Drawing of Pope Francis courtesy Graphic News

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It might look that way from the eye-catching headlines this week that made it appear everyone was bound for heaven — “even atheists!” — thanks to Jesus’ death on the cross.

The passage that prompted the reports came from Francis’ brief homily at the informal morning Mass that he celebrates in the chapel at the Vatican guesthouse.

Speaking on Wednesday (May 22), Francis said that as human beings created in the image of God, everyone has a “duty to do good.”

“The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists,” he said, answering his own query. “Everyone! And this blood makes us children of God of the first class! We are created children in the likeness of God and the blood of Christ has redeemed us all!”

Cue the jaw dropping and head scratching. Atheists were pleasantly surprised, conservative Catholics were dazed and confused, and the pope’s comments raced around the Internet; for a while they were the second-most shared piece on Reddit.

So was Francis preaching a form of “universalism”? That is the unorthodox teaching that says, essentially, that all faiths are equal and all are going to heaven, especially if you are nice to people here on earth. It’s also a heresy that Francis’ predecessor, Benedict XVI, spent a career quashing every time he thought he thought he spied a hint of it in some theologian’s writings.

But the short answer to the question is easy: No. Francis was only affirming the doctrine that Christ redeemed the whole world. Whether people accept that belief is another matter.

In fact, popes going back to Leo XIII in 1891 and up through John Paul II – not to mention authoritative texts from the official Catholic Catechism and the Second Vatican Council – have said the exact same thing Francis did.

The Rev. Thomas Rosica, a Vatican spokesman, confirmed as much in an explanatory note the next day that reiterated these basic points. Even rejecting Christianity, Rosica noted, does not automatically consign someone to hell because Catholics believe God can save anyone, Christian or atheist or a member of another faith – though always through Jesus.

Also, Francis was speaking off-the-cuff, as he likes to do, and not in precise formulations that have magisterial, much less infallible, authority.

In fact, the wide attention given to Francis’ remarks may have as much to do with the popular appeal of his approachable, plain-spoken style and his insistence that Catholics not only help the poor but that they also join hands in respect and humility with others, be they believers or atheists.

The retired pope, Benedict XVI, also made an outreach to atheists a signature issue, and he also preached about making common cause with nonbelievers for the sake of the common good. Yet to the wider public he apparently was neither sufficiently kindly nor convincing to make it sound original.

Still, Francis has managed to rattle more than a few cages, especially among Catholic conservatives who were sending “panicky emails” trying to figure out what is going on in Rome.

Indeed, in the two months since Francis was elected, his broadsides against “savage capitalism” (a remark he made the day before his homily on redemption) have repeatedly unsettled economic conservatives, just as his preference for a low-key pontifical style and simple liturgies have appalled many high-church traditionalists.

Francis’ most recent remarks also tapped into a passionate debate in church circles over a new translation of the Mass that was ordered by Benedict XVI. One of the most problematic aspects of the new translation concerns a crucial Eucharistic prayer in which the priest used to say that Jesus’ blood was “shed for you and for all.” Now the Latin phrase has been translated to read “for you and for many.”

The tweak from “all” to “many” may sound like inside baseball for church geeks, but it actually has profound implications for how Catholics view the nature of salvation, the mission of Jesus and the church’s role in the world.

“Do church leaders want to signal that the grace of Christ is available only to the regular, traditional churchgoer? Is their intention to leave out the rest?” the Rev. Paul Philibert asked in a 2011 essay in America magazine. “More and more it looks as if the covert message beneath the written text is one of effective exclusion rather than antecedent inclusion of all humanity in God’s will for salvation.”

Despite stiff and ongoing resistance from bishops across the English-speaking world, Benedict’s Vatican pushed them to adopt this reformulation as a new orthodoxy. Now Francis seems to have come down on the more expansive side of the debate, giving conservative Catholics another case of agita.

As faux conservative – and genuine Catholic – Stephen Colbert put it in his televised parody of Francis’ recent remarks: “If the Lord redeems atheists all bets are off. What’s next? The Lord redeems Lutherans? It’s madness! … I’m just so glad Jesus didn’t live to see this.”

It was a funny line on Colbert’s cable show, but some are wondering how far the new pope will take it in real life.

KRE/YS END GIBSON

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Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York prays during a Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York May 2, 2013. RNS photo by Gregory A. Shemitz

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NEW YORK (RNS) When Cardinal Timothy Dolan used the morning talk shows on Easter Sunday to say the Catholic Church could do a better job of welcoming gays and lesbians, his remarks were hailed by one activist as an “Easter miracle” and by another as an encouraging “first step.”

