried unimpeded across the Senate carpet.

The Bible Society, which was the third such organization in the early United States, is one of the lesser-known relics of Massachusetts’ rich religious past, and has undergone considerable downsizing in recent years, selling its longtime headquarters on Bromfield Street, closing its bookstores, and moving its small staff first to the Congregational House on Beacon Street and then, in December, to the campus of Andover Newton Theological School in Newton. The organization’s rare Bibles collection now resides at Boston University, and its printed newsletter is now on-line only. Its endowment, which was $6.4 million a year ago, is now about $3.3 million.

The organization, which once employed 18 colporteurs who traveled around distributing Bibles door-to-door and had a special ministry to the state’s many newly arriving immigrants, still distributes Bibles in prisons, hospitals, on campuses, and through programs for the homeless and the poor. The organization also hosts lectures and publishes articles. But the organization is also trying to reinvent itself for the Internet Age, increasingly emphasizing its web site, and now with a Facebook page, a YouTube channel, and a Twitter feed, and it recently spent $500,000 to construct a media center at Andover Newton that is intended for use training clergy and congregations on use of technology.

“At one time, everybody who was anybody had not only heard of the Mass. Bible Society but was part of it,’’ Robertson said in an interview. “We still have a message, but today we are focusing more on Biblical literacy, understanding and dialogue.’’

In an address to the society members before a ceremonial re-signing of the founding charter (below), Robertson outlined the argument for the future of the organization, which in recent years has emphasized its place as home for a liberal alternative to more evangelical readings of the Bible. The organization has encouraged an interpretive, rather than literal, reading of the Bible.

“Is it a tough road to convince people that the Bible is relevant to our age? Yes, it is,’’ Robertson said. “Is it tougher still to reach out and take the Bible back from those who have ground its contents to such a sharp point that more people seem to feel wounded by it than helped? Yes, it is.’’

After the ceremony, the Bible Society members strolled over to the Omni Parker House for a period dinner featuring turnip soup and pink pancakes (crepes).

Cuenin, the Catholic chaplain at Brandeis and the first Catholic priest to serve as president, said he wanted to be involved with the organization in part because of its history and in part to make sure Catholics were visible in an organization that was long Protestant-only.

“What we’ve been trying to do is figure out where we go for the future, and figure out the electronic means of spreading the Bible,’’ he said. “Two hundred years ago, the purpose was to give out Bibles, but today people have Bibles, so that’s not a big deal. The question is, how do we make it usable?”

Cuenin and Robertson both emphasized the Society’s role in encouraging a debate about the meanings of the Bible in today’s society.

“I’m someone who believes in interpreting the Bible, and not following it literally, and that’s what my church teaches,’’ Cuenin said. “This society would promote an understanding of the Scripture that is more contemporary and open to historical criticism.’’

(Photos, by Yoon S. Byun/Globe staff, show the Massachusetts Bible Society celebrating its bicentennial by reenacting its founding in the Senate chamber of the Massachusetts State House on July 6, 2009.)

President Obama this morning met with a select group of reporters for Catholic publications, as well as the religion reporter for the Washington Post. Obama outlined his thoughts on the upcoming visit to the pope, his relationship with American bishops, the abortion issue, economic justice, and the Middle East. There was no major news, but Obama revealed a couple things I had not previously known about his faith life -- first, that he is considering choosing a group of churches in Washington, rather than a single congregation, to reduce the impact of his presence on any one community. And second, the president said that Joshua DuBois, the president's faith adviser, sends Obama's BlackBerry a devotional prayer each morning for the president to reflect on.

The president opened with a preview of his meeting with Pope Benedict XVI, which is scheduled to take place July 10 at the Vatican:

FULL ENTRY

Karl Malden, the film actor who died yesterday at 97, is being remembered in religionland for his Academy Award-nominated portrayal of a tough dockside priest, Father Pete Barry, in the 1954 film "On the Waterfront.'' Malden's role is one of the most famous depictions of a Catholic priest on film. The role was inspired by the real life of a Jesuit priest, the Rev. John Corridan, who died 25 years ago today. America magazine, the Jesuit weekly, today re-posts an explanatory piece that first appeared in Company, another Jesuit publication. An excerpt:

"After meeting the street-smart, earthy Corridan at Xavier, [director Elia] Kazan grilled [writer Budd] Schulberg: 'Are you sure he's a priest? Maybe he's working there for the waterfront rebels in disguise.' Schulberg viewed Corridan as 'the antidote to the stereotyped Barry Fitzgerald-Bing Crosby' portrayal of the priesthood 'so dear to Hollywood hearts.' Corridan agreed and exhorted Kazan and Schulberg to 'make a "Going My Way" with substance.'

The project was turned down by every major studio in Hollywood before finally being rescued by independent producer Sam Spiegel. Corridan served as adviser on the film and helped secure clearances from the Port Authority for the use of piers in Hoboken, where the film was shot in late autumn 1953. He also provided the filmmakers with his speeches and writings on waterfront conditions, including the famous 'Christ is on the waterfront' speech he had first presented at a Jersey City chapter of the Knights of Columbus in 1948. In 'On the Waterfront,' Father Pete Barry (Karl Malden) provides a stirring rendition of the speech over the body of a slain longshoreman. Kazan and Schulberg refused repeated demands by the producers to shorten the scene, which is the moral core of the film since it persuades longshoreman Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) to follow his conscience and testify against waterfront criminals."

And, from the Internet Movie Database, a famous exchange from that scene between Brando's Terry Malloy and Malden's Father Barry:

Terry: If I spill, my life ain't worth a nickel.
Father Barry: And how much is your soul worth if you don't?

Over at dotCommonweal, Mollie Wilson O'Reilly recalls her first viewing of the film, just a few years back:

"I didn’t know going in that it was, at least in part, a story about a heroic priest...In fact, 'On the Waterfront' belongs on parish film-fest rosters alongside chestnuts like 'Boys Town' and 'The Bells of St. Mary’s' (and way ahead of silly epics like 'The Robe'). I would certainly advocate screening it in this 'year of the priest.' And as Philip T. Hartung wrote in Commonweal in 1954, 'Karl Malden’s portrayal of the courageous priest is as outstanding as the author’s characterization of the part.'"

(Photo, from the Globe archives, shows Karl Malden (third from left, in Roman collar) in a scene from the 1954 film "On the Waterfront.")

I was wondering how long I could hold out before blogging about Michael Jackson, and now I know the answer: six days.

In those days since the King of Pop died, I've now seen so many items about his faith that my head is starting to spin. He was a Jehovah's Witness. A Muslim. He accepted Jesus before he died. The Vatican loved him, but was that right? There's even a Jewish angle of sorts. Not to mention the unending discussion of what it means to call him an icon, or an idol. Some folks have suggested that his funeral will shed some light on his final faith practices, but I'm not holding out much hope for that.

Here is a brief Michael Jackson religion roundup. Make of it what you will:

• Jackson was raised a Jehovah's Witness, and there have been a variety of unconfirmed reports that at some point he was disfellowshipped by the Witnesses. Back in 2000, Jackson penned an essay for Beliefnet about his relationship to the Sabbath, and in it he discussed doorbelling to preach for the Witnesses:
  

  "Sundays were my day for 'Pioneering,' the term used for the missionary work that Jehovah's Witnesses do. We would spend the day in the suburbs of Southern California, going door to door or making the rounds of a shopping mall, distributing our Watchtower magazine. I continued my pioneering work for years and years after my career had been launched."

  
  
• Jackson's brother Jermaine is a Muslim, and there were some reports during Michael's life that he, too, converted to Islam. The Times of London rounds up the evidence in an item headlined, "Was Michael Jackson Muslim?"; there was also a roundup on Global Voices. Imam Zaid Shakir blogged about Jackson's conversion to Islam, and then retracted his blog item, concluding, "There have been many reports throughout the media concerning Michael becoming Muslim. Allah knows best as to their veracity.'' Perhaps my favorite development on the role of Islam in the Michael Jackson story, though, was this correction that ran Saturday in The New York Times, revising a comment that Jermaine Jackson made at the hospital where Michael Jackson died:
  

  "The article...misstated part of a comment that Mr. Jackson’s brother Jermaine offered for Mr. Jackson after speaking with reporters. He said, “May Allah be with you always,” not “May our love be with you always.”

• Not to be outdone, Christianity Today tackles the question, "Was Michael Jackson a Christian?" The evangelical magazine explores, and then essentially debunks, suggestions that Jackson accepted Jesus just before his death. "Initial rumors that the King of Pop had accepted Christ may have been false,'' the magazine concludes.

• The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, meanwhile, offers a story on Michael Jackson's "Jewish Ties,'' which turn out to be quite complex -- he said some offensive things, he was friends with a rabbi, he flirted with kabbalah (who didn't?) and it's possible that at least two of his children are technically Jewish because Jackson's ex-wife Debbie Rowe, who has been thought to be the biological mother of the children, is Jewish. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a onetime friend of Jackson, wrote a generous appraisal for Beliefnet; Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the head of the Reform movement, offers a far more critical assessment, asking,
  

  "Is it really necessary, however, now that he is dead, for those who speak in the name of the Jewish community to be joining in the adulation and offering excuses for his actions?"

  
  
• Some in the Catholic community are similarly conflicted. L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, published a generous appreciation of Jackson's legacy, prompting Tom Heneghan of Reuters to observe: "It’s not every day that the Vatican newspaper suggests that a man accused of pedophilia and said to have converted to Islam might be immortal. But that’s what L’Osservatore Romano did today." Over at American Papist, Thomas Peters is not amused, calling the Vatican paper's assessment "fawning'' and suggesting that it could never have appeared in a parish newsletter:
  

  "Jackson, it should be noted, from all outside accounts, lived a tortured existence and the circumstances of his death should prompt an outpouring of fervent prayers for his soul, not these gushing, Hollywood-esque bon mots about how his "myth" will survive "serious and shameful" accusations. All the artistic success in the world, we must realize, is a basket of straw if your personal life was a spiritual, human wreck. I really dig Michael Jackson's music, but as a Catholic, I don't have to buy into the myth that great art makes a great man. Michael Jackson's best chance to "never die" is the mercy of Christ, not his best-selling record."

  
  

I suppose it's not all that surprising that an entertainer who often seemed confused, or confusing, about race, gender and sexuality, would also leave us wondering about his religious beliefs. Here's Juan Cole, blogging about how religion fits into the Michael Jackson identity swirl:

"Jackson was a man of multiple identities, which helped account for his enormous worldwide popularity. It seems clear that he was deeply traumatized by his rough show business childhood, and that things happened to him to arrest his development. Just as a stem cell can grow into any organ, Michael's eternal boyishness made him a chameleon. Increasingly androgynous, he expressed both male and female. A boy and yet a father, he was both child and adult. In part because of his vitiligo, he interrogated his blackness and became, like some other powerful and wealthy African-Americans of his generation, racially ambiguous. Toward the end of his life he bridged his family's Jehovah's Witness brand of Christianity with a profound interest in Islam. He was all things to all people in part precisely because of his Peter Pan syndrome. A child can grow up to become anything, after all."

(Photo, by Hasan Jamali for The New York Times via AP, shows Michael Jackson wearing a black abaya while exiting a shopping mall in Bahrain with one of his children, also veiled, and a security guard, on Jan. 25, 2006.)

And then there were 291.

The Archdiocese of Boston, which had 357 parishes back in 2002, is consolidating another pair of parishes tomorrow. Sacred Heart‐St. James (left) in Groton and Saint Joseph (right) in Pepperell will merge, forming a new parish, Our Lady of Grace. But this transition, unlike some in the past, appears to be largely peaceful. The churches, located about 8 miles apart, have shared a pastor for three years, and for the time being the new parish will hold Masses in the existing buildings, so the changes for worshipers in the short-term are relatively minor -- a consolidation of the offices, and a slight reduction in the Mass schedule. Over the long term the community hopes to construct a new parish campus, with church, rectory, and parish center, on the town line, that would replace the existing buildings.

The congregations are relatively small for Catholic parishes in the Archdiocese of Boston -- each parish currently has about 750 families, and average weekend Mass attendance runs between 500 and 600 at each church. The Groton parish is itself the result of a previous merger, in 2003, and is now trying to sell one of its church buildings and parish halls. The new parish will include not only Groton and Pepperell, but also Dunstable.

This afternoon I spoke with the Rev. Paul L. Ring, pastor of the parishes. Here's what he had to say:

Q: Is this related to the archdiocesan reconfiguration that began in 2004?
A: What happened was, back a number of years ago, during the reconfiguration, when we sat down as a cluster, it was given to us to figure out which parishes would be closed within the cluster. The cluster asked the archdiocese for a different tack, and so the archdiocese asked them to come up with a plan.

Q: How did you come up with the new name?
A: People were asked to submit names, and we came up with three that we submitted to the cardinal, and he chose. "Our Lady of Grace" comes about because a number of our people have a deep affinity for the Blessed Mother, so a number of "Our Lady" appellations were chosen. And we felt grace was needed in abundance to get through this process. Also, Lydia Longley, credited as the first American nun, was a resident of Groton, and she belonged to the School Sisters of Notre Dame, which is French for Our Lady, so that was another rationale.

Q: How are people reacting to the merger?
A: By and large the folks are happy about this, because it gives us a future. I've been encouraging folks to understand that this was the best course of action, not only for the survival of our two communities, but to build the ministries and the kingdom here in the Nashoba Valley.

(Parish photos courtesy of the Archdiocese of Boston.)

Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley's decision to require Caritas Christi Health Care to end its short-lived joint venture with Centene Corp. is generating mixed reaction among his fellow antiabortion activists, many of whom had pushed quite strongly for him to intervene. As the decision, which Kay Lazar and I reported in Saturday's Globe, rippled through the blogosphere, the activists were generally pleased with the development, but differed about whether it went far enough.

O'Malley himself posted the news on his blog Friday night, and made it clear he was upbeat about his decision. "I am happy to share with you the following statement issued this evening by Caritas Christi concerning its decision to withdraw its membership in the CeltiCare Health Plan while continuing its commitment to serve the needs of the poor among us,'' he wrote, before posting a copy of the news release.

The American Life League, which had been quite critical, offered unqualified praise for the decision:

"We profoundly thank Cardinal O’Malley for his courage, leadership and pastoral concern for the health and well-being of those youngest members of his archdiocese. He has set a beautiful example of dedication and charity for those poorest of the poor – the preborn.

Cardinal O’Malley has answered our call and beat the clock as the minutes ticked away until the July 1 launch of the new CeltiCare Health Plan and the Catholic Church’s participation in the intrinsic evil of abortion."

And Massachusetts Citizens for Life, which initially had been critical of the cardinal but then adopted a more conciliatory tone, linked to my blog item breaking the news, and said, simply:

"We at Mass. Citizens for Life maintained our conviction that Cardinal Sean would do the right thing concerning the Caritas Christi arrangements. He has just announced that Caritas has pulled out of the arrangement with CeltiCare...Deo gratias!"

