Clueless as usual where Catholicism is concerned, the secular media have tended to treat Benedict XVI’s action in political terms, as a power grab. This interpretation ignores the fact that the Anglican traditionalists most likely to take advantage of the new provision for “personal ordinariates” have been pleading for something like this for years. The Pope has simply responded to those pleas.

But secular journalists aren’t the only ones to get it wrong. Catholic voices also have been raised in this chorus of callousness. Consider the final paragraph of an article in the London Tablet, a reliable platform for progressive Catholic views: “It is hard to see how this new development will do anything but further sow division in the Anglican Communion and confusion among Catholics who have long been committed to the work of ecumenism.”

As to Anglican “division”: the departure of Anglicans who’ve anguished for a long time over the direction of their fractured communion is much more likely to restore a semblance of unity to that deeply troubled body than it is to create more division.

As to Catholic “confusion”: the confusion admittedly felt by many Catholics about the nature and intent of ecumenism is largely a product of a post-Vatican II interpretation that reduces the ecumenical enterprise to endless dialogue leading—God knows how—to some sort of corporate merger in an unimaginable future. Confusion is a mild word for it.

Most of all, though, such critical comments miss the fundamental point—the relief potentially afforded to those Anglican groups most directly affected by Benedict’s generous gesture. That is best understood in human terms.

A year ago in Rome I had a substantial chat with an Anglican woman who is a member of one of these groups. Moved by her faith and her ardent desire for communion with the Holy See, I told her at the end of our conversation: “I can only hope and pray that you get what you want—and get it soon.”

It’s often said that conservative Anglicans are upset about things like women bishops and openly homosexual bishops. No doubt they are. But much else is involved.

Several years ago an American woman—a contented member of the Episcopal Church—told me an anecdote concerning an Episcopal clergyman which she insisted was true. It seems that this gentleman, in a fit of whimsy, was seen one day to give communion to a dog. The lady seemed to think that was just fine. I was appalled—at what had happened, at her approval of it, and at what it disclosed concerning the state of Episcopalian belief in the Eucharist.

A man who’d been an Episcopalian for years but finally came over to Rome once shared a useful insight with me. “The trouble with those people,” he said of his former co-religionists, “is that they’re sentimental.”

A number of present Anglicans seem to agree. I am glad that Pope Benedict has offered these troubled believers a congenial way out of the dilemma in which their sentimental Anglican brethren placed them. As for those who don’t like what the Pope has done, I suggest they remove their blinders and congratulate him on an act of Christian charity.

I have no intention of rehashing the furor over the Nobel committee’s selection of Obama. Since this is the kind of simple, one-dimensional issue that media love to go on about, journalists have had great fun with it, pro and con. For my money, The Washington Post, a certified Obama supporter, got it right in calling the peace prize “odd” and remarking: “It is no criticism of Mr. Obama to note that, barely nine months into his presidency, his goals are still goals.” Enough said.

For people who’ve been confused by things happening at the Vatican since early this year, the Nobel committee’s action seemed eerily familiar in some respects. Vatican voices have hailed the American president for months, and it hasn’t always been easy to say just why.

First it was L’Osservatore Romano, the semi-official Vatican newspaper, then more recently Cardinal Georges Cottier, an elderly Swiss churchman who was official papal theologian under Pope John Paul. The newspaper and the cardinal publicly pinned high hopes on Obama in the absence of much real achievement and despite his well publicized support for legalized abortion.

Inevitably, this has had the look of policy. But if it’s that, the roots of such a policy on the part of the Holy See are not immediately clear. What exactly does the Vatican expect to get from Obama? An Israeli-Palestinian settlement? Meaningful steps toward nuclear disarmament? These surely are worthy goals, but other American presidents before now have pursued them, with limited success so far.

Note, though, that L’Osservatore Romano was critical of the Nobel to Obama. Perhaps earlier criticism has sunk in at its editorial offices.

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Denver recently had the courage to stand up and say: Enough. In an article published in an Italian magazine, he took polite but strong exception to Cardinal Cottier’s dismissive view of Catholics who criticized Notre Dame University’s decision to give President Obama an honorary degree last spring. The critics included 80 bishops and some 300,000 American Catholics who signed petitions of protest.