But two months later, it’s still not clear what the second step in this fraught process might be, or even if there is a second step. And there are signs that things may only get more complicated.

Since Easter, three more states have passed same-sex marriage laws, and next month the U.S. Supreme Court will hand down a gay marriage ruling that will again spotlight the bishops’ full-throated opposition to a whole host of civil protections for gays and lesbians, particularly marriage.

Moreover, as Americans — and American Catholics — grow increasingly accepting of homosexuality, and as foes of gay rights grow increasingly determined, conflict at the parish level seems inevitable. The uneasy “Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell” policy that once allowed gay and lesbian Catholics to take church positions is clashing with their increasing visibility in the form of marriage licenses or wedding announcements.

Nicholas Coppola (left) with his husband David Crespo at home. Photo courtesy Nicholas Coppola

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Soon after Dolan’s comments, for example, Nicholas Coppola went public with his story of being dismissed from his duties at a Long Island parish after an anonymous letter tipped off the local bishop to Coppola’s marriage to another man.

In Columbus, Ohio, officials at a Catholic high school prompted an outcry in April by firing a teacher, Carla Hale, after someone pointed out that she listed her lesbian partner’s name in her mother’s obituary.

“How just is it to fire someone whose life or practices are not in accord with official church teaching?” Francis DeBernardo, head of New Ways Ministry, which advocates for gay and lesbian Catholics, wrote after two men were fired from their parish music director jobs because they were gay.

“Where do you draw the line?” he wondered in a column for National Catholic Reporter. “Do you get fired if you have remarried without an annulment? Do you get fired if you don’t attend Mass on Sunday regularly? Do you get fired because you are a Protestant who does not recognize the Catholic hierarchical structure?”

In the year since he wrote those words, DeBernardo noted recently, there have been a dozen similar incidents. Those are are in addition to past episodes in which the children of gay parents have been rejected from Catholic schools, or the case of a gay Catholic who was denied Communion at her mother’s funeral.

According to a number of priests, most of whom spoke on background to avoid publicity that could spark protests, the inevitability of such clashes is a growing concern.

“The fact is that it is going to get worse,” said the pastor of a large Midwest parish who has had to fend off complaints about a lesbian member of his staff. As critics become more insistent, and as gay and lesbian Catholics become more public, he fears the resulting controversies will take a serious toll on the church.

“We have to come to some kind of pastoral accommodation,” he said.

Joseph Amodeo led a group of gay Catholics who tried to get into St. Patrick’s church in New York City but were turned away. Photo courtesy Gay Marriage USA

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Such an accommodation is also necessary, said DeBernardo, because the flip side of the high-profile dismissals is that more and more parishes are publicly welcoming gays and lesbians and are thus potential lightning rods. A New Ways roster now boasts over 200 gay-friendly parishes, up from 20 a decade ago.

One of those parishes is St. Matthew’s in Baltimore, where the pastor, the Rev. Joe Muth, not only started a ministry for gays and lesbians a few years ago but he also supported parishioners who were lobbying for a Maryland referendum last fall that legalized same-sex marriage — despite strong opposition from the bishops.

Gays and lesbians “just move into the regular life of the church” at St. Matthew’s, Muth said, as he believes is perfectly normal.

But he also said they are aware of the “sensitivity” of their presence, so they have made a concerted effort to reach out to other groups in the parish, and the parish has also made sure to include one of Baltimore’s bishops in meetings.

That dialogue has been invaluable, he said, and he has received few complaints or protests. But Muth also had to cancel a parish-sponsored forum on the same-sex marriage law last year at the behest of Baltimore Archbishop William Lori.

Muth also said that if some of his gay parishioners get married under the new law and their marriage becomes public, Lori could well remove them from ministry. “I probably wouldn’t have too much of a say in it. That’s the way things work.”

In fact, the patchwork nature of the responses is part of the problem, say gay advocates. “It’s not that there is a witch hunt out there,” said DeBernardo. “But there are witch hunters. … For the most part I don’t think bishops go after these folks. They don’t create controversy; they only respond to controversy.”

At the moment, there are no guidelines to help pastors and parishioners deal with these issues, and there doesn’t seem to be an effort to develop anything comprehensive.

The Rev. Paul Check, head of Courage, a church-approved ministry that encourages gay Catholics to remain celibate, declined to be interviewed. A spokesperson for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said questions would have to be answered by each diocese. Prominent diocesan ministries for gays and lesbians, like Chicago’s Archdiocesan Gay and Lesbian Outreach, did not respond to requests for comment.