Others were less sanguine, noting that Caritas will remain a provider for Commonwealth Care, the new state insurance program for low-income people, which is required to cover abortion services. (Caritas explained its handling of the issue on June 11, saying in a news release, "when a patient seeks such a procedure, Caritas healthcare professionals will be clear that (a) the hospital does not perform them and (b) the patient must turn to his or her insurer for further guidance. This, in fact, is the practice currently in place in the Caritas system as we work with other insurance companies under state laws that mandate access to procedures not provided within the Caritas system. It is the path that Caritas has always followed and will follow in its engagement with CeltiCare.'')

The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts called Caritas's withdrawal from the joint venture a "partial victory,'' saying that "any continued participation by Caritas Christi in Commonwealth Care would obligate Caritas, directly or indirectly, to make abortion referrals." The statement continued:

"Caritas Christi has indicated that a woman seeking an abortion at a Caritas hospital will be sent back to her insurer. For Commonwealth Care members that insurer will be CeltiCare, which will not only procure the abortion but will provide transportation to the abortion facility. Instead of offering compassionate alternatives to abortion, Caritas Christi will still be engaged in a two-step abortion referral. Troubling questions also remain about whether Caritas has already benefited financially from this contract, and whether it continues to have an ongoing relationship with the Centene Corporation."

And Carol McKinley, a cyberactivist who has been quite critical of the archdiocese, blogged:

"Because the Cardinal and Caritas deliberately misrepresented what was happening in the arrangement until they actually got caught on the CeltiCare website with links to the abortionists they hired and their spokesperson admitted to NARAL being the Advisory Board for CeltiCare and that they had hired phone operators to answer the calls when they referred the women back to themselves to carry out and pay for the abortions, the overall consensus is disgust and a complete lack of trust that they are being forthright now about a situation they have been lying about all along."

What would these activists have Caritas do? The Lady in the Pew (Kelly Thatcher) blogs that if a woman named Judy calls and asks for an abortion:

"What I'm supposed to do is (a) help Judy find an alternative to abortion or (b) refer her to one of the many people and/or organizations who are very good at doing just that. Duh! One good thing, though. Until this whole issue came up, I never realized that so-called Catholic hospitals in the Archdiocese of Boston did the old Pontius Pilate number with abortion/contraception seekers. Now I do."

Harsh language, but Thatcher is not alone. Here is Diogenes, blogging for Catholic World News:

"So it appears that Caritas Christi, the healthcare agency of the Boston archdiocese, won't be involved in the abortion business after all. Thank God for that. The announcement was obviously timed (after business hours on a Friday afternoon) for minimal media exposure, and offered no details about the new arrangement. A few questions linger. Among those questions: How did a Catholic agency get involved with this proposal in the first place? Do the people at the helm of Caritas Christi understand the purpose of healthcare system with a Catholic identity? A spokeswoman for Caritas Christi told the Boston Globe: 'This is the right way to move the distraction of the debate of ownership and allow us to be a provider.' The distraction. A debate over involvement in killing unborn babies is a 'distraction' from the business of saving lives. A debate over mutilating people to make them infertile is a 'distraction' from the distinctive mission of Catholic health care."

Meanwhile, a postscript from Caritas, which is arguing that it could benefit from the withdrawal because it will make reimbursements for patient treatment easier, especially since the state decided to slow enrollment in the program. An e-mail from Caritas spokeswoman Teresa Prego:

"The dramatic reduction of new potential enrollees in the Connector plan due to the sudden elimination of auto-enrollments presented a substantial financial risk due to our involvement in the insurance partnership. We faced additional risk based on the fact we had made investments in physicians and support staff to handle the additional patients from the Connector. Our decision to withdraw from the insurance partnership allows us to mitigate our risk."

Caritas Christi Health Care, the financially challenged Catholic hospital system founded by the Archdiocese of Boston, is abruptly ending its joint venture with a Missouri-based health insurer at the insistence of Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley, who has decided that the relationship represented too much of an entanglement between Catholic hospitals and abortion providers.

The dramatic development, just days before the joint venture was scheduled to start providing care to low-income residents as part of the state's efforts to establish near universal health coverage here, is a vindication of sorts for a variety of very conservative Catholic critics of the cardinal, who have been arguing angrily and loudly that it would be "evil" for Caritas to partner with a health provider that covers abortion services.

The development is also a setback for Caritas, because it represents the undoing of one of the most significant steps its new chief executive, Dr. Ralph de la Torre, had announced as part of his efforts to turn around the hospital system's finances. It was not immediately clear what the financial impact of the change is on Caritas, but the decision is a stark and public reminder from O'Malley to de la Torre and the general public that moral concerns will trump monetary concerns at the Catholic hospitals.

The change will have no effect on patient care, because Centene Corp., the Missouri-based insurer, will continue to participate in the state-subsidized program, called Commonwealth Care, starting Wednesday.

And Caritas will continue to participate in the program, but now simply as one of many healthcare providers hired by Centene to treat patients. Caritas's role as a provider will be the same as the role it plays when providing care to people covered by private insurers such as Blue Cross.

In keeping with the ethical directives that bind Catholic hospitals, Caritas hospitals will not provide abortion or sterilizations. Caritas already refers privately insured patients who seek such services to their insurance providers, and will do the same with state-insured patients. (Caritas spelled out its practices for handling Catholic ethical teachings in a statement June 11.)

Here is a statement just issued by Richard Lynch, chief executive of CeltiCare Health Plan of Massachusetts, the former joint venture, which is now solely owned by a Centene subsidiary:

FULL ENTRY

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs (right) has just confirmed that President Obama will meet with Pope Benedict XVI in Rome. Here is the transcript, courtesy of the White House:

"MR. GIBBS: Just one quick announcement before we get going with questions. On his upcoming trip overseas, on Friday, July 10, the President will visit with the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI to discuss a range of issues, including their shared belief in the dignity of all people. That's on the upcoming trip.

Q Does he have a church --

MR. GIBBS: I can assure you, April, we're not joining a church in Italy. (Laughter.)

Q I didn't ask that.

MR. GIBBS: I know. But you know what I did? I just fast-forwarded right to the follow-up. (Laughter.) I'm going to do that -- that's actually what I'm going to do all today. So if I don't answer your question, I will presume your follow-up and answer that instead. (Laughter.)

Q That's very efficient.

MR. GIBBS: Right, this will be like a 10-minute deal.

Q Is Mrs. Obama going to the Vatican, as well?

MR. GIBBS: She will, as far as I know, be on the entire trip, yes."

(Photo, by Ron Edmonds/AP, shows White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs speaking to reporters during his daily press briefing at the White House on June 24, 2009.)

Pope Benedict XVI and President Obama are scheduled to have their first meeting July 10, Catholic News Service reports:

"Discussions between popes and U.S. presidents usually focus on common concerns regarding world events and the church's concerns over issues or policies with special moral relevance. So in addition to discussing ongoing tensions in the Middle East, especially the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the situation in Iraq, Pope Benedict likely will bring up his concerns regarding abortion policy in the United States and renewed government permission for embryonic stem-cell research."

The visit, although in many ways unsurprising, will no doubt occasion an examination of the complex relationship between the president and the Catholic Church. Obama won the Catholic vote last fall, but before and after the election has been repeatedly criticized by Catholic prelates in the U.S. for his support of abortion rights. The Vatican, primarily through its newspaper, has offered a more nuanced take, to the dismay of some American Catholic conservatives. On foreign policy and environmental matters, Obama arguably is closer to the Vatican's views than was his predecessor, President George W. Bush. And because Obama is not Catholic, his visit does not raise some of the questions that came up when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is Catholic, visited the pontiff in February.

(Photo on left, by Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg News, shows President Obama at a news conference at the White House in Washington on June 23, 2009. Photo on right, by Pier Paolo Cito/AP, shows Pope Benedict XVI at Padre Pio's shrine in San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy, on June 21, 2009.)

Religious congregations are often looking for publicity, but one place they don't want to wind up is in the Boston Police Department's blog. That's where the St. Anthony Shrine winds up today, as the victim of one of the lowest of crimes -- stealing from the poorbox. Here's the blog item:

"BPD Investigates Theft of Donation Box Money at Saint Anthony’s Shrine

On Sunday, June 21, 2009, at approximately 11:28pm, Officers assigned to Area A-1 (Downtown), responded to Saint Anthony’s Shrine, 100 Arch Street, Boston, for a report of a larceny.

Upon officers’ arrival, they spoke with church custodians who informed them that they observed an unknown male steal an unknown amount of money from the wooden donation box that is located in the main chapel’s first floor. A later inspection of the box showed the bottom panel to be broken from its hinges. The suspect is described as a thin white male wearing shorts and a t-shirt. The custodians immediately reported the incident to the security officer who confronted the suspect and escorted him out of the building onto Arch Street. The suspect left the area before the arrival of BPD officers.

Area A-1 (downtown) detectives are investigating this incident. Anyone with information pertaining to the unknown suspect is urged to call detectives at 617-343-4248. Information may also be relayed anonymously by calling CrimeStoppers at 1-800-494-TIPS. You may also text “TIP” to CIME (27463)."

(Photo, by David L. Ryan of the Globe staff, shows the St. Anthony Shrine on Nov. 27, 2001.)

There's been a lot of talk in the religion world about Americans' increasing habit of choosing their own religious affiliation -- survey research by Pew, in particular, has shown that half of all Americans have changed denomination during their lifetime. But there's been less attention to the ways in which Americans also have a tendency to make faith their own, accepting those beliefs and rituals that they like, and rejecting those they don't, within or outside their denominations.

I was thinking about this this morning, when I attended the funeral for a co-worker, Sarah Snyder, who died June 11 at the age of 51. Sarah was a gutsy and funny woman, and a talented journalist, who was felled much too soon by cancer. She was also, like so many folks in eastern Massachusetts (although she was not from these parts), a cradle Catholic who struggled with, but did not completely reject, her faith.

Her funeral took place at a Unitarian Universalist meetinghouse, First Parish in Milton, that is simultaneously non-creedal but, visually, quite explicitly Christian. The minister, Parisa Parsa, used a variety of generic phrases for the divine (in her bio, she refers to "that sacred power that resides in all of us") while standing in front of a large cross on the sanctuary wall and between two enormous gold-lettered quotations from the New Testament, starting with "Jesus said unto them: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind.''

As she began the worship service, Parsa declared that "Sarah loved her Catholic faith,'' but that she also struggled with it. And then, she invited the congregation to recite what the minister described as the prayer of Sarah's tradition, the Lord's Prayer, and much of the congregation recited it from memory. The rest of the service included the ambiguous back-and-forth that characterizes so much of the real faith experience of many Americans -- an excerpt from Sarah's journal trying to make sense of the afterlife; several traditional Christian hymns referring directly to Jesus; a friend describing how Sarah had tried to interpret the resurrection of Jesus this past Easter, when she knew her own body was failing; a eulogy that began with an anecdote about St. Irenaeus, an early leader of the Christian church; and a benediction that began, "In the name of God's many expressions among us.''

Of course, many Americans live in an uncertain middle ground between blind faith and avowed atheism, and we see the tension between doubt and belief all around us in any candid conversation; it's just not all that often that I see it in church, and it was interesting to watch how one service illuminated head on the contradictions that characterize so many folks' faith experience.

(Photo, by David L. Ryan, Globe staff, shows First Parish in Milton on May 12, 2000, when the steeple was under repair.)

The past year has been an eventful one for Jewish-Catholic relations – there were controversies over the revival of an allegedly anti-Semitic Good Friday prayer and the lifting of the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop, and then there was the visit by Pope Benedict XVI to Israel. In the middle of it all was Mordechay Lewy, a longtime Israeli diplomat who serves as Israel's ambassador to the Holy See.

Lewy, who previously represented Israel in Germany, Sweden and Thailand, visited Boston this week, primarily to speak at a conference at Boston College, and I spoke with him Friday morning at his hotel in Newton.

Here are edited excerpts of our conversation:

Q: Why do relations with the Vatican matter?
A: We can not afford, as a Jewish state, and we can not afford as a Jewish people, to continue on after 1,900 years of bad experience, traumatic experience with the Christian world. Now, if we take the Christian world as a whole, it's quite an amorphic body. But at least if we have a well known structure, as the Catholic Church, with a top echelon of it in Vatican, I think that would be a missed opportunity not to get along with them as much as we can, knowing that we will not ever be able to come to terms on all aspects the questions which lie between us.

FULL ENTRY

In today's Globe, Rob Weisman has a story about the possibility that Caritas Christi Health Care, the Catholic hospital network founded by the Archdiocese of Boston, may purchase a struggling Rhode Island hospital, Landmark Medical Center in Woonsocket:

"Caritas Christi’s board has authorized its management to move forward with negotiations, according to three healthcare industry professionals who have been consulted about the prospective deal.

Officials at Caritas Christi and Landmark declined to confirm that a deal is close. “We have looked at Landmark Medical Center, as many others have, and have not yet decided whether we are interested in pursuing a relationship with them,’’ said Caritas Christi spokeswoman Teresa Prego. A merger would require Landmark to become a Catholic hospital."

Caritas oversees six hospitals in the Archdiocese of Boston and the Diocese of Fall River; a Landmark purchase would mark its first expansion out-of-state. Currently, there is one Catholic health care system in Rhode Island (the nation's most Catholic state), St. Joseph Health Services of Rhode Island, which includes a single hospital, Our Lady of Fatima in Providence.

"The Diocese of Providence is aware of discussions relative to Landmark Hospital in Woonsocket, however, specific details have not been made available,'' Michael Guilfoyle, the spokesman for the Providence Diocese, told me in an e-mail.

It's not immediately clear how Caritas, which has been struggling financially, would come up with the cash for the purchase, and today, on his blog, Paul Levy, the president and chief executive of Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Boston, wondered aloud about the intentions of Dr. Ralph de la Torre, the former Beth Israel physician who now heads Caritas Christi. Here's what Levy wrote:

"When he worked here, the current CEO of the Caritas Christi system would often look wistfully to the south and ask us to consider taking over the troubled Landmark Medical Center in Woonsocket. We put the kibosh on that idea faster that you can say, 'State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.'

Now, according to this Boston Globe story by Rob Weisman, he is pursuing the same plan. I think it's time for the SEIU to investigate this. After all, they are keen on increasing state aid to a financially troubled Massachusetts hospital in the Caritas system. They can't also be in favor of transferring those state funds and charitable assets to support a financially troubled system in another state.

