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?

So here we are again. We are a country in tremendous crisis and it seems anything we can do to deflect from the difficult conversations we need to have we will do. We are in a war that we can neither win nor afford to lose and we have a financial system that is damaged because of the greed of everyone from hedge fund managers to investment bankers, to commercial bankers to real estate sales people to home buyers. We have a health system that is bankrupting businesses and the government at the same time that millions of Americans can not afford health insurance. We have an education system that places us behind far too many western countries, have a country filled with repressed and not so repressed racial anger, an infrastructure that is rotting, a debate about immigration that is mostly fear mongering and illusion, have a prison system with more people incarcerated than any country in the world including China -- and we are worrying about whether politicians, in this case McCain, who has already, for political reasons, changed his position on taxes and immigration and proudly taken the support from a Pastor Hagee who has spouted vitriolic hatred for Catholics, should renounce his “spiritual guide” (is this a joke?) who spews hate against the now largest religion in the world. A presidential candidate running during a war against a very virulent and violent strand of Islam has as his spiritual guide a pastor who says Islam should be destroyed – yikes, it is like a cross between Twilight Zone and Saturday Night Live.

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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?

So here we go again – a religious act that polarizes. The Pope, a leader of 1.1 billion people decides to officially convert to Catholicism a well known Italian Moslem journalist on Easter, one of the holiest days of the Christian calendar, in front of millions of people. While the Vatican proclaimed the innocence of this international act it is not surprising that the reactions were swift and harsh. On all sides opinions were predictable with every opinion containing a partial truth that ignored, either consciously or unconsciously, other truths.

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