“Christian nation” is supposed by some to mean “a country where the law of land does not contradict Christian precepts.”

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You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to conclude that the present Iraq War is folly. But to form a principled judgment you need a moral framework.

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The Jesuits at St. Joe’s Prep taught me that the worst sin in religion is hypocrisy. So it is not an attack on religion to question if the politicians invoking God’s name to bless the United States of America are doing anything more than seeking votes.

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I really don’t have either the expertise or the genes to offer new insights about support for the state of Israel, anti-Semitism or Jewish identity. But I think exploration of such issues involves the same principles as the 19th-century debate over support for the Papal States, anti-Catholicism and Catholic identity.

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“If I had served my God as diligently as I did my king, He would not have given me over in my grey hairs." I cannot help but think of this death bed declaration of the Renaissance English Cardinal Wolsey in searching for a comment on the passing of Reverend Jerry Falwell. I wonder if the famous televangelist asked the same of his dedication to the Republican Party when going to meet his Maker.

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Senator Hillary Clinton struck just the right note for the Democratic Party this week by saying she was a believer who did not “wear her religion on her sleeve.” That seems to be the principle difference between most Democrats and most Republicans these days. It is also a chief distinguishing trait between most Christian believers and most Evangelicals.

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I have more of a problem with the use of the word "pagan" on this page than I have with pagan chaplains in the military. There is an obvious gain in respect for "paganism" to receive the official sanction that employment in the chaplains’ ranks will provide. However, are these modern day shamans up to the professionalism required of today’s chaplains?

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My general tendency is to favor freedom. If some Catholics want to worship by attending a Mass using the Tridentine Latin ritual, let them. With a billion Catholics in the world today, the number of such old Latin enthusiasts will be negligible and have no real impact on Catholicism today.

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I will leave it to my colleagues to say the most obvious things about pluralism and separation of church and state. Since I believe government has no role in preventing people from practicing their religion, invoking divine protection BEFORE going to work seems harmless enough. Heaven knows, the U.S. Congress needs all the help it can get. If someone chooses not to pray, they can stay in the cafeteria or cloak room.

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I have more confidence in Catholicism’s ability to dialog with Islam than in the opinions of a writer like Mark Lilla, who hasn’t done his homework in “The Politics of God,” published this week in The New York Times Magazine.

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“Atheists’ Delight!” is how I would characterize this question. The only sensible answer is to stress voting for “the best qualified candidate,” which would “prove” that religion doesn’t matter. If one insists that religion become a qualification for office, that insistence makes the respondent not only a bigot, but also un-American. Pushing beyond the superficial first blush, however, there actually is a question here for people for whom faith matters.

At issue is not the religious preference of the voter, but the religious practice of the candidate. In other words, "What is the role of faith in making a candidate the best qualified?"

My experience with religion leads me to conclude that throughout history its members are mostly sinners. (I know that some religions call all their adherents “saints,” with the unfortunate connotation that everyone else is hell-bent. But that is a separate issue.) Current candidates for the presidency have likewise demonstrated a host of imperfections which makes them a lot like presidents who have won elections and turned flaws into major blunders.

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Romney deserves credit for understanding the superficiality of the public and targeting that majority in his speech.

As political theater, Mitt Romney touched all the bases and sounded all the alarm bells necessary to staunch the bleeding of his lead over Mike Huckabee in Iowa. Whether planted or not, the public applause rose when the governor voiced the clichés that are in the US political toolkit. “I believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God, Savior of mankind;” “The president needs the prayers of all faiths;” “Our freedom comes from God.” These are the one-dimensional statements that serve both as the pabulum and main course in US politics today. He deserves an “A” for the material.

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There is little reason to expect any linkage between the religious beliefs publicly professed by a president and the actual practice of morality.

While religion entails public rituals, the real impact of belief is personal and private. In a secular democracy, presidential decisions are influenced by so many factors that it should be virtually impossible to tell when or if a policy is motivated by belief. That is as it should be. It says more about the voting public than about presidential candidates when religious belief becomes a test for office.

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Atheists like to take credit for having invented secularism; they did – in Europe. Secularism in the U.S., on the other hand, is derivative of a high tolerance for all organized religion and a preference for no particular one. The minds of the Founding Fathers on this one have been explored by so many experts (Jon Meacham is one) that it should be unnecessary to restate it. Seen from the full perspective of its historic beginnings within American exceptionalism, modern secularism is godmother of civil religion rather than the brainchild of atheism.

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Volumes have been written about the meaning of “religion” and “spirituality:” In Barack Obama’s campaign both are clearly at work.

Obama is a religious person, having committed to the Christian faith as an adult and chosen to accept religion in ways that had not been part of his upbringing. As a child, he had seen free-thinkers and Muslims as members of his family, so joining the Afro-centric Trinity Church of Christ in Chicago during his 20s was his own choice. That is his religion. His spirituality is another matter.

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The Question: Jeremiah Wright's sermons continue to be an issue in the presidential campaign. Why? What do you think of his preaching style? What do you wish you understood better about it?

In these days of YouTube, we can revisit the famous quote about there being various kinds of lies -- with statistics being one of them. Today, video snippets are used to lie. Such is the battle plan being carried out against the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, erstwhile pastor of Senator Barack Obama.

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