What's the real play here? Perhaps it is the hope that cardiac surgery cases from Landmark would be referred to St. Elizabeth's Hospital, a Caritas subsidiary. How that would help Rhode Islanders is an interesting question. Would the Boston-based doctors and hospital be paid Massachusetts-level insurance rates, which are higher than Rhode Island's? How would Blue Cross of Rhode Island feel about that? Perhaps the doctors and hospital would be paid the lower-than-Boston-market Rhode Island rates? Would Rhode Island's Lifespan system stand by idly and watch this business leave their hospitals?

This is all too hard to understand. It seems to me that if you strap two leaky lifeboats together, they sink faster. Perhaps people could be more transparent about their intentions and hopes."

Meanwhile, Caritas's joint venture with Centene Corp., which Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley of Boston is seeking to modify in some unspecified way to address concerns raised by abortion opponents, is continuing to get some attention in the blogosphere. The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, a small organization that has been leading the charge against the Caritas venture, yesterday alleged that Caritas board members have given money to politicians who support abortion rights, prompting the American Life League's Shaun Kenney to declare, "The Archdiocese of Boston has another scandal on its hands. They are in danger of participating in state-sponsored abortion. It’s time Cardinal O’Malley put a stop to this travesty.”

Conservative blogger Carol McKinley has been posting a lot of commentary critical of O'Malley and Caritas for their handling of the venture. And Philip F. Lawler, a former editor of the Pilot, has written a critical history of the Caritas venture for Catholic World Report, where he is editor emeritus. An excerpt:

"The government contract will undoubtedly bring a critical infusion of revenue for the Caritas Christi system. The alliance with Centene Corporation in the CFHP may even lead to a successful sale of the troubled Caritas Christi system. But the apparent involvement of Catholic hospitals in a system that provides subsidized abortions—and the steadfast refusal of the Boston archdiocese to explain how that involvement could possibly be justified—is an astonishing setback for the culture of life. And it bears emphasis that this situation did not arise because the state government forced Caritas Christi into a morally untenable position; the Catholic agency deliberately sought to be involved."

Over at Beliefnet's Via Media blog, Amy Welborn, a popular conservative Catholic blogger, tries to wade through the complex maze of ethical questions involved. Welborn outlines the issues, but does not reach a conclusion:

"There are a couple of points to chew on: First, the argument that social justice demands that Catholic health care continue to exist in its present form, even if such existence requires provision of immoral procedures. Secondly, that the massive-business model centered around the acute care hospital may have to be abandoned by Catholic institutions, and this is not necessarily a bad thing. A third point, though...greed, and an enthusiastic, as opposed to reluctant, abandonment of Catholic principles on life."

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which is meeting this week in San Antonio, today called for immigration reform. The statement from Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, who is the president of the bishops' conference:

"On behalf of the United States Catholic Bishops, gathered in San Antonio, Texas, at our annual spring meeting, I would ask President Barack Obama and congressional leaders of both parties to work together to fashion and enact comprehensive immigration reform legislation before the end of the year.

It has been clear for years that the United States immigration system requires repair and that reform legislation should not be delayed.

We urge respect and observance of all just laws, and we do not approve or encourage the illegal entry of anyone into our country. From a humanitarian perspective, however, our fellow human beings, who migrate to support their families, continue to suffer at the hands of immigration policies that separate them from family members and drive them into remote parts of the American desert, sometimes to their deaths. This suffering should not continue.

Now is the time to address this pressing humanitarian issue which affects so many lives and undermines basic human dignity. Our society should no longer tolerate a status quo that perpetuates a permanent underclass of persons and benefits from their labor without offering them legal protections. As a moral matter, we must resolve the legal status of those who are here without proper documentation so that they can fully contribute their talents to our nation’s economic, social and spiritual well being.

Only through comprehensive reform can we restore the rule of law to our nation’s immigration system.

We urge President Obama and congressional leaders to meet as soon as possible to discuss and draft comprehensive immigration reform legislation, with the goal of making it law by the end of 2009. The Catholic bishops of our country stand ready to assist in this effort."

Pope Benedict XVI yesterday accepted the retirement of Archbishop Alfred Clifton Hughes, a West Roxbury native and former Boston auxiliary bishop, as the archbishop of New Orleans. (Bishops must offer to retire at 75, but the pope can leave them in place as long as he wants; Hughes is now 18 months past the big birthday.)

Hughes has had a pretty rough run in New Orleans, where the archdiocese was decimated by Hurricane Katrina, and where the archbishop decided he needed to close multiple parishes (and allow the arrest of some protesters in the process) because the Catholic population had dropped so precipitously. Hughes has also been criticized for his role as an aide to Cardinal Bernard F. Law in Boston during the period when abusive priests were being moved from parish to parish. This year he also drew headlines when he refused to attend the commencement at Xavier University because Donna Brazile, the Democratic political consultant and a Catholic who supports abortion rights, was being honored. Over at Whispers in the Loggia, Rocco Palmo sums up Hughes's time in New Orleans this way: "a prelate whose seven-year tenure proved unpopular in many quarters, both as a result of Hughes' history in the abuse-tarred Boston chancery over earlier decades and his more recent task of handling the 370,000-member archdiocese's need for post-storm adjustments."

The pope appointed Bishop Gregory Michael Aymond, a New Orleans native who had been overseeing the diocese of Austin, to replace Hughes. In its coverage of the transition, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports:

"At the news conference called to introduce the new archbishop, Hughes praised Aymond's skills and dedication to the church. But that done, he changed course, reflecting on his own eight tumultuous years in office -- years that included the Sept. 11 attacks, the clergy sex abuse scandal, Hurricane Katrina and the current economic downturn -- and asked forgiveness for his mistakes.

'I want publicly to express my sorrow and beg forgiveness for those who experienced continued hurt or also experienced anger,' he said. 'I have never wanted in any way to hurt anyone. Obviously, difficult decisions do hurt people in ways that we don't want.'"

The Times-Picayune has archived its coverage of Hughes's tenure here.

(Photo, by Essdras M. Suarez of the Globe staff, shows Archbishop Hughes (right) blessing environmental workers in New Orleans on Aug. 31, 2008.)

In yesterday's Globe, Kay Lazar and I had a story about the latest development in Caritas Christi's plans to participate in the state's effort to provide health insurance to nearly every resident of Massachusetts. Caritas has entered a joint venture with a non-Catholic health company, Centene Corp., and has become entangled in a complicated controversy over the morality of its participation in a system that, by state law, provides coverage for abortion services. Those services would not be provided at Catholic hospitals, but critics say any relationship between Caritas and abortion providers is unacceptable.

Here's the lede to the story about Caritas Christi and abortion in the Globe:

Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley, concerned about the relationship between Caritas Christi Health Care and an insurance plan that covers abortions, is seeking modifications to the joint venture that the beleaguered Catholic hospital chain has entered into with a St. Louis-based healthcare company to provide insurance to low-income Massachusetts residents.

O'Malley, who has been criticized by several conservative Catholic and antiabortion activists for his handling of the Caritas venture, issued a statement yesterday declaring that "under no circumstances" will Caritas provide or refer patients for procedures prohibited by Catholic teaching, which include abortion, contraception, and sterilization.

And the Archdiocese of Boston said publicly for the first time yesterday that Caritas would not be permitted to profit from the provision of abortion services by others.

The archdiocese would not specify the changes it is seeking to the joint venture, called CeltiCare, which is 49 percent owned by Caritas Christi.

But the church sought to clarify its requirements for the deal after a number of conservative bloggers and interest groups had recently criticized the venture, accusing O'Malley, often in quite angry language, of abandoning the church's commitment to protecting the unborn.

This week, many of the activists have seized upon, as evidence of the problematic nature of the venture, the new website of CeltiCare. The website specifies the copayments for abortions (from 0 to $100, depending on the plan), and lists family planning and reproductive service providers, including Planned Parenthood facilities in Boston, Somerville, and Worcester.

The president of Caritas Christi, Dr. Ralph de la Torre, issued a statement yesterday saying that individuals covered under the new venture will be told to talk to their insurance company if they seek abortions or other services prohibited by Catholic teaching.

"When a patient seeks such a procedure, Caritas healthcare professionals will be clear that (a) the hospital does not perform them and (b) the patient must turn to his or her insurer for further guidance," de la Torre said. "This, in fact, is the practice currently in place in the Caritas system as we work with other insurance companies under state laws that mandate access to procedures not provided within the Caritas system."

Here is a statement on the abortion issue from Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley, the archbishop of Boston, and Dr. Ralph de la Torre, the president of Caritas Christi.

Conservative critics of the deal are not mollified. The archdiocese expects to announce the final structure of the Caritas deal, and the cardinal's ruling as to whether it is acceptable, before July 1. The cardinal has the power to block the deal, but the archdiocese is hoping that will not be necessary, both because the cardinal wants Caritas to be able to participate in a system intended to extend health coverage to low-income people who could not previously afford it, and also because the arrangement would generate income for Caritas, which has been financially struggling.

In the Sunday Globe, I have a story about how the Rev. James A. Field and his congregation, the Parish of the Incarnation of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, are coping with Father Field's diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. I hope you'll take a look at the story, as well as the video, but I also wanted to share with you some photographs that two of the Globe's amazing photographers shot of Father Field.

Photographer Dina Rudick shot the Pentecost Mass last Sunday at the parish. The parish poses for a group photo at the end of Mass each Pentecost; here is an image of Father Field with his congregation on the parish steps:

This is Father Field, speaking from the pulpit:

FULL ENTRY

Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Boston, last night added his voice to others from the anti-abortion community condemning the killing of George Tiller, the late-term abortionist who was shot dead in the lobby of his Lutheran parish last Sunday. Here's what Cardinal O'Malley wrote in his blog about the Tiller murder:

"Before I come to the events of my week, I would like to address the killing of Kansas abortion physician Dr. George Tiller last Sunday.

This was indeed a tragedy on many different levels. Certainly it was tragedy for Dr. Tiller and his family, as well as and the fact that the violence took place in a Church — a place where people go to pray and to seek spiritual solace.

Obviously, this was the act of a very disturbed person and it is a tragedy for that man and his family, as well. All of those who are working in the pro-life movement are horrified by acts of this kind and repudiate the use of violence; it is in direct contradiction to what the pro-life movement must stand for.

We pray for healing in all of the communities that have been affected by this very tragic crime. We pray, as well, for the day when human life will be protected, at all stages, and that our country as a whole will reject the violence of abortion, the violence of capital punishment and the violence that results from the proliferation of arms in our population."

(Photo, by Michele McDonald of the Globe staff, shows Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley at an anti-abortion march in Boston on Oct. 5, 2008.)

I'm not much of a gardener, but last September I came home from the annual convention of the Religion Newswriters Association as the proud owner of two Pope John Paul II rose bushes that I somehow won at a silent auction to benefit starving religion writers (OK, it actually helped fund scholarships for writers to attend the conference).

The rosebushes, a hybrid tea rose developed by Jackson & Perkins in South Carolina, arrived a few weeks later in a long narrow cardboard box. I live in one of those classic Boston triple-deckers, and everyone else in the building is pretty serious about flowers and shrubs, so one day late last fall my neighbor Charlie (who works for the Episcopal Church, but doesn't seem offended by Romish roses) and I planted the rosebushes in an empty patch along the driveway that gets partial sun and has a fence that provides some shelter from the elements. It was pretty late in the year, but, as luck would have it, winter arrived even later, and the roses had a good month before the first hard freeze. Yuri, the orange-striped cat who lives upstairs, immediately took to the project, and began snoozing on the roots, which I imagined would help keep them warm.

When spring rolled around, there was a bit of a complication. Daffodils and daylilies and Solomon's Seal sprung up jungle-like, crowding the pontifical petals:

The rose bushes were completely hidden from view, and I began to worry whether the branches could make it through, so over Memorial Day weekend Charlie and I staged an intervention, ripping out all the other flowers in an effort to give the papal plants some room:

As it turns out, one of the bushes seems to be thriving (left); the other bush (right) is in serious trouble, and may be headed for that great greenhouse in the sky.

So now we wait, which I suppose is what gardeners do. The publicity material about the Pope John Paul II Commemorative Rose promises "grand stature and classic, pristine white blossoms (that) evoke the majesty and honor the memory of one of history's most beloved and influential leaders."

We shall see. In the meantime, do any of you gardeners out there have any advice? And, just in case we wind up with an empty spot, are there any other flowers named for religious leaders?

Andover Newton Theological School (right) this week announced that it is pursuing a possible merger with Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, prompting me to take a look at the variety of ways in which local theological schools are adapting to new economic and educational realities. Here's an excerpt from the story:

"The decision by Andover Newton follows several innovative arrangements by local theological schools facing financial or enrollment pressures.

In Cambridge, Episcopal Divinity School is in the midst of a new partnership with Lesley University, in which Lesley is purchasing seven buildings from EDS, the land is being governed cooperatively by the two schools, a joint library is about to be launched, and Lesley is taking over buildings and grounds, custodial services, and dining services for EDS. The two schools expect at some point to discuss academic cooperation.

In Brighton, Boston College has absorbed Weston Jesuit School of Theology, which had been located in Cambridge, and Boston College is also providing facilities assistance to St. John's Seminary, which is on land the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston recently sold to the university. In Newton, Andover Newton is already sharing maintenance staffs and some academic programming with Hebrew College, which is now having conversations with other potential partner institutions.

On the North Shore, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, an evangelical Protestant institution that is by far the largest local theological school, has adapted to the new climate by opening additional campuses in North Carolina, Jacksonville, Fla., and Roxbury and sharing faculty and administration among the campuses.

'When you have a fixed amount of money, are you going to spend it on gutters and downspouts or scholarships and scholars?' asked Nick Carter, president of Andover Newton. 'Folks are looking at the challenge of overhead versus the delivery of mission.'"

(Photo, by Wendy Maeda of the Globe staff, shows a building at Andover Newton on May 27, 2009.)

Alberto Cutié, the popular Catholic priest in Miami who was caught canoodling with his lady love, has now switched denominations to the Episcopal Church and plans to marry. The Miami Herald reports on the flight of "Father Oprah":

"Cutié was formally welcomed into the Episcopal Church in a small, private ceremony early Thursday afternoon at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, the church's South Florida headquarters in downtown Miami.

'I am continuing the call to spread God's love,' Cutié said after the ceremony, adding that he has gone through a 'deep spiritual and ideological struggle.'

In attendance at Trinity was Cutié's girlfriend, Ruhama Buni Canellis, 35, a divorced mother living in Miami Beach. It was the first public sighting of the couple since compromising photos appeared in a Mexican magazine early this month that led the telegenic cleric to take leave from his South Beach parish.

Cutié sat smiling beside Canellis during the half-hour ceremony. Deacons and former Catholic priests now in the Episcopal Church were by his side -- many notably accompanied by their wives.

Bishop Leo Frade, head of the Episcopal Diocese of Southeast Florida, officiated as Cutié and Canellis knelt in front of him to be received into the church.

