In June 2007, Michael McCarthy of Vassar College spoke at the Annual Workshop of Boston College’s Lonergan Institute. I get the sense that he deeply cares about the health of our church.

McCarthy offered a handful of initiatives for Catholicism in his lecture, “Towards a Catholic Christianity: A Personal Narrative,” parts of which were recently published in Boston College Magazine:

When I say the Church, I mean us -- the pilgrim people of God in history. It is we who are vulnerable to these failings, who commit these sins, who dishonor God by the images of the divine we project and defend. Yet we are called to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. The most powerful witness, for or against the gospel, remains the lives that we actually lead.

What would a Catholic Christianity faithful to the message of the gospel and the mission of redeeming the world be like?

• Our thought and speech would be realistic and critical; we would be as truthful as we can be in understanding ourselves, our past, and the complexity of the world that we serve.
• Genuinely repentant, we would not justify past failures, conceal present weaknesses, nor shrink from the challenges of conversion and change.
• Our understanding of the Church and the world would be deeply historical. The redemptive message of the gospel is constant, but it has to be proclaimed with fresh credibility to each culture and people in history.
• An ecumenical Church would treat everyone with dignity and respect. Without glossing over differences, its internal and external dialogues would be directed toward mutual understanding and, where possible, consensus in judgment. Continually learning and teaching, the Church would candidly acknowledge its limits as well as its strengths.
• The whole baggage of patriarchy would be abandoned. Women and men are equally created in God’s image, equally redeemed by Christ’s sacrifice, equally inspired by the Spirit, and equally called to the service of God in the world. All the ministries of the Church would be fully open to women.
• The principles of collegial governance and meaningful lay participation proclaimed in Vatican II would be fully implemented. The unifying role of the pope is consistent with a far less centralized, bureaucratic, and secretive manner of conducting the Church’s affairs than has prevailed for centuries. The Church’s internal practice must become a model of freedom and justice, if its prophetic ministry to the world is to be taken seriously.

We live during a complicated and fascinating time. McCarthy suggests that the church can and must conduct rigorous dialog with these issues, while always retaining Christ at the center. My generation must be brought into the tradition by honest outreach to the places where we dwell. Christ dined with the sinners, and He did not condemn them. He found them where they were, and he met them in love. We deserve a Jesus-centered church that engages the honest questions of a desperate generation. Some would be satisfied to spiritually exile agitators, questioners, sinners. I prefer Jesus’ way.

The problem Liz outlines is, as David suggests , not limited to the Church. In reaction to over-reaching orthodoxy, everyone that used to offer normative claims – let’s call it “morality” for short – defers nowadays, instead playing guitar and trying to entertain. The problem is in other American religious communities, for sure, and also in schools, in colleges, in theaters. There’s much to be said here – and I hope to say more in the future – but let me just suggest that by failing to offer morals, even wrong morals, these institutions have failed their flocks. Before, if the Church told me something was wrong, it preserved the idea of wrong, even if it misapplied that idea. Now the very ideas of right and wrong, of good and evil, have withered away. Our moral muscles have atrophied from misuse, and no one trusts anyone, least of all herself, to evaluate anything. This is untenable and dangerous in ways I hope we can discuss.

I couldn’t help but be slightly taken aback by this article in today’s Washington Post. Apparently American churches have found enough loose change in the pews to drop $8.1 billion on audio and projection equipment in the last year. Oh, wait, they do direct deposit tithing now? So no pew change?

Big screen and Hi-Fi, indeed.

Besides the somewhat mournful tack of the latter half of the article, perhaps WiFi church cafés and in-worship light shows aren’t necessarily a bad thing. Nothing prevents the pastor (no Fathers, Imams, Rabbis, Yogis or what have you to be found quoted in this piece) putting on a little pseudo-James Taylor (sorry Campus Catholic), queuing up the requisite scene in The 10 Commandments for his/her 200-inch projection screen and then delivering some serious divinity.

Will podcasting be the death of God? Hardly. Further, the Field of Dreams mentality at work here (“if you build it, they will come,”) probably isn’t far from the truth. Could it be that having the highest resolution projection cannon could constitute a holy calling? Must the modern religious leader walk gingerly through techno-Mammon to illuminate the Divine?