When ABC’s George Stephanopoulos tried to pin down Dolan on exactly how the church could be more welcoming to gay and lesbian Catholics, Dolan confessed that he wasn’t sure: “Well, I don’t know. We’re still – we’re – we’re trying. We’re trying our best to do it. We gotta listen to people.”

When Dolan later blogged that all sinners are welcome in the church so long as they wash their “dirty hands” before dinner, a group of gay activists showed up at St. Patrick’s Cathedral with ink-stained hands in a bid to test that welcome. They were turned away.

The upshot: Even if such a dialogue does take place, it is not likely to end the controversies. But advocates for gay and lesbian Catholics say it may be the only way forward for now.

“Right now it’s a step-by-step process of helping people to be church,” said Muth, of St. Matthew’s in Baltimore. “That’s the way I see it.”

KRE/AMB END GIBSON

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Pope Francis waves to the crowd in St. Peter’s Square on Tuesday (March 19) at the Vatican. RNS photo by Andrea Sabbadini

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“(T)his ‘closing off’ that imagines that those outside, everyone, cannot do good is a wall that leads to war and also to what some people throughout history have conceived of: killing in the name of God,” Francis said Wednesday (May 22) in remarks at the informal morning Mass that he celebrates in the chapel at the Vatican guesthouse where he lives.

“And that, simply, is blasphemy. To say that you can kill in the name of God is blasphemy.”

Francis explained that doing good is not a matter of faith: “It is a duty, it is an identity card that our Father has given to all of us, because he has made us in his image and likeness.”

To both atheists and believers, he said that “if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: we need that so much. We must meet one another doing good.”

In a passage that may prompt a theological debate about the nature of salvation, the pontiff also declared that God “has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone!”

“Even the atheists,” he said to those who might question his assertion. “Everyone!”

Wednesday’s remarks displayed the kind of plain-spokenness that has become a hallmark of Francis’ homilies and speeches, and they also developed themes that Francis frequently mentions in a pontificate that is just over two months old.

One is that the Catholic Church must be open to the world and not “self-referential, closed in on herself,” as he said last weekend at Pentecost. Another is that the church must be humble and recognize its own shortcomings, and that it should be tolerant of nonbelievers.

Francis’ homily on Wednesday was inspired by the passage in the Gospel of Mark in which the disciples tell Jesus that they tried to stop someone from driving out demons because he was not one of their party.

Jesus rebukes them saying: “There is no one who performs a mighty deed in my name who can at the same time speak ill of me. For whoever is not against us is for us.”

The pope’s remarks were reported by Vatican Radio.

KRE/AMB END GIBSON

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Grace Episcopal Church of Randolph, NY via the congregation’s Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/GraceChurchRandolph

You knew that even before the death toll had been tallied Pat Robertson would weigh in with some weather-inflected theology that blames the victims. But when John Piper looked to start down that path, Rachel Held Evans cut him off:

“This theology is, in a word, abusive, for it blames the victim for whatever calamity, abuse, or tragedy she suffers and says it is deserved.”

At CNN, the Rev. Ian Punnett is on the same track, and at the Christian Century blog, MaryAnn McKibben Dana has more reflections in “When bad theology happens to good people.”

How about when live TV happens to Wolf Blitzer? Give the guy credit, he found a real live atheist in red state Oklahoma.

You can also find “godless” funerals in Catholic Ireland, so go figure.

Closer to home, Gallup’s latest says 72 percent of us believe moral values in the country as a whole are getting worse. Thing is, they always say they’re getting worse. Does our depravity have a floor?

Michele Bachmann is still optimistic. As she tells James Dobson:

“I think before his second term is over, we’re going to see a miracle before our eyes, I believe God is going to answer our prayers and we’ll be freed from the yoke of Obamacare … We serve a mighty God and I believe it can happen.”

By the way, if the IRS ever audited churches, THAT would be a scandal. But can’t happen, as Mark Silk explains.

How about putting some teeth into the State Department’s reports on the state of religious freedom overseas?

In Texas, a judge says a lesbian couple can’t live together because of a morality clause in one of the women’s divorce papers. It would be okay if they were married, but …

Don’t get all self-righteous, New Yorkers: there’s a spate of ugly and even deadly attacks against gays in the city.

Then there’s this: The Peace Corps says it will begin accepting applications from same-sex couples who want to volunteer overseas.

Then again, a rightwing historian and traditionalist Catholic was so upset over France legalizing same-sex marriage that he killed himself at the altar in Notre Dame and left an ugly suicide note behind. Not sure what tradition in Catholicism he was upholding there.