'We recognize you as a member of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church; and we receive you into the fellowship of this communion. God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, bless, preserve and keep you. Amen,' Frade recited in Spanish.

At a news conference a few hours later, Archdiocese of Miami officials expressed disappointment in Cutié and had strong words for the Episcopal Church, especially Bishop Frade.

'This truly is a serious setback for ecumenical relations and cooperation between us,' Archbishop John C. Favalora said."

The blogosphere, not surprisingly, is having a field day.

Here's the Rev. James Martin, blogging at America magazine:

"What does this case have to do with the prospect of the church changing its position on priestly celibacy? Very little. Probably the most profound effect will be on members of Father Cutié's parish, as well as on the many Latino Catholics who followed his popular television show on Telemundo (and his radio show as well). But, contrary to what some commentators have been saying on the web and on TV, the departure of a single priest--no matter how popular or influential--from the Catholic Church is unlikely to make the church revamp its 1,000- (or 900- or 1,100- or 1,200- depending on what history you accept) -year-old rule."

At Episcopal Cafe, Jim Naughton has some misgivings:

"Anybody else have mixed feelings about this? One can oppose mandatory priestly celibacy and still feel uneasy about the Rev. Cutié jumping so quickly and publicly to new ministry in a new church after being caught in the act of breaking his ordination vows. No?"

And Rod Dreher, at Beliefnet, also is uneasy:

"That his new bishop received him without the catechumen period, and not only that but has scheduled him to preach at the cathedral on Sunday, reflects poorly not only on Cutié, but on the Episcopal bishop. Showboaters."

Your thoughts?

(Photo, by Al Diaz/AP, shows Rev. Alberto Cutié, center, and his girlfriend, Ruhama Buni Canellis, second left, at Trinity Cathedral in downtown Miami on Thursday, May 28, 2009. At second right is Bishop Shopleo Frade and his wife, Diana Frade.)

The White House tonight announced that President Obama is nominating Miguel H. Díaz (right), a Catholic theologian from Minnesota, as ambassador to the Holy See. Here's the White House bio for Díaz:

"Dr. Miguel Díaz is a Professor of Theology at St. John's University and the College of Saint Benedict in Minnesota. He is the co-editor of the book 'From the Heart of Our People: Explorations in Catholic Systematic Theology' and author of 'On Being Human: U.S. Hispanic and Rahnerian Perspectives,' named 'Best Book of the Year' by the Hispanic Theological Initiative at Princeton Theological Seminary. Dr. Díaz taught Religious Studies and Theology at Barry University, the University of Dayton and the University of Notre Dame. From 2001 to 2003, he taught and served as Academic Dean at St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary in Boynton Beach, Florida. He is a Board Member of the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA) and Past President of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the United States (ACHTUS). Dr. Díaz holds a B.A. from St. Thomas University and a M.A. and PhD in Theology from the University of Notre Dame."

The College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University, where Díaz teaches, has posted more detail in a news release, and says that Díaz's academic interests are "the Trinity, theological anthropology and Latino/a theologies."

Early analysis from Mark Silk at Trinity College in Hartford:

"For starters, with Sotomayor this makes for a serious one-two punch with Latinos. It's very interesting that he's a theologian rather than your basic Catholic pol or lawyer type. He served on Obama's Catholic Advisory Board during the campaign, which puts him firmly in the Kmiec camp. This strikes me as the shrewdest of moves, and one that will cause no end of teeth-grinding on the Catholic right, including the likes of Archbishop Burke. But we await learned commentary from his co-religionists.

Update: Turns out Diaz is a consultant to Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good. Big win for social-justice, common-ground Catholics.

Exegesis: Catholic conservatives would be free to rail against a pro-Obama Catholic politician. 'Not a real Catholic,' etc. A pro-Obama Catholic theologian who teaches at a major seminary, well, that's a different story. And the fact that he's a Latino working on issues in Hispanic theology, at a time where we're experiencing the Latinization of the American Catholic Church--that's a ten-strike."

And from Chris Korzen, executive director of Catholics United, a liberal-leaning group:

"Catholics United is thrilled to learn that Dr. Miguel Diaz has been nominated as U.S. ambassador to the Holy See. Dr. Diaz is a devout Catholic, a respected theologian, a leader in the Catholic Latino community, and a dedicated husband and father of four children. We have full confidence that he will serve our nation well and we invite all Catholics to join us in celebrating this historic nomination."

Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, the liberal organization to which Díaz serves as a theological consultant, said:

"Professor Díaz has always connected his impressive body of academic scholarship and intellectual rigor with an unwavering commitment to living out the social justice tenets of our faith. Professor Díaz has been an invaluable source of support and theological insight for our organization and the broader Catholic social justice community. Our nation could have no better representative to the Holy See than Professor Díaz. This is a proud day for the Alliance and all Catholics dedicated to the common good."

Two Bostonians have recently served in the position of ambassador to the Holy See -- Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon, and former Boston Mayor Raymond L. Flynn.

(Photo courtesy of the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University.)

In this morning's Globe, I have a story about the efforts by the Archdiocese of Boston to restore its clergy pension system. The lede:

"The Archdiocese of Boston, facing a clergy pension system that will run out of money in 2011 without a financial rescue, is now taking its first concrete steps to limit benefits and raise revenue to shore up the fund.

Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley has mailed to all priests a legalistic 17-page 'decree of promulgation' that is raising concerns among some sick priests because it says that they will receive only 60 percent of their stipend, in addition to their healthcare coverage, if they are on health leave. Also in some cases it will require them to submit medical and tax documents to the archdiocese in order to 'demonstrate need.'

The policy also requires priests on health leave for more than six months to seek state and federal government assistance, such as Social Security Disability Insurance, which is a break from past practice.

The policy affects only the 40 priests who are currently 'unassigned' because they are sick, disabled, or on a leave of absence, but it signals the archdiocese's willingness to make difficult and unpopular decisions as it attempts to address its most serious financial challenge."

Judge Sonia Sotomayor has much to distinguish her, but one element of her biography stands out in the world of those interested in religion and the public square: she is Catholic, and, if approved as a Supreme Court justice, she will be the sixth Catholic on the nine-member court. That is a remarkable accomplishment for American Catholics, who make up 23 percent of the nation's population, and will now potentially hold 67 percent of the high court's seats. Two of the justices are Jewish; the resignation of Justice David Souter, who is an Episcopalian, will leave, amazingly given the history of this nation, just one Protestant on the Supreme Court, 89-year-old Justice John Paul Stevens.

Undoubtedly, Sotomayor's Catholic-ness will be the subject of some debate. Just how Catholic is she? Steven Waldman, blogging at Beliefnet, quotes a White House official saying, "Judge Sotomayor was raised as a Catholic and attends church for family celebrations and other important events."

David Gibson, also at Beliefnet, suggests there may be a strategic reason for Sotomayor to downplay her faith affiliation:

"The (awful) question will now be, what KIND of Catholic is she? She is divorced, without kids. Heck, she may want to downplay her practice of the faith as that will be a huge target--and it's easy to guess who'll be lobbing most of the heavy ordinance."

And Cathy Lynn Grossman, blogging for USA Today, makes a similar prediction:

"Next up: Expect her nomination to re-ignite the ongoing Catholic blogosphere wars over who is Catholic enough. If confirmed, Sotomayor, who grew up in Catholic schools in the Bronx, would be the sixth Catholic on the high court. It may be that her life experiences will align her with the social justice issues pushed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on race, poverty, immigration and economic issues. But for some outspoken Catholics, the 'life' issues -- abortion, family planning, so-called 'conscience clauses' for health workers, embryonic stem cell research and end-of-life choices -- are the litmus test."

Over at GetReligion, Terry Mattingly wonders why the word "Catholic" is not more a part of the early press coverage, and asks if that would be different if Sotomayor were a known opponent of abortion rights:

"Her life story will be a big part of the upcoming mini-debates about her appointment. Here is my question: If she was a pro-life woman, from a Hispanic background, do you think that the word 'Catholic' would be appearing higher in these early (I repeat, EARLY) reports about her life and work? Just saying."

What does it matter if Sotomayor is Catholic? Jacqui Salmon, blogging for the Washington Post, suggests perhaps not much, at least as far as judicial decisionmaking is concerned:

"Experts have been split on what the Catholic majority has meant so far. They point out that Catholics on the bench historically have spanned the spectrum from liberal to conservative. Dennis J. Hutchinson, a court historian at the University of Chicago, noted in 2005 that one of the most liberal Supreme Court justices of the 20th century, William J. Brennan, was a Catholic, and so is one of the most conservative, Scalia."

Manya Brachear, blogging for the Chicago Tribune, tackles the same question, and comes to the same conclusion, although also pointing out the symbolic significance:

"Cathleen Kaveny, law professor at the University of Notre Dame, said a sixth Catholic in the High Court would illustrate how entrenched the church has become in the U.S. A sixth Catholic with views like Sotomayor's also would put the American church’s diversity on display. 'My guess is she’s very much operating in accordance with the commitments of the Catholic social justice tradition which is emphasizing … inclusion, solidarity, justice to those least among us,' Kaveny said. 'It’s strand of American Catholic teaching that is somewhat distinct from other Catholic teaching but not incompatible. People emphasize different aspects.'"

Catholic groups are just now beginning to react to the nomination. Catholics United, a liberal group, reacted positively, and said, "We call on other leaders within the Catholic community to join us in welcoming Judge Sotomayor's nomination and to approach her confirmation hearings with civility and reason." I haven't heard yet from conservative Catholic groups, but in general the reaction from the right has been critical. Ted Olsen, blogging at Christianity Today, reviews the early statements and headlines his post, "Pro-Life Group Consensus on Sotomayor: 'Activist'."

Meanwhile, one thing that struck me in President Obama's remarks about Sotomayor this morning was the language he used to describe the role of Catholic schools in offering children a path out of poverty. This is what he said:

"When Sonia was nine, her father passed away. And her mother worked six days a week as a nurse to provide for Sonia and her brother...But Sonia's mom bought the only set of encyclopedias in the neighborhood, sent her children to a Catholic school called Cardinal Spellman out of the belief that with a good education here in America all things are possible."

(Photo, by Jim Young/Reuters, shows Judge Sonia Sotomayor talking with President Obama at the White House this morning, May 26, 2009.)

"Angels & Demons" was not a great film (my brother, in California, declared, "it was terrible, but at least it was long and expensive'') but I have to say that the one saving grace for me was the production design -- the lovingly vivid portrayal of Rome, and in particular the Vatican's sumptuous interiors and elaborate vestments. I've been covering religion long enough that I've been to Vatican City multiple times, and I've visited most of the buildings depicted in the film. Some of the events in the movie -- particularly the elaborate funeral for a pope and the crowds gathered in St. Peter's Square to watch for the election of a new one -- I witnessed in real life back in 2005, and the re-creations struck me as spot on. Other moments, such as the destruction of the dead pope's ring and the voting by cardinals gathered in conclave in the Sistine Chapel, I've had to visualize based on written descriptions, and it was fascinating to see the filmmakers' imaginings of those scenes.

The filmmakers were barred by the Vatican from shooting on church property. But they weren't totally banned from Rome -- in particular, they actually filmed at Castel St. Angelo -- once a papal fortress and now a museum, as well as in the famous Piazza del Popolo and Piazza Navona. Watching Tom Hanks et al. scurry across the Ponte Sant'Angelo, the pedestrian bridge that leads from the city center to the fortress, reminded me that that bridge, which is lined with statues of angels, is a favorite site of Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley, who led reporters from Boston on a walking tour of the bridge in 2006, when many of us traveled to Rome to cover O'Malley's elevation to cardinal. (O'Malley has another connection to the film -- his titular church, Santa Maria della Vittoria, is the site of a key scene; I wrote a story about Cardinal O'Malley's take on Angels & Demons and his titular church.)

Many of the other locations depicted in the film were re-created in Los Angeles. Large replicas of St. Peter’s Square and Piazza Navona were constructed in the parking lot of the Hollywood Park racetrack; the studio also re-created the Sistine Chapel, the Pantheon, Castel Sant’Angelo, as well as the artworks of Michelangelo and Bernini featured in the film. Some of the places depicted -- such as the Vatican archives -- I've never seen, and I have no idea how closely the film reflects reality, but I have to say that the depiction of the places I have been, like the apostolic palace, looked pretty good, even if they weren't exact facsimiles.

Several critics have also admired this feature of the film. A.O. Scott, reviewing "Angels & Demons" for the New York Times, writes:

"As an exercise in extreme mass-market tourism 'Angels & Demons' gives pretty good value. Unable to shoot in the Vatican itself, Mr. (Ron) Howard (the director) and his team have deftly blended actual Roman locations with Hollywood stage sets and C.G.I. confections to make a dreamy, ephemeral Eternal City.

The costume and production design — all those red cardinals’ robes swirling dervishlike in the incense-tinted light, those sensuous Bernini sculptures and soundless library stacks — nearly steal the movie from the bland, dogged heroes."

In Variety, Todd McCarthy writes:

"If, as reported, the production shot in Rome for only two weeks, it sure doesn't show; pic is saturated with local atmosphere, evidently achieved through expert location lensing combined with wizardly sleight-of-hand in the visual effects and production design, especially in the climactic section set in St. Peter's Square. Dark exterior scenes accurately reflect the low lighting levels of much of nocturnal Rome."

Did you see the film? What did you think?

(UPDATE: The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has now posted a surprisingly nuanced review of "Angels & Demons,'' declaring the film to be "highly improbable but mindlessly entertaining.'' The bishops' review also notes the visuals, saying, "Ironically - given Howard's location filming restrictions - Vatican City looks quite splendid, with majestic aerial shots while the Hollywood recreations of St. Peter's Square, the Sistine Chapel and other locales are, as noted by L’Osservatore Romano, 'magnificent.'")

(Photo by Zade Rosenthal/Columbia Pictures.)

Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley of Boston yesterday ordained six new priests for the Archdiocese of Boston. Globe reporter Meghan Irons was there, and filed a story about the ordinations. An excerpt:

"Between greeting guests and offering his first blessings as a priest, the Rev. Shawn P. Carey took a moment yesterday to soak it all in.

'It's a miracle,' said Carey, who was ordained with five other men at Boston's Cathedral of the Holy Cross.

He is one of only 11 deaf men in the nation to be ordained a priest, and he could hardly contain his joy.

'It's been a long journey for me as a deaf seminarian and a deaf man,' he said through a sign-language interpreter. 'And becoming a priest - I never thought it would come this fast.'

Carey, who attended high schools in Northampton and Springfield, was drawn to the priesthood as a teenager and attended seminary after he graduated from Providence College. 'It was overwhelming,' he said of his struggles. 'But it was overwhelmingly joyous.'

Hundreds came to celebrate as Carey and a diverse mix of seminarians were ordained in a two-hour ceremony. A choir sang in Vietnamese, and part of the church was reserved for scores of people from the deaf community who came to celebrate with Carey.