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During those years when I stayed for most of the (very long) High Holy Day liturgy, I’ve noticed the ebb and flow of people follow distinct trends. To be economical about it, certain parts of the liturgy are products demanded by the market more highly. I suppose people feel that these services are better investments, with higher payoffs. One is the Yizkor service, a short memorial service sentimentally connected for many with their loved ones who have passed. This part of the services brings out so many people that a tradition, in no way binding, has developed that children whose parents are alive should not be in the room; otherwise not everyone could fit.

The part of the service that everyone seems to love, though, is the blowing of the shofar, both on Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur. The liturgy suggests several reasons why we blow the shofar, a ram's horn in multiple sense of the word. “Wake up, God!” seems to be one reason. And yet why would blowing through a ram’s horn make God any more likely to listen to us sinful mortals?

On Rosh HaShanah, I stood on the men's side of a small congregation. We had reached the Shofar service (about an hour later than promised; people who had shown up just to hear the shofar found us in the middle of reading the Torah). Traditionally, the shofar is blown one hundred times. After every blast, a small child clinging to his mother imitated the blast. A long blast, a long shriek of delight from the toddler. A series of short toots, a series of short exclamations from this little boy. And if the sound of an innocent little boy happily shouting, held by his mother, isn’t reason enough for God to save us all for another year, I can’t imagine what is.

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I have a confession to make. This year, during the month leading up to the High Holidays and even during the ten days of awe between Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Repentance), I prayed a lot and I fasted, but I did not apologize to a single person. This is a big deal. Unlike in Catholicism, Jews can’t confess to a priest and be forgiven, and unlike Christians in general, Jews have no comforting idea that Jesus died for our sins. Jews are hard core.

On Rosh Hashanah, God opens the book of life and writes down what will happen to you in the next year – whether you will be happy or sad, whether you will live or die – and on Yom Kippur, the book of life is sealed. During this time, in order to ensure a good write-up in the book, you have to set yourself right with God and with those around you. To be honest, God is a much easier customer. Whereas you can simply pray to God, apologizing and promising to improve next year, with people you have to actually approach them, look them in the eyes and say sorry. Only when you are forgiven by everyone in your life are you really prepared to begin the New Year.

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“Look,” he said, offering a laminated sheet for my approval. “You need to buy one of these. It has Jesus, you see, here, at the top, and almost all the Saints.”

If he was disappointed when I demurred he didn’t show it. Laying his cane against the wall, the man slowly closed the steel collar around his neck. Muttering soft prayers, he wrapped himself in the ancient chain.

No, I hadn’t walked in on a deleted scene from the Da Vinci Code. I was in the depths of the Convent of St. George in Old Cairo’s Coptic Quarter and my erstwhile salesman was undoubtedly hoping to reap the curative benefits of the chain of St. George. Here are the Copts, the Egyptian Orthodox Christians, who birthed monasticism, housed the Holy Family, and are (probably) responsible for adapting the contemporary Christian cross from the Egyptian Ankh to boot.

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“You, Lord, are truth.” Draped in a prayer shawl with four fringed corners, decked in full suit and tie, swaying back and forth per Jewish custom, I read those words aloud from the prayer book one week ago on the second day of Rosh Hashanah. They triggered a crisis of theology. What does it mean for God to be Truth?

Saint Augustine wept when he was elected Bishop of Hippo. He wanted to be a monk, so he could contemplate philosophy and God. Instead he had to administer a complex and difficult church. The religion of philosophy and the religion of going to services with your family differ.

So praying at college, especially during the High Holy Days, requires a little of multiple personalities – setting aside one personality, always questioning, always wondering, and accepting another. The liturgy helps with this: God is our Father, who will always take us back. Holidays, and especially Yom Kippur, allow me to re-examine my own life, my interaction with others, and not to worry about the nature of God, at least for another day.

Deep inside a drawer, I recently found a CD belonging to my mother, an old favorite that reminds me of the warmth inside our home on blustery December mornings in my childhood. The CD is "Handel's Messiah –A Soulful Celebration," and it won a Grammy in 1992 for Best Contemporary Soul Gospel Album. The songs on this album, which can be heard on this link from Amazon, praise Jesus Christ Our Lord and Savior in ways that will make you want to break out in wild interpretative dance. Or at least start bopping around in your chair. This stuff is cheerful, uplifting and proves that Christianity can –and even should –be bold, relevant and full of life. This is a welcome infusion in my spiritual life. Praise the Lord!