Remarking that “the pastoral realities of any country are best known by the local bishops,” Archbishop Chaput said Catholic frustration with the university’s action in honoring Obama had nothing to do with “whether he is a good or bad man” and everything to do with his “deeply troubling views on abortion law and related social issues.”

Meanwhile, things are rapidly coming to a head in Congress over health care reform in general and the issue of abortion coverage in particular.

President Obama has promised that there will be no government funding of abortion and any reform program will include a conscience clause allowing abortion opponents to opt out. But the key legislative proposals in play at present provide for abortion funding and have no conscience clause.

Will Obama deliver on his promises or will he not? Time is running out. Maybe those Catholics who are eager to pay homage to our pro-abortion president—including those at the Vatican—should wait to see what actually happens. Unless, like the Nobel committee, they think promises without performance are good enough.

Nirenberg is a professor of history at the University of Chicago. His analysis is a temperate and thought-provoking look at the encyclical that merits consideration in its own right.

He begins by noting that although people on both the left and the right have been free in their criticism of the Pope’s document, “nobody is much interested in debating the crucial argument…the fundamental claim that economic exchange requires love.” Perhaps, he speculates, that’s because religious believers see “the economic relevance of God’s love” as “self-evident” while non-believers consider it “absurd.” In both cases, there is a tendency to dismiss the idea as a platitude.

Yet from Plato to Marx, Nirenberg points out, the competing claims of self-interest and forgetfulness of self to be the guiding principle of economic activity have been debated. Only in modern times, and preeminently in the West, has self-interest triumphed. “It is this victory that Benedict XVI is questioning,” he says.

Nor is Benedict the first pope to do that; the questioning extends back at least to Leo XIII and his classic social encyclical of 1890, Rerum Novarum, and can be found also in major teaching documents of pontiffs like Pius XI, Paul VI, and, most recently before Benedict, John Paul II, whom Nirenberg quotes at length.

The professor speaks respectfully of what he calls “the scope of Benedict’s ambition,” which, as set out in Caritas in Veritate, he describes this way: “His idea is that every act of exchange should approximate the gratuitous gift of divine love. Every coin should approximate a Eucharist.”

Nirenberg does not embrace this idea, but neither does he reject it out of hand. He holds that it should be taken seriously—far more so than it has to date—in order truly to grasp what Benedict’s encyclical fundamentally is saying.

But he does have a bone to pick with the Pope. It is that in Benedict’s estimation only Catholicism possesses intellectual and spiritual resources capable of sustaining an approach to economic life grounded in selflessness. According to Nirenberg, this is unacceptable religious exclusivism that creates an insuperable obstacle to persons of other faiths who otherwise might wish to draw upon the Pope’s thinking.

Whether this is or isn’t an accurate critique of Benedict can be left to another day. Nirenberg’s unexceptionable point is that religious teachings in these pluralistic times must be presented in “a way that seeks to transcend the boundaries of the traditions that produced them.” If “transcend” here means “reach out beyond,” his point is well taken. But if it instead means “put aside” or “abandon,” he is making an ecclesiological assertion that no self-respecting religious tradition could possibly accept.

At the very least, it seems to me, if persons of other faiths do not accept papal claims for the Catholic Church (and pretty clearly they do not, for otherwise they would become Catholics), it doesn’t follow that they are thereby prevented from drawing whatever they do find true and helpful from the thought of Benedict or any pope. In the present instance, Professor Nirenberg (whose religious affiliation I do not know) appears to have done that with success, and for that we owe him thanks.

These contrasting reactions by Rome to American military ventures struck me then and strike me now as reflecting eminently sound moral judgments. In light of recent events, it’s useful to consider why that is so.

Afghanistan was and is a just war. In early 2002, the U.S. had lately suffered the vicious 9/11 terrorist attacks plotted by al-Qaeda from the sanctuary provided by its Taliban protectors. Without a prompt American military response, there surely would have been more of the same.

In Iraq, however, the puzzle from the start has centered on why we were going to war there. Saddam Hussein was a bloody tyrant and no friend of America, but he hadn’t attacked the U.S. or its allies, and despite the dire warnings of the Bush administration there was no compelling evidence that he meant to do so, with weapons of mass destruction or without them.