In a stirring homily, Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley highlighted the mix of the group - a deaf man, a Vietnamese refugee, a widower, a Spaniard, an Irish immigrant, and a man in his second career.

'A century ago in this cathedral, there would have been 50 men, but those huge ordination processes did not begin to reflect the diversity of . . . today's class,' O'Malley said. 'This is a microcosm of the church today.'"

The archdiocese published brief biographies of the six new priests. And the Globe previously profiled Shawn Carey in 2007.

(Photos by Wendy Maeda/Globe staff, show the ordination ceremony at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston, 5/23/09.)

The Globe magazine section this weekend has a feature about contemporary consecrated virgins, women who promise "perpetual virginity" and dedicate themselves to Jesus and prayer. An excerpt:

"Consecrated virgins have existed in the Catholic Church longer than nuns. The tradition died out around the ninth century but has made a comeback after the Second Vatican Council, or Vatican II, in the 1960s emphasized the idea that everyone is called to holiness. Women who join the Order of Virgins feel called to Christ, much like a priest or a nun does. And, as with priests and nuns, the Catholic Church recognizes consecrated virginity as a distinct vocation. Unlike nuns, however, consecrated virgins don't take a vow of poverty. Instead, they live in their own homes and support themselves by working in jobs outside the church. Like (Kathy) Reda (the consecrated virgin featured in this story), they are women who are inspired to make a public commitment to Jesus. They dedicate much of their free time to prayer, including reciting the thrice-daily Liturgy of the Hours, and volunteer work.

There are about 250 consecrated virgins in the United States and about 3,000 worldwide -- the Boston Archdiocese is home to 13 of them. The vocation even has its own membership organization, the United States Association of Consecrated Virgins, which holds conferences and provides information to members and prospective members. But the church does not actively recruit women to consecrated virginity -- in fact, many Catholics say they have never heard of the Order of Virgins. But the church says interest may be on the rise. "The number of women inquiring about it is increasing," says Sister Marian Batho, O'Malley's liaison for the religious communities of the archdiocese. Batho says the membership organization has helped build awareness, and that bishops have also played a role. "As bishops come to understand it, they can encourage women to listen carefully to see if God is calling them to this vocation," she says. Those who wish to join the order "are women who have never been married or lived in open violation of chastity," says Batho. The church doesn't require any proof of virginity -- a woman's character determines her eligibility. She can be admitted into the vocation by her local bishop and must work with a spiritual director before and after her consecration."

As it happens, the Archdiocese of Boston last week held a Mass for the local consecrated virgins, prompting Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley to blog about consecrated virgins yesterday:

"Last Thursday, we celebrated Mass with the consecrated virgins in the archdiocese. The Mass was offered for Jane Claire Forte, a consecrated virgin who passed away recently.

Boston has one of the larger groups of consecrated virgins in the United States. This ancient order in the Church was restored after the Second Vatican Council and sought women who consecrate themselves in celibacy to a deeper life of prayer and service in the Church.

Certainly, in today’s world, the witness of the consecrated virgins is more needed than ever. We are very grateful for the women who have come forward and discerned this specific vocation in their lives. Sister Marian Batho, our delegate for consecrated life in the archdiocese, has been very good at helping us to prepare women for this vocation."

A much awaited report on abuse at Catholic institutions in Ireland was released today by the government-sponsored Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse.

The conclusions are shocking, even given how much has been revealed in recent years about sexual abuse of minors:

"Physical and emotional abuse and neglect were features of the institutions. Sexual abuse occurred in many of them, particularly boys’ institutions. Schools were run in a severe, regimented manner that imposed unreasonable and oppressive discipline on children and even on staff."

The report, according to the Associated Press, concerns conditions at "Ireland's austere network of industrial schools, reformatories, orphanages and hostels from the 1930s until the last church-run facilities shut in the 1990s." The schools, according to the AP, housed "more than 30,000 children deemed to be petty thieves, truants or from dysfunctional families -- a category that often included unmarried mothers.''

Here are the conclusions on sexual abuse:

• "Sexual abuse was endemic in boys’ institutions. The situation in girls’ institutions was different. Although girls were subjected to predatory sexual abuse by male employees or visitors or in outside placements, sexual abuse was not systemic in girls’ schools.

• "It is impossible to determine the full extent of sexual abuse committed in boys’ schools. The schools investigated revealed a substantial level of sexual abuse of boys in care that extended over a range from improper touching and fondling to rape with violence. Perpetrators of abuse were able to operate undetected for long periods at the core of institutions.

• "Cases of sexual abuse were managed with a view to minimising the risk of public disclosure and consequent damage to the institution and the Congregation. This policy resulted in the protection of the perpetrator. When lay people were discovered to have sexually abused, they were generally reported to the Gardai. When a member of a Congregation was found to be abusing, it was dealt with internally and was not reported to the Gardaí.

"The damage to the children affected and the danger to others were disregarded. The difference in treatment of lay and religious abusers points to an awareness on the part of Congregational authorities of the seriousness of the offence, yet there was a reluctance to confront religious who offended in this way. The desire to protect the reputation of the Congregation and institution was paramount. Congregations asserted that knowledge of sexual abuse was not available in society at the time and that it was seen as a moral failing on the part of the Brother or priest. This assertion, however, ignores the fact that sexual abuse of children was a criminal offence.

FULL ENTRY

For those of you who love Catholic vestments, check out this photo of Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley, the archbishop of Boston, at yesterday's commencement ceremony at Boston College. The cardinal, a Franciscan Capuchin friar whose preferred garb is the brown hooded habit and sandals of his order, here is shown wearing a silk ferraiolo, which is an ecclesiastical cape used for solemn nonliturgical events, like formal dinners and academic convocations. The ferraiolo is over the cardinal's simar, or house cassock, a black wool garment trimmed in scarlet (because O'Malley is a cardinal). The photo was taken by Pat Greenhouse of the Globe staff; the cardinal is shown entering the commencement ceremony with the Rev. T. Frank Kennedy, the rector of the Jesuit community at BC.

The JP Gazette is reporting that efforts by parents to save the Our Lady of Lourdes School have failed, meaning the last Catholic school in Jamaica Plain will close next month. An excerpt from the JP Gazette story about Our Lady of Lourdes School:

"An attempt by parents to raise $500,000 to save Our Lady of Lourdes (OLOL) School fell far short of that goal, sealing the fate of Jamaica Plain’s last Catholic school.

“We understand that this is disappointing news for those who worked so hard to keep Our Lady of Lourdes School open,” said Boston Archdiocese spokesperson Terry Donilon in a written statement, confirming that the school will close forever in June. “But the reality is that because of declining enrollment and mounting financial pressures it simply is not possible to reopen in the fall.”

Church officials shocked parents early this year with the surprise announcement that the century-old school was so financially shaky it would have to shut down after this school year. Officials had known about the financial problems for about five months, but had not told parents or alumni. Outraged parents demanded and got the chance to save the school for at least one more year by raising half-a-million dollars by the end of April.

But the parents’ Save OLOL campaign raised only $150,000, parent Colleen Scanlan reported in a letter to a church official that she also sent to the Gazette. Scanlan said another donor had pledged to give $200,000 per year, and that a college had pledged to provide two free teachers.

Donilon said that closure plans are under way. OLOL students have been guaranteed seats in other Catholic schools."

I asked Donilon this morning if he wanted to add anything to the story -- here's what he said:

"We know this is not easy for the students and families of Our Lady of Lourdes School. We also know that there are many opportunities for families to continue educating their children in Catholic schools. The closing of Our Lady of Lourdes School does not diminish the Church's commitment to Catholic education. The task ahead for us is to see to it that we provide a smooth transition for the students, families, teachers and staff as the school year draws to a close."

The 97-year-old school had 187 pupils this year. The Globe had a story about the planned closing of Our Lady of Lourdes School in January.

UPDATE: The Parent Committee to Save OLOL has posted on its web site a letter about the latest turn of events:

FULL ENTRY

Here is the text of the speech by Notre Dame's president, the Rev. John I. Jenkins, introducing President Obama at today's commencement, and reflecting on the associated controversy:

"President Obama, Fr. Hesburgh, Judge Noonan, Members of the Board of Trustees, Members of the faculty, staff, alumni, friends, parents, and most of all – the Notre Dame Class of 2009:

Several autumns ago, you came to Notre Dame from home….now Notre Dame has become home. And it always will be. For home is not where you live. Home is where you belong. You will always belong – and I pray you will always feel you belong – here at Notre Dame.

You are … ND.

In my four years as President of your University – I have found that even among those who did not go to Notre Dame, even among those who do not share the Catholic faith, there is a special expectation, a special hope, for what Notre Dame can accomplish in the world. They hope that Notre Dame will be one of the great universities in the nation, but they also hope that it will send forth graduates who -- grounded in deep moral values -- can help solve the world’s toughest problems.

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A few observations on the commencement ceremony now wrapping up at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend:

• President Obama was given an enormously enthusiastic welcome by the crowd. The one time I heard a heckler erupt (I was watching the webcast) he was drowned out by cheers. Obama was repeatedly given ovations and applause.

• The Rev. John I. Jenkins, president of the university, devoted almost the entirety of his introduction to a passionate and forceful defense of the university's decision to invite Obama to give the address, and to grant him an honorary degree. He lamented the tone of the debate, saying to the graduates, "The world you enter today is torn by division – and is fixed on its differences," and that "too often differences lead to pride in self and contempt for others.'' He rued what he said was the demonization of others in American culture, and referred to "hateful divisions" among human beings.

• Jenkins, who has faced criticism from dozens of bishops and hundreds of thousands of lay Catholics for allowing an abortion-rights supporting president to be honored at a Catholic university, praised Obama for agreeing to speak despite the substantive disagreement and the ensuing controversy. Jenkins said, "President Obama has come to Notre Dame, though he knows well that we are fully supportive of Church teaching on the sanctity of human life, and we oppose his policies on abortion and embryonic stem cell research."

Then, he added, "Others might have avoided this venue for that reason, but President Obama is not someone who stops talking to those who differ with him.'' And Jenkins outlined a series of reasons for honoring Obama, mentioning his positions on education and health care and foreign relations and war, as well as his accomplishment in becoming the first African-American president of the United States.

• Obama spoke for about 31 minutes, drawing repeated applause, even for saying, simply, "I am honored to be here today.'' Then, noting that "I know it has not been without controversy,'' Obama addressed at some length the tension in American culture over the abortion issue. He said that, "Those who speak out against stem cell research may be rooted in admirable conviction about the sacredness of life, but so are the parents of a child with juvenile diabetes who are convinced that their son’s or daughter’s hardships can be relieved." And, on abortion, he outlined a series of steps that he said the two sides should agree on, including reducing the number of women seeking abortions, reducing unintended pregnancies, making adoption more available, and providing "care and support for women who do carry their children to term.'' He also indicated that he is open to "a sensible conscience clause" for health care workers, suggesting that he is open to compromise on that front.

• Obama also said the abortion issue is not likely to go away. "The fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable,'' he said.

• Obama paid striking homage to two Catholic icons, the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago, who he said he encountered as a community organizer working in Catholic-sponsored groups in Chicago, and the former Notre Dame president, Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, who will turn 92 this week, and who Obama praised for his role in the civil rights movement. In turn, Notre Dame gave Obama a framed photograph of Hesburgh and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., holding hands and singing "We Shall Overcome" at a civil rights event.

Here is the full text of Obama's remarks, as released by the White House:

FULL ENTRY

As the pope travelled through Jordan over the weekend, a reader e-mailed to call my attention an interesting local angle: the Jesuit Center of Amman is staffed by priests from the Boston area. Today, I finally connected via e-mail with the Rev. Kevin G. O'Connell, a 70-year-old Jesuit priest from Roslindale who now serves as pastor of an English-language parish in Amman, Sacred Heart, that ministers largely to Filipino domestic workers for affluent Jordanians. I asked Father O'Connell whether he had met the pope, and although he hadn't, he said he got pretty close:

"On Sunday, at the Papal Mass, I was in the crowd within perhaps ten feet of him as he entered the stadium, & I was even a bit closer as he processed out. I had the impression that our eyes met for a fleeting second as he passed, but I'm sure he had no impression of me! Anyway, it was good to be part of the Mass & to facilitate the active participation of many parishioners. It was a moving & encouraging experience, & I found the Pope's homily at the Mass very supportive to all who were there."

Father O'Connell (right) is one of four Jesuits at the Jesuit Center in Amman; the others are veterans of the New England Province mission in Iraq, from which the Jesuits had been expelled. The community's superior is the Rev. Alfred Hicks, a Needham native and former principal of Nativity Prep in Roxbury; also there is the Rev. Denis Como, from Pride's Crossing, who once directed the Chinese Catholic Center in Boston, and the Rev. Clarence Burby, a Baghdad native who ministers to Iraqi refugees in Jordan. O'Connell is an alumnus of BC High and Boston College, has a doctorate from Harvard, and studied theology and then taught at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology. He was ordained by Boston's Cardinal Richard J. Cushing in 1969.

Here's his e-mail to me about the pope's visit:

"Local Christians were pretty excited about the Pope's visit, especially in the last couple of weeks before he arrived. It was a BIG event for a relatively small country like Jordan, & especially for the tiny local Catholic Church.

There are perhaps 80-90 thousand native Jordanian Catholics, more or less evenly divided between Melkites or Byzantine Catholics (called "Roum Katolik" here because of their affinity to the Eastern Roman Empire at Byzantium) & what we Westerners know as Roman Catholics (called "Latine Katolik" here because our roots are in the Latin Catholic Patriarchate of Jerusalem, begun by the Crusaders & re-established by Pope Pius IX in the mid-1800s), & around 35-38 thousand expatriate Catholics (perhaps 23-26 thousand of the 28-30 thousand Filipino workers here, another 8-10 thousand of the 35-38 thousand Sri Lankan workers here, perhaps 5-8 thousand of the few hundred thousand Iraqi refugees still here, & smaller numbers from many other countries). There are also around 90,000 Orthodox Christians in Jordan, as well as small numbers of Protestants from various denominations.

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Miami is abuzz over the plight of one Father Cutié (no kidding -- Father Cutie, with an accent) -- the hunky and popular pastor of a South Beach parish who was photographed bare-chested and cuddling with a woman on the sunny sands of Florida. The Rev. Alberto Cutié is no ordinary priest -- he was a friend of celebrities, a frequent television commentator, and the popular author of a book, "Real Life, Real Love,'' whose subject matter earned him the moniker "Padre Oprah." His downfall is now attracting more attention than his smile, with the predictable debate ensuing over the viability of mandatory celibacy for priests.

The Miami Herald conducted a poll, and found broad support for the priest:

"Days after the Rev. Alberto Cutié admitted he had a romantic relationship with a woman, an overwhelming number of Miami-Dade Catholics still view him favorably, a poll conducted for The Miami Herald found.