For a post-Vatican II Catholic like me, church music often consists of little more than a wanna-be James Taylor/ Joan Baez type strumming a guitar and singing soft, sweet lines like "You are My God/ You are an awesome God/ God you are so awesome." Sometimes these ballads are enough to inspire a lump in the back of my throat. At their worst, however, they sound limp and whiney, their lyrics empty except for strained spiritual pleas. They are like John Mayer, only worse, because these sob songs are supposed to relate to our eternal salvation. In fact, advocates of the Latin Mass often cite the banal music in our churches as reason enough to bring back the ethereal rite of old. While they insist that the mystery and grandeur are the missing elements in our liturgies, and the Latin Mass the solution, I have noticed another looming problem, one not easily fixed by Latin elements:

The Christianity preached from our Catholic pulpits is totally lame.

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Ahlan wa sahlan, or hello and welcome, from the Arab Republic of Egypt. I'm here studying for the next four months.

It’s the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, otherwise known as Ramadan. It’s been an interesting few days, to say the least. I’ve re-familiarized myself with such fine American dining establishments as Hardee's, McDonald’s, and KFC because the cheap-and-greasy falafel or schawerma joints I frequented pre-Ramadan are on a one-month hiatus from providing me 50-cent lunches.

Ramadan-esque topics will be a part of much of my writing for some time, I expect, but one experience does deserve a bit of immediate digital ink. I spent the first night of Ramadan in the shadow Al-Azhar University, one of Islam’s most prestigious institutions (and perhaps the oldest university in the world).

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In Manhattan on the Lower East Side someone has written on a brick building “rumspringa.” As I understand it, that’s the phrase for the period a young adult member of the Amish community goes through “running around” the world before coming back to the church. Yesterday, I heard a new phrase: “frumspringa.”

Frum is a Yiddish word meaning traditionally observant. Like many Yiddish words, we need and don’t have an English equivalent. You could see an ultra-orthodox Jew in Williamsburg in New York wearing a black coat and black hat in the Eastern European style on a summer day and say, “Wow, he’s pretty frum” just as you could find a devoted Democrat voting Republican in a local primary explaining, “I’m not such a frum democrat.” Will I refuse to eat in a non-kosher kitchen? “I’m not that frum.” Did she go to college and start reading the Bible everyday? In an American-izing of the phrase, she is “frumming out.”

So a frumspringa is exactly what we need, those of us who are in college, who are looking to be serious in our Judaism, who are approaching the Day of Judgment in a tradition without clear divine retribution for sin, who want to lead normal, adult, productive lives, who want meaning, who don’t know where we are going.

Around this time of year the Jewish liturgy is full of this line from Lamentations (5:21): “Take us back, O Lord, to Yourself/ And let us come back;/ Renew our days as of old!” Or maybe this isn’t just a Jewish impulse. As Augustine says in his Confessions, “Lord, make me chaste – but not yet.”

“Madonna tells Peres she is ‘in love with Israel.’” The other day I came across this headline on the English language website of “Yediot Ahronot,” a popular Israeli newspaper. At first glance, it appeared to be reporting that the international pop superstar had a crush and had been confiding in Israeli president Shimon Peres.

That was not the case. Madonna, along with a smattering of other celebrities, including Demi and Ashton, was visiting Israel over the Jewish New Year for a Kabbalah conference. She and Peres, whose role as president is ceremonial, met up to chat about the peace and exchange autographed books. Luckily for us the event is documented by a series of photographs, the most awkward of which features a beaming Madonna flanked by Peres, whose eyes are closed, and husband Guy Ritchie, who looks supremely uncomfortable.

Madonna has been practicing Kabbalah, esoteric Jewish mysticism, for several years now, and even took on the Hebrew name Esther. My Grandmother, whose name is Esther, was thrilled: “I always liked my name!” she gleefully declared at the time.

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I studied Theology and Government at Georgetown, a double major that has landed me in the lucrative field of . . . Graduate School.