Then again, a Catholic priest who wrote an anonymous book two years ago about being a gay cleric has now come out – he is the Rev. Gary Meier of St. Louis, and many are wondering what will happen next.

Speaking of priests, they’re not too happy with the changes in the Mass – less so, in fact, than the folks in the pews. But they have more speaking parts.

Great Britain is seeing a surge (relatively speaking) in women wanting to be nuns. Is it recession-related?

The Quote of the Day goes to Pope Francis, from remarks at his daily morning Mass:

“To say that you can kill in the name of God is blasphemy.”

Just as powerful were his words rebuking “intolerant” Christians who don’t think non-believers can do good, thereby closing the church off – “a wall that leads to war.” Pow.

Follow up: no, the Pope gave that man a blessing, not an exorcism. But another priest later said the man was possessed by four demons, apparently relating to an abortion law in Mexico. It’s all good fodder for discussion in Nicole Winfield’s piece for The AP.

Father Fugee is back in jail, and the Star-Ledger editorial board says prosecutors shouldn’t stop there but should also investigate Newark Archbishop Myers.

Moral-legal debate: prosecutors in Cleveland want to charge the awful Ariel Castro with murder because one of the kidnapping hostages he repeatedly raped got pregnant five times and he abused her until she miscarried. Some pro-choice advocates say that was terrible, yeah, but worse would be counting the fetus as a murder victim because it could impede abortion rights.

Thoughts?

Marketing dogma: Sex sells. Or maybe not, says one economist.

Okay, so might as well tone down all the erotica in the Roundup.

Is using a church for graffiti a sin – or a way to spread the Gospel? An Episcopal church in New York wants to find out.

Finally, Los Angeles has its first Jewish mayor. Mazel tov, Eric Garcetti! Ah, but be careful what you pray for …

David Gibson

The post Wednesday’s Religion News Roundup: Tornado Theology * Red State Atheist * Pope’s Blasphemy Blast appeared first on Religion News Service.

But now, more than a year after the changes took effect in U.S. parishes, a survey of American priests shows that they are more disturbed by the innovations than their flocks.

Congregants pray during Catholic mass at St. Therese Little Flower parish in Kansas City, Mo. on Sunday, May 20, 2012. RNS photo by Sally Morrow

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In fact, the poll, conducted by researchers at St. John’s University School of Theology-Seminary in Collegeville, Minn., showed that almost 60 percent of priests surveyed did not like the new Roman Missal, as the liturgical book for the Mass is known, while about 40 percent approve.

“The high level of dissatisfaction among priests should be a grave concern for the bishops, assuming they care about what their priests are thinking and feeling,” the Rev. Michael Ryan, a Seattle priest who started a petition to rally opposition to the new translation, told the popular liturgy blog Pray Tell.

The clergy critics also have firm opinions on the matter: one-third of priests (34 percent) strongly disagree that the new translation of the Mass is an improvement, and 80 percent say that some of the language is “awkward and distracting.”

That contrasts with polls from last year, which showed that 70 percent of Mass-goers thought that, overall, the first new translation in 40 years “is a good thing.” The approval rating was 84 percent among weekly attenders. (Polls also showed that most Catholics didn’t notice many changes.)

An online survey in February by The Tablet, a London-based Catholic periodical, found opinions among English-speaking Catholics around the world to be sharply divided about the new Mass, with clergy expressing more negative opinions than lay people.

The new translation, which went into effect in the nearly 18,000 parishes in the U.S. in November 2011, was years in the making but took longer than expected when the process was taken over by Vatican-backed conservatives who wanted to make the language sound more like literal translations of the original Latin.

That resulted in formulations that supporters said were more authentic and expressed a grandeur and mystery appropriate for the sacred rites. Critics said the new phrasings were stilted and often incomprehensible.

For example, where the Nicene Creed once explained Jesus’ relationship to God as “one in Being with the Father,” the new version has believers say Jesus is “consubstantial” with God – prompting comedian Stephen Colbert, a practicing Catholic, to quip: “It’s the creed! It’s not the SAT prep.”

Pope Francis issued a powerful call for the protection of the environment and of society’s most vulnerable during his formal installation Mass at the Vatican, while qualifying his papal power as a “service” to the church and to humanity. RNS photo by Andrea Sabbadini

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In the previous version, worshippers preparing to receive the Communion host would confess, “I am not worthy to receive you.” Now they say, “I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof.”