Nearly 80 percent of those polled had a favorable view of Cutié, with 10 percent saying they looked at him unfavorably.

...A substantial majority -- 74 percent -- of those surveyed, including Hispanics and non-Hispanics, oppose the Roman Catholic Church's prohibition of priests marrying or having any type of sexual relations. Only 22 percent said they supported the prohibition, while 4 percent said they were unsure or gave no answer."

Not so fast, blogs Thomas Peters at American Papist:

"Of course, the answer to violating the vows of celibacy ... is to observe the vows of celibacy. Not to toss them out! That's why the public improprieties of Fr. Cutié constitute such a grave scandal - they diminish the witness of the Church to the world.

Yes, we ought to pray for Fr. Cutié, but let's also re-double our prayers for the noble young men (and women) who are faithfully living lives of celibacy as they study to become priests (and professed women religious).

Let us also pray for those who have already taken on the vow of celibacy that they remain faithful to it and thereby provide the world with a wonderful (and so needed) witness!"

Father Cutié has acknowledged the relationship in several interviews:

"'Falling in love is not something that I chose to do. It's something I have been struggling with for a long time,' Cutié told The Miami Herald Friday, at the end of a week of seclusion, prayer and tough talks with Miami Archbishop John Favalora and other church leaders.

But now those telling snapshots are out there, the priest -- a star of radio and TV talk shows -- is offering the kind of plain language that has been the cornerstone of his popularity with millions of Spanish-speaking fans across the United States and Latin America.

He says he wants to get married and start a family."

Today, he spoke on The Early Show on CBS:

(Photo above, by Tony Gutierrez/AP, shows the Rev. Alberto Cutié preaching in 1999 in Miami Beach.)

Pope Benedict XVI today arrived in Israel for a much-anticipated visit after four days in Jordan. He immediately touched on the two major issues looming over the trip, addressing the Middle East conflict by expressing his support for an independent Palestinian state and addressing strain in Jewish-Catholic relations with a visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.

In today's Globe, columnist James Carroll reflects on the trip:

"Abstracting from the complications of Pope Benedict's own record of omni-directional religious insult, his role as a living emblem of what remains of Christendom, the generating core of Western Civilization, is enough to give his journey to Jerusalem special gravity. As the head of a church that has earnestly grappled with its legacy of anti-Semitism, yet understands how that legacy infects the air to this day, he can represent to Arabs the urgency of purging their own attitudes of its ongoing effect. Anti-Semitism no more. The popes who sent wave upon wave of crusaders to Jerusalem have been reversed only in recent years, and Benedict surely longs to continue that reversal. Crusades no more. As the Vicar of Christ in whose name so many colonial adventures were launched, he can stand repentantly with Palestinians who refuse to be treated as a colonized people. Colonialism no more. As the ultimate European, in the ultimate world city, he can acknowledge the new condition of human survival - that it belongs as a right not just to the "superior races," but to all.

However inhibited by strictures of institution or imagination, Benedict is a man of good will. Yet his role transcends his person. A symbolic figure on pilgrimage to a symbolic place, he has opportunities to heal ancient and modern wounds. So we wish him well."

The pope's trip to Jordan went quite smoothly, but over at the National Catholic Reporter, John L. Allen Jr. reports that there is already disappointment with the pope's remarks today in Israel:

"Pope Benedict XVI has long been a figure who draws mixed reactions, with many admiring his clarity and intellectual depth, and others turned off by his traditionalism and occasional lack of a popular touch.

The pontiff's keenly anticipated visit today to Yad Vashem, the main Israeli Holocaust memorial, is likely to become another chapter in Benedict's mixed reviews. Some are likely to see it as a stirring poetic meditation on memory and justice, while others will probably be more struck what the pope didn't say than what he did.

For one thing, there's no explicit expression of regret for Christian anti-Semitism, no allusion to the role that currents of thought within Christianity about Jews and Judaism may have played in preparing the soil for the Holocaust."

Of course, the trip is just getting underway. Tomorrow the pope is scheduled to visit the Western Wall and Temple Mount -- the holy sites of Judaism and Islam. Then he is to spend Wednesday in Bethlehem, Thursday in Nazareth and Friday at Christian sites in Jerusalem before returning to Rome. (One factoid I find amazing: Israel is deploying 80,000 people to provide security for the papal visit.)

The Vatican is posting the texts of the pope's remarks throughout his trip here.

(Photos, by Uriel Sinai/Getty, show the pope at Yad Vashem today, 5/11/09.)

For the last several weeks, as my friends in the media have circled the Globe in a sometimes sympathetic and sometimes eager death watch, I have found myself wondering whether I was the only one curious about what Cardinal Bernard F. Law must be thinking.

It's now been 17 years since that spring day when Law, frustrated by the news media's intensive coverage of a former priest, James R. Porter, who was a serial pedophile, called for divine intervention. In one of the most famous lines Law ever uttered, he said, while speaking at a Roxbury church, "By all means we call down God's power on the media, particularly the Globe."

In the years since, that quote has been twisted (I often hear people say that Law called down the "wrath of God" on the Globe) and, Law argued, misinterpreted (he later claimed that "power" was a relatively benign word). Here's an exchange Law had with attorney Eric MacLeish about the 1992 remark in a 2002 deposition:

Q: Do you remember saying those words, words like that?

A. I don't remember saying words like that, but, you know, calling down God's power is not calling down God's wrath.

Q. I'm not suggesting it is.

A. Yes. And I don't think that would be a bad thing to do, even today, to call down God's power on the news media, including even the Globe, yes. I think that would be good.

I think what Law meant at the time was that he wanted God to influence the Globe, but it's been widely interpreted as Law seeking to punish the paper, and now, with our cash-strapped corporate parent, The New York Times Company, threatening to shut us down if we don't slash spending, apparently I'm not the only one recalling that quotation.

The inestimable Rocco Palmo, blogging over at Whispers in the Loggia, revels in the irony for all it's worth (including the fact that the supposedly make-or-break negotiations are taking place at a Catholic parish in Weymouth (one that, by the way, is rich with metaphoric potential -- it burned to the ground a few years back (act of God?) but had good insurance (miracle?) and has now been rebuilt (reborn?)). Here's Rocco:

"In 1992, Cardinal Bernard Law famously called down "the power of God" on the Boston media, "particularly the Globe," over its dogged coverage of the region's first public case of a predator priest.

Nine years later, the paper's "courageous, comprehensive" reporting on abuse in the Beantown church itself opened the floodgates of the most devastating scandal American Catholicism had ever known, paving the way to Law's resignation in disgrace and earning the broadsheet the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

These days, however, in the direst sign of the state of newspapers everywhere, it's the 137 year-old Globe that faces the ax, with its owner demanding $20 million in union concessions and negotiations continuing past a midnight deadline at -- of all places -- a suburban parish.''

I have to say I've had lots of kind e-mail from Catholics and other religious folks saying they're praying that the Globe will survive, or just thinking caringly about those of us who work here. But of course my blog, like others around Boston.com, has had its share of comments from people who claim they just can't wait for us to die (but first they want to post one more observation....). And although all the archdiocesan leaders I've spoken with, including Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley, have been sympathetic, at least one church employee is not so sure -- Domenico Bettinelli, who works in fundraising for the archdiocese, blogged:

"Perhaps the Globe outpaced the populace and went further left faster than the people could be brought along. Oh sure, the glitterati and the politicians that the Globe is supposed to cover have all come out of the woodwork to lament the possible loss of the newspaper. But the people have been voting with their pocketbooks for years, dropping their subscriptions to the newspaper with every bizarre anti-Bush screed or anti-Catholic editorial cartoon. Herald columnist Howie Carr has gleefully filled up not one but two recent columns full of the Globe's follies, including some shoddy reporting in which the desire to advance a liberal cause resulted in retractions because they just didn't get the story right. After a while, the people began to notice.

Will it be the end of the world if the Globe shutters its doors? Competition is always better for the consumer, so I'd prefer two healthy competitors in this market to one, even if the one I prefer was the winner. On the other hand, if the business can't offer a product that the consumer wants, then let another take his place."

And even my former colleague, David Warsh, gets into the act, delivering what strikes me as an outrageous kick-when-down to the Globe:

"The pedophile priest story reflected a familiar tactic in building newspaper circulation. Newspapers are often described as an essentially two-sided market, meaning that both readers and advertisers each pay a share, but there is a significant third side to newspaper markets as well, a non-pecuniary one that influences readers' and advertisers' willingness to pay for the product. This is the realm of peer opinion in the newspaper industry, reflected in prizes, medals and general reputation. There is always some risk when seeking the good opinion of the profession of seeming to appeal over the heads of readers...It is hard to evaluate what the vigor of the Globe's pursuit of the story of the church's tolerance of sexual abuse by priests cost the paper in good will."

I don't actually believe the Globe is going to close, and, if it does, I don't believe our coverage of clergy sexual abuse will have had anything to do with it -- our problems are financial, and they are shared by all kinds of papers with all kinds of journalistic histories -- and I find it slightly shocking that a blog about economics would even suggest otherwise. I also think it's kind of insane, and insulting, to imply that the abuse story was aimed "over the heads of readers" -- I've never been involved with any story that provoked more engagement and reaction from readers, or one that readers said was more significant to their own lives. But whatever one thinks, the story has clearly become a defining part of the paper's history -- I noticed in an NECN story about the Globe's past yesterday that sex abuse and busing were the only two stories mentioned -- and, whatever our future holds, it will be part of our legacy.

(Photo by Stephan Savoia/AP.)

The Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life last week reported a finding that at first blush is stunning: the more often one attends religious services, the more likely one is to say that the use of torture against suspected terrorists is at least sometimes justified. And white evangelical Protestants are the most likely subgroup to offer at least some support for torture, while those who are not affiliated with a religious denomination are the least likely.

Here's the graphic from Pew:

The finding has occasioned, not surprisingly, quite a bit of discussion. Andrew Sullivan, in a post headlined "Jesus Wept,'' calls the result "terribly depressing,'' and writes:

"So Christian devotion correlates with approval for absolute evil in America. And people wonder why atheism is gaining in this country.''

Over at Christianity Today, David Neff blogged:

"The immediate impression is that religion — especially religion characterized by active commitment — makes people bloodthirsty. Or something like that. What can we say about this picture? First, the survey is probably accurate. Other studies have shown similar results...Second, there is (as there always is) a gap between leadership beliefs and grassroots attitudes...The key leaders of most evangelical denominations and parachurch organizations have gone on the record against the use of torture."

Neff, who is editor-in-chief of the Christianity Today Media Group, goes on to argue that evangelicals should be against torture always, despite the "Does it work?" debate:

"Utilitarian ethics tends to weigh the magnitude of a potential good against its costs (the greatest good for the greatest number). But evangelicals have been eager to reject utilitarian ethics when addressing other issues — embryonic stem-cell research and population-control programs, for example. Even if embryonic stem-cell research turned out to be the best way to cure Parkinson’s disease, most evangelicals would oppose it, just as we would oppose abortion even if it were shown to reduce, say, food insecurity. By the same token, even if torture produced reliable information about terrorist activity, we should reject it. We are people of principle. Our principles were historically at the root of human rights action and the development of the Red Cross and the Geneva Conventions, and any number of other moral crusades that put principle above utilitarianism. Our principles should now motivate us to lead the world in rejecting torture of any human being, for any reason."

At Spiritual Politics, Mark Silk observes:

"The real point here is that moral issues are tied into a whole array of ethical and political values and commitments. Explaining a particular position on a particular issue at a particular time according to religious identity or commitment is a complicated undertaking. One thing should, however, be clear. In this regard there are few if any slippery moral slopes. The oft-cited claim by the pro-life community that support for abortion rights leads individuals and communities inevitably into moral squalor cannot be sustained--certainly not when it comes to opposition to torture. The most anti-torture element in American society--the Nones--is also the most pro-choice."

Of course, the other element that I don't see discussed anywhere is simply partisanship. Evangelicals, and frequent churchgoers, are more likely to vote Republican; it was a Republican presidential administration, of George W. Bush, that allowed interrogation practices many have now concluded constituted torture; and the debate over torture today is, in some ways, a proxy for a debate over the conduct of the Bush administration. It seems to me it might be difficult in survey research to disentangle attitudes toward torture from attitudes toward the Bush Administration's legacy in general, and response to terrorism in particular.

BRAINTREE -- The Archdiocese of Boston is continuing its slow but steady progress digging out of a deep financial hole triggered by the clergy sexual abuse crisis, but is still facing an enormous challenge in the form of a pension fund for retired priests that will run out of money in two years without major change, church officials are announcing today.

The archdiocese, for the fourth year in a row offering the public a detailed look at the finances of the region's largest religious institution, today is releasing the annual financial reports for the central administration and, in aggregate, the 292 parishes, as well as for more than 60 other Catholic organizations, including schools, hospitals, cemeteries and social service agencies, overseen by Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley. For the first time, the archdiocese also is releasing individual financial reports for 102 parishes; a significant step toward fulfilling O'Malley's delayed goal of reporting every parish's finances publicly each year.

Archdiocesan officials said they were heartened that contributions to parishes rose 4 percent in fiscal 2008, and the archdiocesan annual fundraising campaign slightly surpassed its $15 million goal. And they said that indications are that contributions are holding steady this year, despite the recession.

"The continued generosity of the parishioners in the Archdiocese of Boston, despite very challenging times, is inspirational,'' said the Rev. Richard M. Erikson, the archdiocesan vicar general. And Erikson credited the archdiocese's financial officials with transforming "a diocese that was in economic freefall" to one that he described as now "in the midst of a major turnaround financially, and in many other ways.''

The archdiocese is hoping to balance its budget by fiscal 2010, which begins this July 1.The deficit in fiscal 2008 for its central administration was $4 million, which the archdiocese said was a decrease from about a $15 million annual deficit when O'Malley first arrived in Boston.

The reports are rich with detail about many aspects of the Catholic Church's complex financial situation, but perhaps the numbers that will most raise eyebrows among the public are the salaries the archdiocese is now paying the new employees O'Malley has brought in as he attempts to modernize and professionalize the church administration: the new superintendent of Catholic schools, Mary Grassa O'Neill, is being paid $325,000, and the new general counsel, F. Beirne Lovely Jr., is being paid $300,000. Two other top officials, chancellor James P. McDonough and development director Scot Landry, are being paid $250,000 each.

Erikson noted that the highest salary is for the church's top education official, which, he said, reflects the archdiocese's priority on strengthening its struggling schools. And, he said, the salaries generally reflect the cardinal's decision to recruit experienced laypeople to help transform an oft-criticized church administration.

"The salaries we have are an indication of the cardinal's commitment to attracting the most talented and gifted people we can find to serve in the church,'' he said.