So why invade Iraq? Six going on seven years later, many explanations have been offered but none of them has had staying power—beyond the embarrassingly obvious one of bad judgment.

Here, then, is the heart of the situation: legitimate self-defense in Afghanistan and a big question mark in Iraq. But there’s more to the story than that.

Once the allies had the Taliban on the run in 2002, a terrible mistake was made. Instead of pushing ahead to win a solid, lasting victory, America turned its attention and the bulk of its military resources to Iraq, leaving the wrapping-up in Afghanistan—as was supposed—to undermanned NATO forces and the CIA.

The results as we see them now were predictable. In Iraq, a shaky semi-peace, with the U.S. anxious to pack up and leave. Soon it will be up to the Iraqis to work things out—or fight them out—for themselves. This is exactly the outcome that was probable all along. Does it really justify all the killing and maiming, along with the destabilization of a crucial sector of the Middle East?

In Afghanistan, meanwhile, the fighting drags on in what even American military commanders have taken to calling a deteriorating situation. President Obama has begun increasing the troop levels, and the generals are asking for even more. Whether they will get it, in the face of growing unhappiness with the war back home, is anybody’s guess.

Morally speaking, what should one make of all this? I reason as follows.

Afghanistan was a just war at the start, and nothing has happened to change that today. The same overriding consideration applies now that applied in early 2002—the need to spike the terrorist threat in its heartland. American failure would be a calamitous setback for the U.S. and a godsend for al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

But for America to succeed in Afghanistan, the war must be waged seriously. The one thing the Obama administration mustn’t do—because it would be a military and moral disaster—is to carry out a token military buildup that would be sure to fail. Fighting a just war halfheartedly isn’t the way of moral sensitivity but the way of national cowardice. If we are going to fight this war at all—and unfortunately we must—we need to fight to win.

This problem surfaced early on the key issue of cost. Obama insisted that his approach would save money, but the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office testified it would enormously increase the deficit. Where adding and subtracting are concerned, who do you believe — a politician anxious to make his mark or professional number crunchers? The number crunchers win hands-down.

But if a president is not serious about the numbers — and Obama isn’t the first president of whom that might be said — it gets harder to take seriously other claims he makes.

Consider the health plan’s provision for end of life counseling for elderly people (an idea now apparently dropped from the bill in the Senate). The president was right to reject the claim that this meant "death panels." But, as even liberal commentators pointed out, the proposal unquestionably did have coercive overtones wildly inappropriate in this context.

Something similar can be said of the scheme to send nurses into the homes of low-income pregnant women to counsel them about, among other things, "increasing birth intervals between pregnancies." There are several ways to increase those intervals, including abortion. Is that what those nurse-authority figures will talk about?

Or take abortion. The president lately has accused people who say his plan provides for abortion coverage with "bearing false witness." But analysts of the plan repeatedly have shown that it does indeed open the door to abortion, with government helping to pay the cost. That isn’t a matter of opinion or interpretation but objective fact, and it’s Obama who’s doing the fictionalizing here, a circumstance profoundly disturbing in itself.

The abortion lobby has provided negative confirmation of all this by redoubling its efforts to trash prolifers for trying to keep abortion out of health care. Leaving a White House strategy session, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards said proudly that "PP [Planned Parenthood] supporters are speaking up for reform in the states." Naturally they are: Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion provider after all, and it knows a potential bonanza when it sees one.

There is, however, another, still more basic problem with the quality and candor of presidential communication on the abortion issue. Obama has often given assurances that he wants to reduce the number of abortions. That worthy intention was a major element of his commencement address at Notre Dame last spring, and his Catholic apologists have repeated it time and time again.

Unfortunately, everything the president has done with regard to abortion up to now has the effect of increasing the number of abortions, not reducing it. That includes his steps to restore funding to groups involved in abortion overseas and to resume tax-paid abortions in the District of Columbia — and now his health plan.

Would Obama care to say something about that? With good reason, Americans have gotten tired of having presidents play fast and loose with facts. As things now stand, the Great Communicator in the White House would inspire more confidence — on health care and much else — if his words consistently reflected reality.

“Look at what?”

“It’s a full-page ad mentioning the bishops’ conference and a lot of other groups. Something about energy.”