One reason that priests may take a dimmer view of the new translation is that they have to use it every day, and have many more parts to say than lay people. They were also paying closer attention to the translation process, which may explain why many of them said they were just as upset with the way the revision was undertaken and implemented as they were with the end result.

More than six in 10 of the priests surveyed said they wanted a revision of the revisions, and they are not the only ones. “While we don’t want to ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater,’ the new missal needs corrective surgery and this should take place without delay,” Bishop Robert Brom of San Diego told Pray Tell.

Whether anything will happen is unclear. The new pope, Francis, appears to prefer simpler liturgical practices, but it’s also not clear that he would want to reopen this can of worms. And senior church officials in charge of liturgical matters either declined to respond to questions from Pray Tell – which is run by a priest who worked on the survey – or questioned the value of the survey.

More than 1,500 priests from around the country responded to the survey, which was conducted from February to May 2013.

KRE/AMB END GIBSON

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Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo., has become the first U.S. bishop to be charged with failing to report the suspected abuse of a child. RNS photo courtesy Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph

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The family filed the civil suit in federal court in 2011 against Finn, the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo., and the Rev. Shawn Ratigan, who pleaded guilty last year to charges of producing child pornography.

Ratigan had taken hundreds of lewd and suggestive photos of young children; the lawsuit, which was settled on Tuesday (May 14), was filed by the parents of a girl who was 2 years old when Ratigan started photographing her in 2006.

“We hope this settlement comforts at least some of the many families who have suffered and are suffering because Bishop Robert Finn refused to call police, protect kids and monitor Father Shawn Ratigan,” said Barbara Dorris of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

Last September, in an arrangement with prosecutors, Finn was convicted of a misdemeanor charge of failing to report Ratigan to authorities as required by law. Finn and the diocese had received multiple complaints about Ratigan in the months preceding the priest’s arrest in 2011 and church officials had seen some of the pictures of children on his laptop computer in December 2010.

Despite calls for Finn to resign, he has remained as head of the diocese. Diocesan spokesman Jack Smith told The Kansas City Star that the payout would be covered by insurance.

The tab for Finn’s own defense amounted to $1.4 million, the diocese said last year, which was covered by insurance plus funds collected from parishes.

The judge in the civil lawsuit dismissed the claim that Finn and the diocese aided and abetted Ratigan in possessing pornography.

The diocese previously paid out $10 million in 2008 to settle cases by plaintiffs who alleged sexual abuse by 12 priests. It still faces dozens of other lawsuits related to abuse allegations against other priests.

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Abstract model of woman made from DNA molecules illustration courtesy Shutterstock.com (http://shutr.bz/10GYQXS)

(RNS) News that scientists had for the first time recovered stem cells from cloned human embryos prompted dire warnings from religious leaders who say the research crosses a moral red line and could lead to designer babies.

Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley, point man for the U.S. Catholic bishops on bioethical issues, said Wednesday (May 15) that “this means of making embryos for research will be taken up by those who want to produce cloned children as ‘copies’ of other people.”

Human cloning “treats human beings as products,” O’Malley said on behalf of the bishops, “manufactured to order to suit other people’s wishes. … A technical advance in human cloning is not progress for humanity but its opposite.”

Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley, point man for the U.S. Catholic bishops on bioethical issues. Photo by Gregory L. Tracy/The Pilot

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Critics argue there are other ethical techniques for creating stem cells that may help cure illnesses like Parkinson’s disease and diabetes and that the alternatives do not require cloning human embryos or destroying them. The most popular alternative is harvesting adult stem cells from the same patient.

“Given that science has passed cloning by for stem cell production, this announcement seems simply a justification for making clones, and makes reproductive cloning and birth of human clones more likely,” said David Prentice of the Family Research Council.

The cloning breakthrough was accomplished by scientists at Oregon Health & Science University and was announced Wednesday in the journal Cell. It followed 15 years of failed experiments and the infamous case of fraud when a South Korean biologist falsely claimed to have cloned human embryos.

To achieve their breakthrough, researchers had to refine techniques that had been used on monkey embryos: This time they were able to take DNA from a human patient and splice it into a human egg that had its DNA removed. The egg then grew into an early-stage embryo whose stem cells — a virtual genetic copy of the original patient — were then harvested.

Many Christian experts, especially Catholic bioethicists who believe life begins at conception, object to the destruction of human embryos for any purpose.

But they also say the new technique could lead to the cloning of replica human beings because it is similar to the process used to produce the cloned sheep named Dolly in 1996. That technique has since been used to clone a dozen other animal species.

