Bill's 'Faith Matters' Weblog

Equality for Muslim women: 12-18-09

In many ways I admire religious pioneers -- those people who, ahead of the curve, challenge traditional religious teachings that frankly need to be challenged.

I think, for instance, of William Wilberforce, whose understanding of Christianity led him to lead the opposition to slavery in England.

There are many other examples from different faiths and different cultures, but the one I learned about most recently was a late 19th century Albanian Muslim who, though arguably patriarchal, had started to push for equal treatment of women.

A Baylor University historian recently has uncovered information about Semseddin Sami Frasheri, a novelist and playwright, that suggests he was pushing women's equality in Islam long before it became more popular to do so in our era.

The Baylor history professor, George Gawrych, has written an article about this. It will appear in the January 2010 issue of Middle Eastern Studies, a British academic journal.

A Baylor press release about this says: "In his research on Albanians under Ottoman rule, Gawrych stumbled across Semseddin Sami's bold ideas, written in a treatise entitled Women, published in 1879. Intrigued by his findings, Gawrych then read the Albanian's novel on arranged marriages and studied the entries about women in Semseddin Sami's six-volume encyclopedia on the world. Those three sources formed the foundation of Gawrych's analysis of Semseddin Sami's thoughts on women, Gawrych said."

By highlighting Gawrych's work, I don't want to leave the impression that Islam from the beginning until Semseddin Sami's time considered women second-class citizens always and everywhere. Not at all. A book to read on this subject is 'Believing Women' in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur’an, by Asma Barlas.

Modern scholars of Islam say that the Qur’an is the only sacred text to give women rights to inheritance, to own property, to keep their own wages, to create marriage contracts beneficial to themselves and to receive material and physical support from husbands. So Islam in the beginning was in many ways liberating to women, despite some problematic verses in the Qur'an and despite the fact that in many ways the patriarchal cultures into which Islam moved soon overwhelmed Islam's liberating impulses for women.

But I found it intriguing to find this liberating impulse expressed in the late 19th century by Semseddin Sami. One can hope that the more positive views he expressed about the equality of women eventually will become normative everywhere.

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OPPRESSING RELIGION AROUND THE GLOBE

A new study outlines the ways in which country after country limits religious freedom. I'll have more to say about this subject next week, but I wanted to alert you to the Pew Research Center's new study, "Global Restrictions on Religion." This has to do with a fundamental human right, and Americans cannot stand by silently while that right is being so wantonly violated.

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P.S.: Two Episcopal priest friends of mine sustained no serious injuries this week when the car in which they were riding together was struck by a suspect involved in a high-speed chase. For the story and a TV interview with them, click here. It makes my knees weak to think of how close they came to serious injury or worse.

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ANOTHER P.S.: Time for choosing holiday gifts is running out, and I want to recommend that you give my new book, They Were Just People: Stories of Rescue in Poland During the Holocaust, co-written with Rabbi Jacques Cukierkorn. To read about it and find several ways of ordering it, click here. And remember, all the royalties go to Holocaust-related charities, so feel good about buying lots of copies.

'A Christmas Carol' at 166: 12-17-09

As you know, the list of ways in which people celebrate religious holidays is long indeed, and this is especially true of Christmas -- which nowadays is really two holidays, a winter secular holiday and a religious celebration of the birth of Jesus.

The problem is that we mix the two all up and confuse and madden people. But that's perhaps a story for another day.

Today I want to take note of one way people have commemorated Christmas for a 166 years -- by reading A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (depicted here). The work was first published on this date in 1843.

I've seen the play several times and have, of course, read it, and I've often wondered exactly why it's such a favorite and why it became a classic. After all, it has precious little to do with the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. It presents a bizarre vision of a haunting afterlife. And it seems to promote what theologians call "works righteousness," which is the idea that somehow you can do things that will earn God's favor and earn salvation, despite the Christian teaching that salvation is a gift of grace.

And yet there's something profoundly human and charming about the story of the old man who comes to regret his mean, penny-pinching ways. And there's something touching about the idea that it's possible to reach such people with the message that there are things in life more important than work and money.

So, in the end, I suspect that Dickens' work has become a favorite because it speaks to our fallen natures, our ungrateful souls that we try to keep in check but that keep rising to the surface.