I took the paper and pondered the ad. Paid for by the Environmental Defense Action Fund, it was a slightly sneering message of support for the “American Clean Energy and Security Act” then up for a vote in the House of Representatives. (It passed narrowly in late June.)

The sneers were aimed at the American Petroleum Institute and Exxon, which were said to oppose the bill. Listed as “publically” (sic) backing it were the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and other organizations.

“I have no strong opinion on this bill,” I told my wife. True enough. But I’d hazard the guess that this complex legislation is well-intentioned and, if enacted, will be an expensive expansion of the government’s power to use coercion on behalf of what it considers socially desirable purposes.

“But,” I went on, “I do know that this is a good example of something that drives lots of people crazy—the bishops’ conference taking stands on detailed policy questions that bishops, as bishops, don’t know anything special about. I imagine this is just something the staff wanted to do, and the staff got their way—so here it is.”

That’s hardly news. In the years I worked for the bishops’ conference (1969-1987), there was much more of it. Wiser heads among the bishops have toned things down since then, but the old instinct for the national organization to toss in its two cents dies hard.

Does that mean the bishops and their organization should keep mum on important matters like reducing pollution, promoting alternative energy sources, and hold down energy costs? No, it doesn’t.

I agree entirely with Pope Benedict XVI’s statement, in his new encyclical on economic justice, that “the Church has a responsibility towards creation and she must assert this responsibility in the public sphere.” If the bishops wish to add their voices to the chorus of support for worthy environmental goals, that’s swell with me. I support them, too.

But I do draw the line at the endorsement of one specific legislative blueprint for the how of it. Not that how to protect the environment, promote alternative energy, and hold down costs aren’t important questions—they are. But I cannot bend my mind to accept the idea that churchmen, as churchmen, know any more than anybody else about the “how” of these things. Let the bishops endorse sound principles and leave writing the directions to those with expertise.

The Environmental Defense Action Fund’s ad itself contained an object lesson in the perils of ignoring that simple rule. Among groups listed as backing the environmental bill was the National Council of Churches. The NCC was an important presence in American life 50 years ago—people listened when it spoke. Not any more. And although there are a number of reasons, one is the NCC’s self-destructive practice of taking stands beyond its competence on policy matters. Let the bishops’ conference beware.

There will still be lots of thing on which the bishops and the rest of the religious community have a right and duty to speak—things like the sanctity of unborn life, the death penalty, marriage and the family, the duties of rich nations to poor ones, religious liberty and human rights. That’s a large enough agenda for anybody.

But Brown’s secret code, the 2000 year chain of clues supposedly leading to the true identity of Jesus and his holy grail, is simply a parody of the real mystery embedded in history.  The writer of this authentic code is the Holy Spirit and the code book is the Bible.  For thousands of years people have “searched the Scriptures” under the guidance of the same Spirit who inspired them, looking for connections between people, places, things.  They’ve discovered one coherent story of salvation history amidst many different books, written in different genres and styles, by many different human writers over the course of centuries.

This Sunday, the Church has put together readings to bring out connections that many of us would fail to see without a little help.  Just about every Christian has heard the story of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, in fact numerous times.  But we’ve probably overlooked the fact that they were barley loaves.  What significance could that have?

Plenty.  First of all, someone in the Old Testament had multiplied loaves, and they too were barley loaves.  Elisha was the successor of Elijah, the greatest of all the prophets.  Elijah had multiplied flour and oil to save a widow and her son from starvation.  Elisha did a bit better than his master, multiplying 20 barley loaves so as to feed 100, with some even left over.  But in the Gospel, Jesus multiplies 5 barley loaves and feeds 5,000, leaving 12 baskets left over.  We’re talking serious one-upmanship here.

So here’s one clear message: Jesus is a prophet greater than even Elijah and Elisha.

But there is someone else who is referenced here, though you have to look a bit harder to see him.  Did anyone else in the Old Testament provide bread for God’s people in the wilderness?  Of course!  Moses and the manna.  What is the symbolic number associated with Moses?   There are five books of Moses which are called the Torah or Pentateuch.  No wonder Jesus starts with five barley loaves.  He is transforming the Mosaic Law into something much bigger, greater, and more nourishing.  Moses predicted that God would raise up a prophet like himself (Deuteronomy 18:18).  The people got the point–Jesus had to slip away to avoid them making him king (John 6:14-15).