Perhaps because of my academic background, I frequently find myself on the receiving end of unsolicited religious confessions of all varieties. People like to tell me things. Spiritual things.

Agnostic? Southern Baptist? Jew for Jesus? I’m your girl.

For example, Upon hearing of my theology training, I’ve been informed by an acquaintance that Jesus talks to him. Fascinating.

I’ve been told by a friend that there is no God. Oh really?

I have been told everything else in between.

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The preparations going into Ramadan were always more mental than physical. Knowing that you are not going to get to eat anything until exactly 6:59 PM or whatever time the sunset happens to be on that day. A friend of mine said this past week that he never feels hungry during Ramadan, and on a normal day, he would have needed some coffee at least by his first class.

While I don’t agree with him (my hunger happens in waves, attacking me around lunchtime, resting until right before iftaar, or the opening of the fast), I can completely understand what he’s talking about. For some reason, even though I’m still hungry, I won’t have any sort of inclination to combat the hunger or thirst. I let it mull around in my stomach, enticing it even while I’m cooking my iftaar food (which always end up being a little too salty because you can’t taste anything).

And then there are the precautions that you end up developing. Waking up at suhr, the meal before the fast in the time before the prayer at sunrise, and drinking half a day’s worth of water and eating as much protein as you can to last you through the day. Taking a nap after class or work and before sunset, letting your body rest a little to catch up with the rest of you. All of the little physical things that assist you mentally.

Sometimes, Ramadan gets difficult for me, it’s true. There were times, when I was younger, when I had found it cruel or pointless. When I lapsed into these moments, my father’s voice would come into my head. He always used to say that we should think of the child that keeps his or her fasts every day of the year. That this child does not even get to eat when the sun goes down. There are millions of these children all over the world, whose malnourishment fully exceeds my own. And then even though throughout the day I may face slight bouts of dehydration, it is nothing compared to the mass of people in the world facing hunger and thirst, whether Muslim or not.

While sharing my usual cup of coffee and Sunday paper with friends this week, I couldn’t help but notice the Nonfiction Best Sellers in the New York Times Book Review. There at number five, under four memoirs, was It’s All About Him by Denise Jackson with Ellen Vaughn, described as “The wife of the country music star Alan Jackson describes how religious faith restored her marriage” (which by the way is super awkward if she ever gets divorced). This alone didn’t surprise me. Scripture is used to treat all sorts of problems, from debt to drug addiction.

But then juxtaposed immediately underneath this clearly Christian book at number six was God is Not Great, Christopher Hitchens’ anti-religion polemic. Curious isn’t it? Is the American reading public schizophrenic?

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It is that time of year again. Ramadan begins Thursday. I am once again filled with excitement.

Why, one would ask, would I be remotely excited about starving myself from sunrise to sundown every day for thirty days? Well, besides the spiritual cleansing, the time I give myself to nap the afternoon away during this month, and the thankfulness that I feel that I actually have food at the end of the day, I can’t really say.

It might be the food, for Ramadan food is what I always look forward to -- the savory pastries my mother sends with me to my apartment and the cookies I treat myself to after the sun sets.

It could be getting up before the sun, drinking tea while watching the city wake up, watching an empty street turn into a bustling environment.

And, perhaps the most plausible reason, it could be Eid-al-Fitr, “Little Eid” as it’s called my family, the celebration after a month of hard work in Ramadan. A day filled with food and family. Some of the best parts of growing up were on Little Eid, wearing itchy Pakistani clothes and playing tag in various houses of relatives.

So the autumn chill could not have come sooner in Chicago, because, for Muslims, holiday season is here.

A few Sundays ago, my mom dropped me off at the gargantuan local Southern Baptist church, warning me as I got out of the car clutching a notebook, “Don’t kneel!” My mom has a permanent mental image of me being forced to bow before a crucifix. Misguided warning notwithstanding, the fact that my mother was willing to facilitate my attending church at all is another step towards her coming to terms with the fact that her nice Jewish daughter likes to study Christianity.

As committed American Jews, my family and many others like us have a precarious relationship with Christianity. It is the religion of the vast majority of the people around us, but we are afraid to learn about it or even to encounter it outside of secular environments because of a collective memory of forced conversion and persecution.

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I see London I see France…
“This rayon bikini is not underpants!”