The lead researcher on the team, Shoukhrat Mitalipov, said he does not believe the new technique could lead to cloned babies, in part because scientists have not yet been able to do that with cloned monkey embryos. The cloned primate embryos do not develop sufficiently to implant into the uterine wall.

But others say the innovation opens the door to human cloning scenarios that were once confined to the realm of science fiction.

“The reasons why primate-cloned embryos won’t implant are probably just technical barriers,” William Hurlbut, a consulting professor at Stanford University and former member of George W. Bush’s Presidential Council on Bioethics, told Christianity Today. “Science is clever at figuring out what goes wrong and fixing it.”

Hurlbut, who has worked with Mitalipov on developing ethically acceptable adult stem cell techniques, said the breakthrough will “mark the beginning of a whole new chapter of moral scientific controversy.”

KRE/AMB END GIBSON

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Cardinal Keith O’Brien of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, Scotland. Wikimedia photo courtesy Gavin Scott.

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The move is an abrupt change of plans for O’Brien, and apparently came under pressure from Pope Francis, who on Wednesday also delivered a sermon that blasted bishops and priests who “become wolves and not shepherds.”

While the pope’s homily focused on the temptations of money, “careerism” and “vanity,” the dual developments reflected Francis’ well-known disdain for clericalism, and prompted speculation that the new pope might take a harder line against misbehaving bishops.

O’Brien, a vocal opponent of gay rights, stepped down as archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh when reports of his sexual advances and affairs emerged in late February; a week later he apologized and admitted that “there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal.”

That was on the eve of the March conclave that elected Francis. O’Brien said he would not take part in the papal election because of the scandal, a first, and that he would “play no further part in the public life of the Catholic Church in Scotland.”

O’Brien had recently been seen moving into a seaside home outside of Edinburgh, and was quoted as saying: “My plan is to move here ultimately to relax and enjoy my retirement.” That may not have been the signal the new pope wanted to send.

In a terse press release on Wednesday, the Vatican said that O’Brien, “in agreement with the Holy Father,” would leave Scotland “for several months for the purpose of spiritual renewal, prayer and penance.” It concluded that “any decision regarding future arrangements for His Eminence shall be agreed with the Holy See.”

Earlier Wednesday, at his informal morning Mass in the Vatican guesthouse where he is living, Francis asked a group of Vatican employees to pray for their bishops and priests because churchmen often fall prey to temptations. The pope focused mainly on the temptations of money and vanity, both of which he has cited before in comments blasting vainglorious clerics who strut like “peacocks.”

“When a bishop, a priest goes on the road to vanity, he enters into the spirit of careerism,” Francis said Wednesday, “and this hurts the church very much – (and) ends up being ridiculous: he boasts, he is pleased to be seen, all powerful – and the people do not like that!”

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Photo from the new Star Trek Into Darkness movie courtesy http://www.startrekmovie.com

O’Brien did not travel to Rome then, and today the man who was elected in that conclave, Pope Francis, dispatched O’Brien to an undisclosed location “for several months for the purpose of spiritual renewal, prayer and penance.”

“Any decision regarding future arrangements for His Eminence shall be agreed with the Holy See,” a Vatican press release concluded.

Does this herald a new, tougher line with bad bishops?

Another possible signal: At his morning mass today, Francis had strong words for vainglorious bishops and priests, and asked his listeners to pray for their clergy not to give into temptations:

“When a bishop, a priest goes on the road to vanity, he enters into the spirit of careerism – and this hurts the Church very much – (and) ends up being ridiculous: he boasts, he is pleased to be seen, all powerful – and the people do not like that!”

No, they don’t, and many of them might have a list of other prelates they’d like to send along with O’Brien…

What of Kermit Gosnell? The rogue abortionist made a deal to serve the rest of his life in prison and thereby avoid the death penalty, which he probably wouldn’t have been given anyway.

Not everyone is happy about that, among them a number of pro-lifers who might have preferred a rougher justice, as Mark DeMoss signaled in his post-conviction tweet:

But others, like Ashley McGuire, say no death for Gosnell – it would undermine the pro-life message. Abby Johnson had one of the more impassioned critiques of the “vitriol”she has heard directed at Gosnell from “Christian pro-lifers,” as she put it:

“Hate comes from hell. Mercy comes from Christ. When we have hate in our hearts, our spirits are damaged. Be careful with your words. Not only are you a living witness of Christ and His truth, but you could put your own soul at risk.”

Princeton’s Robby George is also on the prayer train for Gosnell’s conversion – and for the conversion of the rest of America.