But let’s get back to those barley loaves.  There is even more symbolism here to probe.  Barley is the first grain to be harvested in the spring, and the feast of unleavened bread celebrates the first fruits of the barley harvest.  Jesus performs this miracle as Passover approaches, and will go on later in John 6 to explain that he himself is the bread of life.  The miracle of the loaves points backwards to great events in the Old Testament to give us clues as to who Jesus really is.  But it also points forward to the future, to what Jesus will do in the upper room on the night before he died and which will made present again in every Eucharist.  The people recline where there is much grass, verdant pastures (Psalm 23), and the Good Shepherd, after giving thanks (eucharistia in biblical Greek) feeds them with rich fare that causes their cup to run over with blessings of not only earthly satisfaction, but eternal life.

How many baskets of scraps are left over?  Twelve, the mystical number symbolizing God’s people.  Twelve tribes, twelve patriarchs, and now twelve apostles, the patriarchs of the New Israel gathering up the remnants of a feast that will be the new covenant meal of God’s new people, the celebration of their deliverance, the new food for the journey to the true promised land, heaven.

But how about the fish?  What do they symbolize?  You’ll have to do some research and figure that one out for yourself!

Thus it’s without any wish to choke off the debate that I note two kinds of response to the encyclical that strike me as more or less unhelpful.

One is the claim that on a number of the issues discussed in the document, the Pope comes down somewhere to the left of President Barack Obama. The other is the explanation that, where the encyclical says things the commentator doesn’t agree with, faceless Vatican bureaucrats rather than the Pope are to blame.

Take those remarks one at a time.

To begin with, saying that the Pope comes down to the left (or to the right, for that matter) of the American president is embarrassingly parochial. Should the encyclical then be judged in France by situating it left or right of President Sarkozy, in Germany left or right of Chancellor Merkel, in Great Britain left or right of Prime Minister Brown? The Pope is not writing here for just one country or one part of the world, and this way of reading him smacks of crass chauvinism.

Moreover, even on its own terms the remark is meaningless. Let’s suppose that Pope Benedict and President Obama are more or less in agreement on the analysis of economic issues and more or less in disagreement on the question of legal protection for unborn human life. (As far as I can tell, that is roughly the case.)

The crucial — and remarkably creative — thing about the encyclical nevertheless is the powerful case made by the Pope for the inseparability of what he calls “life ethics” and “social ethics.” This flows naturally from the emphasis — here and in other documents of the papal magisterium — on integral human development, the development of persons in relation to the totality of human goods, as the fundamental measure of social and economic policy.

To say that the Pope is to the left of Obama on some things and to the right on others misses this fundamental point.

But so does the second reaction: blaming things in the encyclical that you don’t happen to like on apparatchiks in the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, as if the Pope were unaware of what his document says or went along with it under protest.

Consider. Several times in the last year and a half the publication of Caritas in Veritate was said on the record to be imminent and then was postponed. The reason each time was that Pope Benedict wasn’t satisfied with the draft and wanted it revised to bring it in line with the facts of the global economic crisis.

Whatever anyone makes of this, it hardly suggests a pope who is disengaged from the writing process and does not know (or doesn’t care) what’s going on. On the contrary, it makes it clear that Benedict was closely involved in the drafting process and very much in control. The final product, one can safely conclude, says what it says because that’s what he wants it to say. Critics need to face up to that instead of blaming apparatchiks.

All of which is simply by way of clearing out some underbrush so that the discussion can proceed. Caritas in Veritate and its author deserve as much.

But a fight about what?

In his Notre Dame commencement address in May, President Barack Obama declared support for a “sensible” conscience clause to excuse those who object to abortion from being involved in the procedure. Soon after, two friends, both prolife, were arguing about what that meant.

One said Obama had made a big concession. The other denied that proposition. He pointed to pro-abortion steps already taken by the Obama administration that violate the consciences of pro-lifers by using their taxes for that purpose, as well as the president’s declared intention to rescind Bush-era regulations affirming and clarifying conscience clause laws on the books since 1973.