The reports also reveal that the archdiocese's new headquarters, in Braintree, was valued at $25 million when it was given to the archdiocese, in a complex transaction, by one of the archdiocese's biggest donors, Thomas J. Flatley, who died shortly thereafter. The archdiocese spent $8 million renovating, furnishing, and equipping the building -- money that came from a portion of the proceeds from selling the church's former headquarters, in Brighton, to Boston College.

"We see the pastoral center as an investment in the future of the archdiocese," Erikson said, noting that the building, which houses 225 employees formerly spread across six different structures, is already being heavily used by a variety of groups for training sessions and other kinds of church meetings. He also said the building's chapel is proving a draw, saying that about 100 people attended daily Mass there during Lent.

The report is largely backward looking, reflecting on the fiscal year that ended in June 2008. But it also includes several predictive comments that shed light on how the archdiocese is being affected by the economy, and what its concerns are going forward. Among the projections is a grim forecast for the troubled Catholic schools of the region: the archdiocese expects enrollment at its parish elementary schools to drop by 4 percent next year, and at the few remaining parish high schools to drop by 9 percent.

The archdiocese, which recently assigned a single priest to oversee three parishes in Dorchester in what it said could be a model for how to handle the dwindling number of priests, suggests in the report that some parishes should now begin to share employees such as business managers.

"It is critical that parishes begin collaborating and sharing staff and costs whenever possible,'' McDonough wrote in the report. "Going forward, parishes will need to plan for increased payrolls, as more lay staff will be needed for operational responsibilities previously handled by clergy or religious.''

The economy really began to tank after the fiscal year covered by the report, but the archdiocese says in supporting documents that it has been affected in several ways by the recession and the stock market collapse. O'Malley, in a letter that accompanies the report, says the archdiocese is seeing "an unprecedented number of requests for services for the poor and those who find themselves in a never expected circumstance of need.'' And the report indicates that a pooled investment fund for many Massachusetts Catholic institutions, including the archdiocese, lost 18 percent of its value between July of 2008 and March of 2009.

The church investment fund appears to have significantly outperformed the broader market -- it lost 6.4 percent in fiscal 2008, a period when the Standard & Poor's 500 index dropped 13 percent, and it lost 15.8 percent in the first half of fiscal 2009, when the S&P dropped 29 percent. McDonough attributed the church's success to a combination of fortune and skill -- the church's fund had minimal investments in financial services and limited exposure to the sub-prime mortgage market, and also had a relatively high amount of cash, rather than stock, when the steepest market declines began..

As has been the case for several years, the archdiocese says its biggest financial problem is the weak health of the funds it sets aside to care for disabled and retired priests; the funds are short $114 million. The church's historic handling of those funds, which were largely built based on contributions made by churchgoing Catholics at Easter and Christmas, has been angrily questioned by both priests and laypeople, some of whom suspect that the money was mishandled, and others of whom question to what degree the funds were used to quietly support priests accused of sexual abuse over the years. McDonough has commissioned an investigation of how the funds were handled over their 27-year-history, and has pledged to release it in June or July; he said this week that thus far there is no indication of any criminal misconduct.

McDonough said that, in order to shore up the funds, the archdiocese will need to increase revenues and reduce expenses. He said the archdiocese will take several steps to raise money for the funds -- the party-shy cardinal has agreed to headline a gala benefit this year, pegged to the 25th anniversary of his becoming a bishop, that will raise money for the fund, the archdiocese will add a third annual collection, each June, to supplement the Easter and Christmas collections, and the archdiocese will launch a major gifts campaign to benefit retired priests. The archdiocese, chastened by the furious reaction from priests and the public to an earlier proposal to cut clergy retirement benefits, has also held multiple meetings with priests to discuss proposed changes to benefits and housing; church official say they plan to roll out those changes over time, but pledge that retired priests will be well cared for.

UPDATE: Here is the story about the archdiocesan finances that appears in the 5/1/09 Globe.

(Photo above, by Matthew J. Lee of the Globe staff, shows Richard Mawson installing stained glass windows in the chapel at the Archdiocese of Boston's new pastoral center in Braintree on 7/31/08.)

President Obama last night was sort of asked about the controversy over his scheduled commencement address and honorary degree at the University of Notre Dame, and he sort of answered. The exchange:

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. In a couple of weeks, you're going to be giving the commencement at Notre Dame. And, as you know, this has caused a lot of controversy among Catholics who are opposed to your position on abortion.

As a candidate, you vowed that one of the very things you wanted to do was sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which, as you know, would eliminate federal, state and local restrictions on abortion. And at one point in the campaign when asked about abortion and life, you said that it was above -- quote, "above my pay grade."

Now that you've been president for 100 days, obviously, your pay grade is a little higher than when you were a senator.

Do you still hope that Congress quickly sends you the Freedom of Choice Act so you can sign it?

OBAMA: You know, the -- my view on -- on abortion, I think, has been very consistent. I think abortion is a moral issue and an ethical issue.

I think that those who are pro-choice make a mistake when they -- if they suggest -- and I don't want to create straw men here, but I think there are some who suggest that this is simply an issue about women's freedom and that there's no other considerations. I think, look, this is an issue that people have to wrestle with and families and individual women have to wrestle with.

The reason I'm pro-choice is because I don't think women take that -- that position casually. I think that they struggle with these decisions each and every day. And I think they are in a better position to make these decisions ultimately than members of Congress or a president of the United States, in consultation with their families, with their doctors, with their doctors, with their clergy.

So -- so that has been my consistent position. The other thing that I said consistently during the campaign is I would like to reduce the number of unwanted presidencies that result in women feeling compelled to get an abortion, or at least considering getting an abortion, particularly if we can reduce the number of teen pregnancies, which has started to spike up again.

And so I've got a task force within the Domestic Policy Council in the West Wing of the White House that is working with groups both in the pro-choice camp and in the pro-life camp, to see if we can arrive at some consensus on that.

Now, the Freedom of Choice Act is not highest legislative priority. I believe that women should have the right to choose. But I think that the most important thing we can do to tamp down some of the anger surrounding this issue is to focus on those areas that we can agree on. And that's -- that's where I'm going to focus.

(Photo, by Charles Dharapak/AP, shows President Obama walking down the Cross Hall before the start of a news conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington on 4/29/09. )

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops today issued an advisory urging priests and other eucharistic ministers to be sure to wash before distributing Communion, and encouraged sick people to refrain from taking Communion from a cup. But the bishops stopped short of imposing a nationwide ban on handshakes or embraces during the kiss of peace at Mass, or a nationwide ban on the use of shared chalices.

Here is the news release from the bishops:

"The U.S. bishops’ Committee on Divine Worship has posted on the Web a series of 10 questions and answers related to participation at Mass during the time of the swine influenza (swine flu).

The information echoes that published in 2006 at the time of the avian (bird) flu and was developed in conjunction with the U.S. Center for Disease Control.

The 10 questions and answers can be found at http://usccb.org/liturgy/swineflu.shtml

Previously, the Q&A noted, “in those localities where the outbreak of the disease has been the most significant, bishops have introduced several liturgical adaptations in regard to such practices as the distribution of Holy Communion and the Exchange of the Sign of Peace in order to limit the spread of contagion.”

The Q&A also re-emphasized “the need to practice good hygiene” now.

“Ministers of Holy Communion should be encouraged to wash their hands before Mass begins, or even to use an alcohol based anti-bacterial solution before and after distributing Holy Communion.”

The Q&A added that priest, deacons and extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion ministers “should instruct people who feel ill not to receive from the cup.”

The Q&A also noted that “the need for the introduction of widespread liturgical adaptations for the prevention of the transmission of influenza in the diocese of the United States of America is not evident at this time.”

The bishops' full swine flu Q&A is here.

The Archdiocese of Boston has sent the bishops' advisory to all of its employees.

(Photo, by Joe Raedle/Getty, shows people wearing surgical masks to help prevent being infected with the swine flu as they shop in a grocery store in Mexico City today, 4/29/09.)

Globe reporter Jenna Russell spent some time this afternoon with Jack Sullivan, the longtime Plymouth District Court clerk magistrate who says that he experienced a miraculous healing after praying for the help of the late Cardinal John Henry Newman. Here's her dispatch:

"MARSHFIELD _ Lying in a hospital bed after surgery on his spine, unable to walk and in agonizing pain, Jack Sullivan propped himself up on elbows and prayed.

Not to some vast, unknowable God, but to a specific figure in the Catholic church, vastly respected, yet mortal: Cardinal John Henry Newman, an Englishman who died in 1890.

The healing, as Sullivan tells it, was almost immediate. He felt a tingling all over, was flooded with warmth, and, as easy as that, he could walk.

Now, the recovery that Sullivan, 70, has been describing for almost a decade, a drama that unfolded in August 2001, is on the verge of being deemed a miracle by the Catholic church, and the unassuming Marshfield man, a church deacon and father of three, is at the center of an accelerating campaign to make the late British cardinal a saint.

A panel of theologians, convened by the branch of the Vatican that investigates possible miracles, has concluded that Sullivan's recovery resulted from his prayer, the London Telegraph newspaper reported. A panel of doctors previously researched his claim and found no medical explanation for what happened, Sullivan said. The final decision to bestow miracle status rests with Pope Benedict XVI. If that status is given, as expected, it would lead to beatification for Newman, the last step before canonization, or sainthood.

For Sullivan, who has remained pain-free since his prayers were answered, and who has lately been busy fertilizing his rose garden and celebrating his 40th wedding anniversary, the Vatican finding confirms what he has long believed.

He said his most striking memory of that summer day eight years ago is the wave of well-being that swept over him as he prayed in his hospital bed.

'The most important thing was the sense of exuberance I felt, exuberance and confidence that all would be well, all would be rosy, and a tremendous happiness,' Sullivan said yesterday. 'I got up and walked all over the place, twisting my cane like Charlie Chaplin.'"

The Globe's Charlie Radin took a look at Sullivan's role in the sainthood tribunal in a 2005 story.

The Catholic blogosphere has been fascinated by the Newman sainthood cause, and this latest development is attracting considerable attention.

Here's the Rev. James Martin, blogging at America magazine:

"Newman would make a fascinating and somewhat controversial modern saint: On the one hand, he is beloved by traditional Catholics (among them Pope Benedict XVI) for the moving story of his conversion from Anglicanism, his "theology of conscience," as well as his elegant apologias for the Catholic faith. But he is also loved by progressive Catholics for his ideas on the "development of doctrine." And, ironically, many Catholics suspicious of clericalism often quote this prince of the church who quipped, "Who are the laity? I answered that the church would look foolish without them.")

And not long ago, in preparation for his beatification, church officials attempted to unearth his remains in order to "transfer" them to a place more appropriate for public veneration but found little left. (Something quite the opposite of the tradition of the "incorruptible" saint.) The exhumation proved controversial since Newman had explicitly asked to be buried next to his lifelong friend, Ambrose St. John. "As far as this world was concerned, I was his first and last...he was my earthly light," Newman wrote. As a result, he is somewhat beloved among the gay community as well, who claim him as one of their own.

Newman: favorite of traditionalists, progressives, anti-clericalists and gays? It's a bit like the quest for the historical Jesus. Which Jesus you're looking for depends a great deal on what you're looking for. Stay tuned for the controversy over the historical Newman."

(Photos, by Debee Tlumacki for the Globe, show Sullivan at his Marshfield home. In the photo at top, he is holding a photo of Cardinal Newman.)

America, the Jesuit weekly, says it is time for the Catholic church to discuss allowing priests to marry. "Silence and fervent prayer for vocations are no longer adequate responses to the priest shortage in the United States,'' the magazine writes in an editorial. "For making do within the limits set by present demographic trends presents a double threat to Catholic life: Catholic communities will become only infrequent eucharistic communities, or eucharistic communities will be severed from the pastoral care and public witness of priests." An excerpt:

"Married priests already minister in the Catholic Church, both East and West. Addressing the married clergy of the Eastern Catholic churches, the Second Vatican Council exhorted “all those who have received the priesthood in the married state to persevere in their holy vocation and continue to devote their lives fully and generously to the flock entrusted to their care” (Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests,” No. 16). That exhortation now applies to the more than 100 former Anglican priests and Lutheran ministers who have entered the Catholic Church, been ordained and now serve in the Latin rite. As we face the challenges of the priest shortage, some of the more than 16,000 permanent deacons in the United States, many of them married, who experience a call to priestly ministry might be called to ordination with a similarly adapted discipline. In addition, the views and desires of some of the more than 25,000 priests who have been laicized (and are now either single or married) should also be heard.

Our plea is modest. The bishops of the United States should take greater leadership in openly discussing the priest shortage and its possible remedies. These should not be conversations in which we face a problem only to find every new avenue of solution closed. Rather, they should be exchanges fully open to the possibilities offered by the Spirit.

In March, Cardinal Edward Egan, the newly retired archbishop of New York, said in a candid moment that the topic of married priests “is a perfectly legitimate discussion.” He added, “I think it should be looked at.” The cardinal later nuanced his statement, but the need for a creative re-visioning of priestly life to sustain the eucharistic life of the church in its fullest sense can no longer be delayed."

Your thoughts?

Breaking news in the controversy over the University of Notre Dame's decision to grant an honorary degree to President Barack Obama: Harvard Law Professor Mary Ann Glendon has decided to decline the university's prestigious Laetare Medal, which was to be awarded at the same commencement ceremony.

Here is the letter Glendon, who was the Bush Administration's final ambassador to the Holy See, sent this morning to Notre Dame President the Rev. John I. Jenkins:

"Dear Father Jenkins,

When you informed me in December 2008 that I had been selected to receive Notre Dame's Laetare Medal, I was profoundly moved. I treasure the memory of receiving an honorary degree from Notre Dame in 1996, and I have always felt honored that the commencement speech I gave that year was included in the anthology of Notre Dame's most memorable commencement speeches. So I immediately began working on an acceptance speech that I hoped would be worthy of the occasion, of the honor of the medal, and of your students and faculty.

Last month, when you called to tell me that the commencement speech was to be given by President Obama, I mentioned to you that I would have to rewrite my speech. Over the ensuing weeks, the task that once seemed so delightful has been complicated by a number of factors.

First, as a longtime Consultant to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, I could not help but be dismayed by the news that Notre Dame also planned to award the President an honorary degree. This, as you must know, was in disregard of the U.S. Bishops’ express request of 2004 that Catholic institutions "should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles" and that such persons "should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions." That request, which in no way seeks to control or interfere with an institution's freedom to invite and engage in serious debate with whomever it wishes, seems to me so reasonable that I am at a loss to understand why a Catholic university should disrespect it.

Then I learned that "talking points" issued by Notre Dame in response to widespread criticism of its decision included two statements implying that my acceptance speech would somehow balance the event:

"President Obama won't be doing all the talking. Mary Ann Glendon, the former US Ambassador to the Vatican, will be speaking as the recipient of the Laetare Medal."