But will the Gosnell trial change the abortion debate in this country, as abortion foes are hoping? They might want to temper their high expectations, as I write in this analysis.

Photo of the cast of new Star Trek Into Darkness movie courtesy http://www.startrekmovie.com

The new “Star Trek” movie premiers tonight – at midnight for all you serious diehards. Among them is Jason King, who is a serious “Theo-Trekkie” and explicates this moral universe at the Catholic Moral Theology blog.

If that isn’t enough, Matthew Yglesias at Slate has watched all five of the “Star Trek” television series and all 11 movies and finds that, Hillel-like, the heart of the franchise’s ethos can be summed up in one phrase: The Golden Rule.

If this is what it’s like for another “Star Trek” flick, just imagine what it will be like when the new “Star Wars” movie comes out. By then I will need what our President would call a “Jedi mind-meld.”

Actually, you might need one of those to figure out all the controversies and scandals rocking Washington these days, but Franklin Graham is pretty clear about the IRS problem: The revenuers were targeting his ministries “and attempting to intimidate us.” That was apparently after the nonprofit Graham ministries weighed in for Mitt Romney in last year’s election. The younger Graham has now gone straight to the top, writing to President Obama to complain.

So, is the notion of Christian persecution a myth? And was it always thus? Author Candida Moss talks to our own Lauren Markoe about the thesis of her controversial new book.

Check out Mark Silk on gay marriage in Minnesota and the partisan divide in America, not just the Beltway.

Paige Patterson, who led the Southern Baptist Convention’s turn to social conservatism, is being hailed as a “modern-day Martin Luther” who saved the SBC from “a quagmire of ecumenism, pluralism, universalism and drifting further to the left.” Well, he could do no other, no?

Mormon Works vs. Evangelical Grace? Not so fast, says Jana Reiss.

In a similar vein: Can Evangelicals and Catholics sort their difference on Purgatory? Interesting conference next month will try to come up with an answer. Unfortunately, I doubt it will compete with Dan Brown’s new novel.

Speaking of evangelicals and purgatory, quarterback Tim Tebow – who was named by Forbes this month as America’s most influential athlete, has been unceremoniously dumped by the New York Jets and looks to have few if any prospects of catching on with another team. But he told a crowd at a Michigan college that helping people is more important than playing football:

“I don’t know what the future holds but at the end of the day I know who holds my future.”

Good words, though not the words of a fantasy pick, I think.

Then there’s my former hero, pitcher R.A. Dickey, who left the Mets – or rather, they didn’t want to pay him what he deserved – and signed with the Toronto Blue Jays. It’s been a tough season so far, but Dickey, also a prominent Christian athlete, has told graduates to persevere. That’s what he does, even in the “very dysfunctional lifestyle” of pro baseball.

Doomsday prophet Harold Camping was right! At least his ministry, if not the whole world, appears near the end.

An update on Bishop Robert McManus of Worcester, Massachusetts, who was nailed for drunk-driving: that charge will be dismissed and he will plead to a lesser count of refusing a chemical sobriety test. No driver’s license for six months and $950 in fines and court costs. Beats having the pope send you into exile.

Speaking of the pope – again – Austrian Cardinal Christophe Schönborn said that he personally received two signs from the Holy Spirit that he should vote for Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, who was elected Pope Francis. One, he said, was when a friend whispered into his ear: “Bergoglio.”

So that’s how it works.

Cardinal Dolan of New York isn’t whispering about Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s plan to expand abortion access in the state:

“I am going to hope that the better natures prevail here, but boy if you come out you can expect us to be as vociferous and rigorous as possible in our opposition to this,” Dolan said during an interview with an Albany radio station Tuesday. “I hope we don’t go there.”

He did not, as initially reported, question Cuomo’s standing as a Catholic, his spokesman later clarified.

Couple of interesting reads:

First, Judith Shulevitz at TNR on “the Lethality of Loneliness.”

Then, the latest research at Scientific American on why rituals work.

Which is the perfect segue to our FINAL Daily Religion News Roundup fundraising plea – feel less lonely by making a habit of supporting the Roundup, even after we cease with these annoying but necessary appeals. Thanks for all your support, even if its only your eyeballs on the Roundup and your fine word of mouth that has made this such a popular venture.

LLAP, as they say…

David Gibson

The post Wednesday’s Religion News Roundup: Cardinal exiled * Theo-Trekkies * Tebow’s future appeared first on Religion News Service.