Then he added:

“I’ve spent some time figuring out where Obama really stands on abortion, and now I think I know. He believes that every woman has an unconditional, intrinsic right to it. No obstruction or impediment can be allowed to get in the way of exercising that right.

“Within that framework, a ’sensible’ conscience clause is acceptable. But a conscience clause that in any way inconvenienced a woman in having an abortion—for instance, by requiring her to go to the next hospital over instead of the hospital nearest her home—would not be allowable.”

His friend was unconvinced. “We should exploit the political potential of Obama’s pledge,” he insisted. “With so much at stake, including the integrity of the medical profession and the livelihood or conscience of Catholic physicians, his words can’t be neglected on the plausible ground that they’re meaningless. They should be wielded like a club over his head, and if he fails to honor them, the club should strike a blow to his halo.”

Both points of view will be tested in the months to come. Congress and the administration are moving full steam ahead on health care reform, with October the admittedly optimistic target date for enactment.

By contrast with the Clintons’ bumbling in their failed attempt at reform, Obama & Co. have acted with great subtlety and skill. They enjoy the advantage of widespread agreement that reform of some sort is needed (but opinions differ on what will work and what won’t). And, to top it all off, the mindless killing of late-term abortionist George Tiller by an anti-abortion zealot has given the reform campaign a martyr. Enactment of some version of “reform” may not be a certainty, but it’s a very good bet.

There’s little doubt that Obama and the congressional Democrats will seek to include abortion coverage in the plan, and given their dominance in Washington they’re likely to succeed. Very soon, we may all be debating what a “sensible” conscience clause looks like.

Meanwhile the complex perils of finessing the abortion issue are on painful display in Boston, where the archdiocese has agonized for months over an attempt to find an acceptable way for Catholic hospitals to participate in a state health care scheme that includes abortion, without complicity on the hospitals’ part. Good luck to them—but maybe they should try something easy like squaring the circle instead.

The archbishop smiled sadly and shook his head. "Six months from now it will all be forgotten, and everything will be business as usual," he said. It was clear that by "business as usual" he wasn’t suggesting that the state of American Catholicism had been all that good before the Notre Dame-Obama flap.

Maybe he’s right, although for once I hope he isn’t. Obama’s feel-good remarks at the Notre Dame graduation changed nothing of substance. But I agree with White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel: you shouldn’t waste a good crisis. In that spirit, here are three important lessons that can—and must—be learned from this extremely painful episode.

The first lesson, familiar by now, is that American Catholics are deeply divided. The Obama invitation was yet another occasion for two very different groups of Catholics to split over something serious.

The poll numbers were somewhat contradictory, but the overall picture is clear. Generally speaking, Catholics who go to Mass weekly tended to think that Notre Dame was badly off base in paying tribute to our pro-abortion president, while Catholics who don’t go to Mass weekly tended to see it as okay. We’ve been seeing this split in Catholic ranks—those who go to Mass weekly vs. those who don’t—for many years and on many different issues, both political and religious.

I have no solution to offer, except that the split must henceforth be taken far more seriously into account than it has been up to now in pastoral planning and action. It’s just not meaningful to say, "American Catholics think this or that." The question is: Which Catholics do you mean—the ones who practice their religion or the ones who don’t?

The second lesson is that Catholic colleges and universities face a choice. A couple of weeks before the Notre Dame event, I was discussing that with a notably well informed Catholic editor. The bottom line, we agreed, is that these days many Catholic schools—Notre Dame being a prime example—claim Catholic identity without practicing accountability to the Church.

It doesn’t work. Identity and accountability—it’s a case of both or neither. Notre Dame, Georgetown, Boston College and the rest have to choose.

The third lesson is that the bishops also face a choice. Will they fight to uphold the Catholic identity of Catholic institutions or let them go without protest? Many already are gone, and more currently are being forced into secularization—or extinction—by economic factors and/or ideology.

Where Catholic identity remains a viable option, however, the bishops still have a little time to exert themselves in its defense. Otherwise they’d best resign themselves to its all-but-universal loss. Merely hoping for the best won’t work.

If these lessons are learned, the Notre Dame controversy may do some good. But if my friend the archbishop is right in predicting business as usual within six months, the future of Catholic identity in higher education and other areas of the Church’s infrastructure isn’t bright. How very sad if it turns out like that.