The Question: John McCain's spiritual guide, televangelist Rod Parsley, calls Islam a "false religion" that should be "destroyed." Should McCain renounce Parsley? Will Islam be an issue in this year's U.S. presidential election?

John McCain doesn't have to put the shoe on the other foot now that he has a controversial preacher to contend with, just as Barack Obama did a few weeks ago. Neither candidate should be held responsible for second-hand opinions, and since McCain didn't pour kerosene on Obama's firestorm, I doubt that the reverse will happen. For the first time in twenty years, neither candidate is asking God to vote for him. Our secular democracy has a good chance of backing off the ledge that right-wing fundamentalists and those who pander to them pushed us toward. In a perfect world, God wouldn't vote at all.

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The Question: The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated 40 years ago. What are your memories of that day? What impact did it have on you? How is King relevant to you and to us today?

To turn into a sainted memory is a poor memorial for a man of action. I was in medical school in India in 1968 and therefore saw the murder of Martin Luther King as a blurry image from a faraway land. Moving to America was still three years off. But unlike other foreigners who self-righteously decried the level of guns and violence in the U.S., Indians were keenly aware of what an assassination can do. It can end an era of idealism, which is what happened when Gandhi was killed in 1948 by a Hindu extremist while taking his evening stroll. In both cases the ideal that died was the same: Satyagraha, or active non-violent resistance. Dr. King was consciously a descendant of Gandhi as well as of Thoreau and his philosophy of civil disobedience.

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The Question: Pope Benedict's recent baptism of a well-known Italian Muslim has prompted criticism in much of the Islamic world. Has Benedict done enough to build bridges to Islam?

The Vatican scored an undoubted public relations coup by converting a Muslim who was also a prominent newspaper editor in Italy. This comes as an after note to the quieter conversion of Tony Blair, who wanted to join his wife's faith. But once the reporters leave, the fact remains that Italy and England, like the rest of Western Europe, have very low Church attendance, generally between 10% and 18%. Church-going has been on the decline for decades and is basically limited, for most citizens, to weddings, funerals, and holidays.

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The Question: What can Pope Benedict XVI say and do to repair the growing rifts between the Vatican, the clergy and the laity in America?

Giving the Pope advice is a contradictory task, because the Church's position is that he is infallible to begin with. To an outsider, infallibility seems like an impossible burden for someone who, the day before his election to the Papacy, was as fallible as any other mortal. But the Church's whole existence is based on a special relationship to God. The Pope sits on a throne that belongs to Jesus when he returns, and this symbolizes a duty to care for the Kingdom of God here on earth. The current crises inside Catholicism are only the latest difficulties that began after Christ disappeared from view. In every age balancing the two worlds of God and man has been a deep mystery.

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The Question: In his speech to U.S. bishops last week, Pope Benedict XVI said: "Any tendency to treat religion as a private matter must be resisted . . . To the extent that religion becomes a purely private affair, it loses its very soul." Do you agree or disagree? Why?

The Pope was on a mission to do more than inspire. He came to stop the steady sinking of a leaky boat. Faced with declining membership and widespread disgruntlement, the Catholic Church in America shows every sign of emptying out its parish churches and cathedrals. They are already empty, more or less, in Europe. Therefore the phrase "private matter" means, "Don't go off on your own." And faith losing its soul is code for a familiar theme to lay Catholics: without the Mother Church you are lost.

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