Even before rogue abortionist Kermit Gosnell was convicted in Philadelphia on Monday (May 13) of delivering and then killing late-term infants, abortion opponents were convinced they had a case that could reshape an abortion debate that has remained static over the years. RNS photo courtesy Shutterstock.com

After the verdict, they were even more confident.

“Dr. Gosnell is only the front man; and the real trial has only just begun. The defendant is the abortion license in America,” Robert P. George, a Princeton law professor and leading conservative activist, wrote after a jury convicted Gosnell of three counts of first-degree murder for snipping the spines of babies after botched abortions.

Gosnell, who could face the death penalty, was also found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the death of a 41-year-old patient who sought an abortion at the squalid West Philadelphia clinic that prosecutors labeled a “house of horrors.”

Yet the fervent prayers for a game-changing impact from the Gosnell conviction may go unanswered for a variety of reasons.

A ‘monster’ used by both sides

One is that Gosnell is an equal-opportunity icon: Abortion rights supporters also believe they can make a powerful argument out of the Gosnell case for greater and more affordable access to safe abortion services.

“Anti-choice politicians, and their unrelenting efforts to deny women access to safe and legal abortion care, will only drive more women to back-alley butchers like Kermit Gosnell,” Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, wrote in an email that was part of a post-verdict media barrage that was almost as intense as the one orchestrated by abortion opponents.

In fact, at least nine of the jurors who convicted Gosnell told the court that they are “pro-choice.” As New York Magazine’s Dan Amira put it: “Pretty much everyone believed that Gosnell is a monster who did horrible things. Where the two sides part ways is on what the tragedy says about abortion more broadly.”

Public opinion stalemate

A second factor working against prospects for a major shift is that most Americans, like the courts, are so settled in their views on abortion that it’s hard for anything — even the gruesome Gosnell story — to change their minds.

A Gallup Poll taken weeks into the Gosnell trial and a few days before the verdict found public opinion virtually unchanged: 26 percent of Americans said abortion should be legal under any circumstances, 20 percent said it should be illegal in all circumstances, and more than half — 52 percent — opted for something in between, as has been the case since 1975.

The Gallup survey also showed that few people were even paying attention to the case; conservative activists accused the media of downplaying the trial due to a liberal bias, but it turns out that conservative media also did not cover the case very much in part because the details were so horrific that the audience would likely tune those stories out. 

Overtaken by events

A third reason that the Gosnell case is probably not “the trial of the century,” as one abortion foe claimed, is simply bad timing: Benghazi, the IRS investigations of Tea Party groups, and reports that the Justice Department had snooped on journalists’ phone records all overshadowed the Gosnell story.

Those other controversies not only gave the public something less gruesome to focus on, but they gave conservatives too many targets all at once.

‘Safe, legal and rare’ but still legal

Finally, it may well be that the Gosnell case seemed like such a slam-dunk for abortion opponents that they overreached in arguing that Gosnell showed why every abortion is always and everywhere wrong.

“The unsafe conditions of the clinic do not cause our gut-wrenching response,” Collin Garbarino wrote a month ago in First Things, predicting that the trial, just starting, would strengthen the anti-abortion movement. “No. Our horror stems from the very act of abortion itself, the most brutal and distasteful act tolerated in America today.”

Or as George put it, after the Gosnell trial “it will no longer be possible to pretend that abortion and infanticide are radically different acts or practices.”

Yet by a wide margin, most Americans are not willing to make such sweeping judgments on legalized abortion, whatever their views on Gosnell. What many might support, however, are measures to provide greater oversight of abortion clinics and perhaps some limits on relatively rare late-term abortions.

Such proposals are gaining steam around the country — often at the initiative of conservative lawmakers — and in the wake of the Gosnell case are even attracting support from more liberal commentators, such as Michael Wear, who led the Obama campaign’s outreach to faith groups in 2012, and The Washington Post’s Melinda Henneberger.

“Though I do not support a ‘personhood’ amendment, neither am I okay with the Orwellian dodge that it’s not a baby unless and until we say it’s a baby,” Henneberger wrote.

The risk for abortion opponents is that endorsing such limited policies could be seen as settling for a Clintonesque standard for abortion as “safe, legal and rare” — but nonetheless still legal.

Still, the more pragmatic activists in the movement seem to recognize that the momentum from the Gosnell moment is likely to fade as quickly as it does for gun control advocates after a deadly shooting massacre. So if they don’t seize this moment for what they can get, they may wind up leaving loyalists in both camps energized, but the center as ambivalent as ever.

KRE/LEM END GIBSON

The post ANALYSIS: Will the Kermit Gosnell verdict change the abortion debate? appeared first on Religion News Service.