"We think having the President come to Notre Dame, see our graduates, meet our leaders, and hear a talk from Mary Ann Glendon is a good thing for the President and for the causes we care about."

A commencement, however, is supposed to be a joyous day for the graduates and their families. It is not the right place, nor is a brief acceptance speech the right vehicle, for engagement with the very serious problems raised by Notre Dame's decision--in disregard of the settled position of the U.S. Bishops--to honor a prominent and uncompromising opponent of the Church's position on issues involving fundamental principles of justice.

Finally, with recent news reports that other Catholic schools are similarly choosing to disregard the Bishops' guidelines, I am concerned that Notre Dame’s example could have an unfortunate ripple effect.

It is with great sadness, therefore, that I have concluded that I cannot accept the Laetare Medal or participate in the May 17 graduation ceremony.

In order to avoid the inevitable speculation about the reasons for my decision, I will release this letter to the press, but I do not plan to make any further comment on the matter at this time.

Yours very truly,

Mary Ann Glendon"

And here is a statement from Father Jenkins:

“We are, of course, disappointed that Professor Glendon has made this decision. It is our intention to award the Laetare Medal to another deserving recipient, and we will make that announcement as soon as possible.”

(Photo by Tanit Sakakini for The Boston Globe.)

Americans are changing their religious affiliations at unprecedented rates, but Catholics are much more likely to cite concerns about their religion as a reason for leaving than are Protestants, who more often cite changing life circumstances.

The churn within American religion -- about half of American adults have changed their faith affiliation at some point -- was one of the key findings of a major study released last year by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life; today, the Pew Forum is releasing a new study that attempts to explore the reasons why Americans change denominations or religions, or, increasingly, drop out of institutional religion altogether.

Among the most striking findings are that most people who change their religious affiliation leave the denomination in which they were raised by age 24, and many change religious affiliation more than once. And the study found that the growing population of unaffiliated Americans are more disenchanted with institutionalized religion than with the idea of God.

But the differences between Catholics and Protestants are also significant, suggesting that Catholics who become alienated from their church often leave, whereas Protestants have the option of simply switching denominations.

"Protestants show a lot of interdenominational mobility, in part because there are a lot of Protestant groups,'' said John C. Green, a political science professor at the University of Akron. "Among Catholics, there is much less scope for mobility within the denomination, and a larger number ended up leaving.''

The study finds that about half of former Catholics cite religious and moral beliefs as the reason they left the Catholic church. About four in 10 former Protestants who became unaffiliated offer a similar explanation, but among Protestants who simply switch denominations, the main reasons are concerns about particular religious institutions, and life cycle changes such as marriage.

Pew last year released the eyepopping estimate that one in ten Americans is now a former Catholic -- about half of the former Catholics are now Protestants, and about half are now unaffiliated. But the new study suggests that the sexual abuse crisis played at most a minor role in the decision of Catholics to leave -- only two percent of former Catholics who are now unaffiliated volunteered the abuse scandal as the main reason they are no longer Catholic; when prompted by an interviewer, 27 percent said concern about the abuse scandal was a factor in their departure. Former Catholics who are now unaffiliated often said they left because of disagreements with the Catholic church over homosexuality, abortion, birth control, or gender; former Catholics who are now evangelical often say they stopped believing Catholic teachings and are concerned with the Catholic church's teachings about the Bible, while former Catholics who are now mainline Protestants most often say they changed because of marrying a non-Catholic or because they didn't like their priest.

"The sex abuse crisis is nowhere near being among the most important factors explaining why people have left the church,'' said Mark M. Gray, director of the Catholic Poll at Georgetown's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. Gray noted that many Catholics who became Protestants cited not one of the culture war issues, but teachings about the Bible.

"Clearly, there's a need to try to connect with youth, because a big portion of the people you're losing are teenagers and in their early 20s, and there's a need to reach out to them in terms of spiritual needs not being met,'' Gray said.

Susan Spilecki, a 41-year-old English teacher from Brighton who was a lifelong and active Catholic until entering the Episcopal church last year, didn't even mention the sexual abuse crisis when describing her transition.

"For my first 20 years, it wouldn't even have occurred to me, no matter how bad it was, that I could change -- being Catholic was just what you were,'' she said. But then, she said, she encountered other Christians in college, she had growing concerns about the church's teachings on contraception, homosexuality, and the ordination of women, she grew tired of explaining why she remained in the Catholic church, and her parish, in Boston's Symphony neighborhood, was closed by the archdiocese. Finally, she decided she wanted to study theology, and concluded that, "as a female, and therefore unordainable, Roman Catholic, who also disagreed with a lot of teachings,'' it was time for a change.

In the Episcopal churches where she worships -- the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Boston and All Saints Parish in Brookline, "I've met more disenfranchised Catholics, and Unitarians who discovered Jesus, then cradle Episcopalians."

Despite the departures of Catholics from the faith, the overall Catholic population in the U.S. has remained stable because of immigration.

"Long-term, what this means is that the face of the Catholic Church is going to change dramatically over time,'' Green said. "There is likely to be continued erosion by Catholics of European background, and the church is going to be increasingly populated by Hispanics and Asians who are immigrating to the US.''

Among Protestants denomination switching is quite common, and is often triggered by marriage or by a family's move from one community to another.

"A lot of the switching is intra-Protestant switching, and I think at this point that's not even switching -- hardly anyone knows the difference between a Lutheran and an Episcopalian, or even a Methodist and a Baptist,'' said Stephen Prothero, a professor of religion at Boston University. "Lutherans hardly know anything about Luther, and Methodists hardly know anything about Wesley, and they don't care. We live in a postdenominational time.''

Kyle Thureen, a 26-year-old software engineer from Burlington, was raised in a Lutheran church in Minnesota and now attends the evangelical Grace Chapel in Lexington.

"The name on the front of the church is less important than what does the church believe, and how do they live that out,'' Thureen said. "The bottom line is, I would describe myself as a Christian.''

And Susan Stewart, a 44-year-old church worker in Arlington, had been affiliated throughout her life with American Baptist Churches congregations, but then joined a United Methodist church because it had better programming for children. Her husband was raised in the Catholic church.

"We looked around at a bunch of places, and Calvary United Methodist is within walking distance of our house, it was a neighborhood congregation, and there were a reasonable number of children when we started going there,'' she said. "Neither one of us had any experience with a United Methodist congregation, but originally the denomination did not particularly matter to us. In some ways, we were starting fresh together.''

The study also explores the growing ranks of the unaffiliated -- about 16 percent of American adults, according to Pew. The study finds many of the unaffiliated cite objections to religious people or religious institutions as the reason for leaving organized religion; few cited unbelief. And about one third of the unaffiliated say they are still open to finding the right religion.

"In American Christianity, you see a lot of talk about how vibrant it is, and how people are moving in, but there's also a huge open back door that they must be leaving out of,'' said D. Michael Lindsay, an assistant professor of sociology at Rice University. "It's not so much that science disproves religion, so people abandon their faith, it's more like a gradual drifting away, and a number of unaffiliated folks end up coming back and getting involved.''

In addition to the Globe graphics above, here is a cool flash graphic from Pew.

Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley of Boston this weekend blogs about the upcoming May 15 release of "Angels & Demons," the movie version of the bestselling Dan Brown novel, which features a particularly gruesome killing (above) of a cardinal in a Roman church, Santa Maria della Vittoria, which is now O'Malley's titular church in Rome. (All cardinals are assigned a church in Rome which they are responsible for protecting, financially and spiritually.) I had talked to O'Malley about the connection between his church and the novel back in 2006; here's what he has to say this weekend in his blog:

"I understand that a movie based on Brown’s book Angels and Demons is about to premier. Portions of the plot take place in my titular church in Rome.

I read the book a few years ago and I didn’t find it a great piece of literature. The ending is a kind of a “deus ex machina” and, although it does not present a favorable picture of the Church, in my recollection is not as damaging as The Da Vinci Code, which calls into question the basic tenets of Christianity — Jesus’ divinity and the divine origins of the Church.

I understand that “The Da Vinci Code” was not a successful movie and this one will probably not be very successful either, but Dan Brown’s books were very profitable.

But “The Da Vinci Code” was a particularly virulent attack on the Church filled with many untruths that underscores the need for our Catholics to be more informed about their faith and the history of the Church.

The story line of “Angels and Demons,” I’m sure, will underscore many of the interesting architectural and artistic aspects of the city of Rome, including my own Church, Santa Maria della Vittoria, which has one of the finest statues in Rome: the Bernini statue of “The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa” (at left).

I always joked that I wanted to bring that statue back to Boston, but the Carmelite friars who run my church told me that Napoleon tried to take it to Paris and not even he was able to. They also tell me that they get a lot of tourists coming to the church because it is on the Angels and Demons tour of Rome. But, apparently, the director of the film was refused admission into the Church (although I’m sure they will still do something to replicate it in the film)."

(Photo above, by Zade Rosenthal/Sony Pictures, shows the scene that in the book takes place in O'Malley's titular church, Santa Maria della Vittoria; it's not clear where this scene was staged because the filmmakers were barred from shooting inside the actual church. Photo at left, of the famous Bernini statue in the actual church, was taken by David Ryan of the Globe staff; you can see other photos David Ryan shot of the real-life church here.)

Boston College's Church in the 21st Century Center has pulled together a series of thematic essays reflecting on Catholicism in Boston over the two centuries since the Archdiocese of Boston was established. The essays are collected in a new book, "Two Centuries of Faith: The Influence of Catholicism on Boston, 1808-2008,'' edited by university historian Thomas H. O'Connor. The book is not a comprehensive history of the archdiocese, but rather takes a look at several aspects of the development of the archdiocese, from the French influences on its beginnings, to the role of women and minorities in its ranks, to the role of Catholicism in Boston politics, social services, education and literature.

BC held an event Tuesday to present a copy of the book to Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley, the archbishop of Boston; the authors and a variety of faculty and students gathered in the Irish Room at BC's Gasson Hall, under a giant stained glass window of St. Patrick, the patron saint of the archdiocese.

O'Connor, offering the gathering an overview of the book, provocatively suggested that in some ways, the archdiocese of today resembles the archdiocese of 200 years ago, with fewer Catholics and fewer priests than it enjoyed during the triumphalist decades of the early 20th Century.

In the book, one of the contributors, the Rev. William T. Schmidt, pastor of St. Patrick Church in Stoneham, offers a sober look at the history of parish life in the archdiocese, observing that the sexual abuse scandal caused a "crisis of confidence and trust in the leadership of the Catholic Church" and saying "the long-term impact of this crisis is still unknown.''

"The parishes of the Archdiocese of Boston are facing extraordinary struggles, disappointments, and challenges at the beginning of Boston's third centenary. Sunday Mass attendance on the part of Boston Catholics has dropped precipitously from more than 70 percent of baptized Catholics during the halcyon days of the 1940s and 1950s to less than 25 percent today. This depleted participation at Sunday Mass is certainly reflective of continuing anger over the clergy sex abuse scandal. It is also refelctive of some deep distress with the closure of parishes. It would be inaccurate, however, to attribute the depleted numbers at Sunday Mass to these issues alone. There has indeed been a steady erosion of Sunday Mass attendance since the 1970s that is reflective of sweeping changes within the church and society.''

The last word in the book goes to BC history professor James M. O'Toole, who looks back at the bishops of Boston, and then looks ahead:

"For the foreseeable future, the institution of the church will continue to shrink, and the number of priests and sisters will become steadily smaller. Even as new forms of lay ministry expand, the reconfiguration of the institutions and agencies of the church will have to be accomplished cooperatively. For their part, lay people are eager to participate in this process of seeking new ways of 'being the church.' As time puts distance between ourselves and the events of the scandal, it seems increasingly significant that large numbers of Catholics did not simply abandon the church. That they stayed with it, even amid the heartbreaking scandal, evinces a desire to remain faithful members of the church. That commonality of faith has sustained them for the last two hundred years and will be essential for the next century -- centuries -- of Catholics of Boston.''

Cardinal O'Malley spoke briefly as he accepted a copy of the book. Here are some video excerpts of his remarks:

(Photo above, by Wendy Maeda of the Globe staff, shows Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley of Boston greeting history professor Thomas H. O'Connor of Boston College on 4/21/09.)

Empire State Pride Agenda, a gay rights organization in New York, yesterday released a video (above) and a pamphlet featuring a group of liberal Massachusetts clergy arguing that the legalization of same-sex marriage has not led to restrictions on religious freedom. The video and pamphlet are being used by the New York organization as part of its campaign in that state, where the governor last week introduced legislation to legalize same-sex marriage. Empire State Pride Agenda says the Massachusetts clergy are being cited to rebut claims by conservative religious organizations that the legalization of gay marriage threatens religious freedom.

The clergy interviewed, all of whom support same-sex marriage but some of whom are not allowed by their denominations to officiate at same-sex weddings, point out that most Massachusetts clergy do not officiate at same sex marriages (they're not allowed to, by religious authorities, in Catholic, Orthodox, Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist, Mormon, or evangelical churches, or in Orthodox synagogues or in mosques) and said that there has been no government pressure on them to do so.

I called up the conservative Massachusetts Family Institute and the Massachusetts Catholic Conference to get their thoughts; not surprisingly, they see the landscape differently. They believe that confrontation between public policy (supporting gay marriage) and religious denominations (that oppose gay marriage) is inevitable, although they acknowledge that it hasn't happened yet. But they point to the state requirement that Catholic Charities be willing to place adoptive children with same-sex couples in order to continue participating in a state adoption program as an example of how this kind of tension plays out. I have a story, "Clergy lend voices to marriage debate,'' in today's paper.

"Angels & Demons," the Dan Brown thriller, does not paint a particularly flattering picture of the Vatican -- major elements of the Catholic Church's hierarchy are depicted as secretive, violent, conspiratorial, and, of course, anti-science. But the novel is also obviously a work of fiction, by the same writer who brought us "The DaVinci Code.'' So is it anti-Catholic?

As the May 15 release date of the film approaches, William Donohue, the president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, has been vociferously critical of the story, even publishing a booklet attempting to debunk the book and film. But now comes Ron Howard, the director of the film, offering a forceful defense, at the Huffington Post.

"Let me be clear: neither I nor Angels & Demons are anti-Catholic. And let me be a little controversial: I believe Catholics, including most in the hierarchy of the Church, will enjoy the movie for what it is: an exciting mystery, set in the awe-inspiring beauty of Rome. After all, in Angels & Demons, Professor Robert Langdon teams up with the Catholic Church to thwart a vicious attack against the Vatican. What, exactly, is anti-Catholic about that?

...But since Mr. Donohue has, in effect, smeared me by claiming I am smearing his Church, I want him to know this: I hav