While none of us would ever consider walking around in public in underwear, the woman’s bikini –one bar bra, the other panty –merely has to contain some Spandex and Rayon within its weave for it to be suddenly considered appropriate for public wearing. What is it about that puny, stretchy fabric that allows women to declare themselves liberated from clothes, while the same amount of coverage from their Hanes too over exposing?

We live in a world where a single mother dancing around in her underwear for money is front page news. I’ve seen the story of Britney Spears’ VMA performance a dozen times today from various media outlets, who have unanimously decided that her performance left much to be desired. In the clip, Ms. Spears appears lifeless, trying so desperately to look sexy that she ends up looking pathetic. She is the mother of two young babies, presumably in the care of nannies or her ex-husband as she halfheartedly gyrated for millions. Did we do this to her?

Pop culture –sold to us on TV, in music, in stores and online –wants our generation to believe that we are entitled to indulgence at every bend, and that no behavior can be deemed as inappropriate. Stripping, once relegated to the dank corners of society because it demeans the dignity of both the performer and the consumer, is now broadcast as business as usual. But Spears’ mood and performance belied the tragedy of exploitation all too well.

How could our culture decide that enough is enough? Well, for starters, read this article entitled How The Bad Girl Became Good. And take a look at Wendy Shalit’s new book, whose title, Girls Gone Mild, does not sufficiently express the power of modesty. The Pink Nun proves that modesty can be, of all things, a wee bit naughty. Yes, Sr. Purity insists that it’s never too late, even for those of us who have been a bit bad. Did you hear that, Ms. Spears?

We wore T-shirts that said “We are all Professor Finkelstein”, chanting together in humid Chicago weather. That morning, we had sat around the Quad, soaking in the sun as well as Finkelstein’s words. He mentioned a song that I quite like by the Brazilian Girls called “Die Gedanken Sind Frei”. The thoughts are free. No matter what you take away from people, they will always have their thoughts.

Three hours later, Professor Finkelstein resigned from his position as Political Science professor at our university. It is a great loss to our university. I regret not having signed up for one of his classes when his career here was more stable. I think I would have learned a lot from them.

Just from this one free class in the Quad, I realized the importance of our thoughts. People will try to keep you quiet, insult you, and in other ways discredit you. But they cannot take away your thoughts. That is where their power over you stops.

I will take that lesson with me as I attempt to reverse the detrimental image of Islam in many areas in the world today. This image of Islam that has been deteriorating since this month six years ago. The truths that I hold about Islam will always exist, and I should continue to fight for them. I am not the first person to fight for these truths. Nor am I alone. And it is for that that I am thankful.

From a 2005 article in Spirituality and Health Magazine, Brother David Steindl-Rast asks: (You must register for free to read the article but it’s worth the effort):

Does your view of God build you up? Does it give you courage to explore and be creative and make you open and welcoming to those who hold other views? Or does what you have learned about God make you feel worthless, guilty, timid, or skeptical?

When I was a child, I used to lie in bed at night and stare out of my window at the stars. The Jesus I learned about taught humans lessons for living on earth, but that God seemed so far away when I looked up at the sky’s enormity. How could this small God I learned about in church be large enough for this wide, mysterious universe, I wondered. My only answer was to push those questions out of my mind. They were too scary to think about, so I chose doctrine instead.

When I was nine, I wrote a letter to God. Drawing inspiration from the tooth fairy, I told God that I would leave the letter to Him under my pillow, and if He really was God, that when I awoke, the letter would be gone. Of my plan I told no one, not even my parents.

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Georgetown is the type of place where students debate politics at parties. While I’ve never heard the question asked “Is that beer produced and manufactured under environmentally sustainable and socially responsible conditions?” I wouldn’t put it past my fellow Hoyas. A smaller number of us, self-titled ‘religion dorks,’ were known to take on philosophers like William James over glasses of wine. An enthusiast of mind altering substances himself, I imagine James would have tipped his spiritual hat to our noble cause.

At one party last year, I spotted someone whom I had never met, but whose religious reputation preceded him. This robust young man was a former Georgetown student who joined the seminary and was well known in our social circle for his conservative religious and political beliefs. Since we had mutual friends, and I was feeling religiously confrontational, I made a high-heeled walk towards him.

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