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A MAJOR NEW RELIGION-POLITICS CENTER IN MISSOURI

With a gift of $30 million from the Danforth Foundation, Washington University in St. Louis is creating the John C. Danforth Center on Religion & Politics. Scholars there will study the intersection of religion and politics, no doubt in the spirit of former Missouri Sen. Jack Danforth's thoughtful approach to the subject and his desire that the nation engage in civil discourse about both politics and religion. The story to which I've linked you quotes Danforth as saying this: “Few issues are more critical to the well-being of a democracy than how religious beliefs — or the denial of such beliefs — co-exist with civic virtue and of how the ‘truths’ of the one are made compatible with the toleration and good will required by the other.”

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P.S.: The nation's religion news writers have chosen President Obama's outreach to Muslims in his Cairo speech the top religion news story for 2009. I agree with that selection.

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ANOTHER P.S.: Time for holiday gift giving is here, and I want to recommend that you give my new book, They Were Just People: Stories of Rescue in Poland During the Holocaust, co-written with Rabbi Jacques Cukierkorn. To read about it and find several ways of ordering it, click here. And remember, all the royalties go to Holocaust-related charities, so feel good about buying lots of copies.

Human trafficking warnings: 12-16-09

 
I hope you've been reading the excellent series of articles in The Kansas City Star this week, "Human Trafficking in America." Several of my former Star colleagues have spent months on this assignment. The fourth part runs today and it concludes tomorrow.

This is Pulitzer Prize material. And the Star's staff deserves commendation for the work.

I want to raise two main points about the subject of human trafficking, or slavery, today, and the first has essentially nothing directly to do with religion. It is that if newspapers disappear, so will this kind of reporting. Series like these are found in this depth only in newspapers.

The second point is to note that faith communities in this country have been concerned about human trafficking for some time, though in my view they have not been as vocal about this crime (and sin) as they need to be.

A few brief examples of what faith communities have been doing and saying:

* My own denomination, the Presbyterian Church (USA), has a separate section of its Web site devoted to human trafficking, noting that training to understand the matter from a religious perspective is available. So this is not a new issue for Presbyterians.

* Much the same thing is true for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which offers this Web site about the issue.

* Similarly, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops offers Web-based resources for helping to combat the evil of trafficking.

* And the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism also has this Web site devoted to the issue so people can find ways to work against it.

My point is that I'm really glad The Star has tackled this subject, but please be aware that many religious groups have been concerned about this for a long time. It's one more reason to pay attention to what faith communities are doing and saying. Sometimes they are like canaries in coal mines -- they warn us of things early.

(The illustration here today is from The Star’s Web site.)

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WORDS FROM THE 'GREEN POPE'

Pope Benedict XVI is becoming known as the green pope for his persistent advocacy of environmental sanity. Another example was his annual message on the Roman Catholic Church's World Day of Peace, delivered Tuesday. Good for him. He and others need to continue being a voice of faith in this matter.

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P.S.: Time for holiday gift giving is here, and I want to recommend that you give my new book, They Were Just People: Stories of Rescue in Poland During the Holocaust, co-written with Rabbi Jacques Cukierkorn. To read about it and find several ways of ordering it, click here. And remember, all the royalties go to Holocaust-related charities, so feel good about buying lots of copies.

Staging the afterlife: 12-15-09

THIS JUST IN:

Oral Roberts has died at age 91.

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Probably the first serious theological question ever uttered by one of the first human beings had to do with whether there's an afterlife.

The idea fascinates us, and each religion offers its own doctrines, beliefs, thoughts, guesses.

So I was pleased the other night to attend a play that promised to consider various afterlife possibilities. I thought it might be stimulating.

Instead, "Miss Witherspoon" at the Unicorn Theatre in Kansas City (where I've been a season ticket holder for a long time) was simply a sophomoric exploration of this whole question by a playwright, Christopher Durang, who also wrote the puerile and intentionally anti-Catholic play, "Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You." Having seen that play, I should have stayed away from this one.

I felt for the cast of "Miss Witherspoon," whose members did their best to rescue this from rampant junior highism, but their task was simply beyond them.

And how sad. I can imagine a serious (or even humorous) -- "Miss Witherspoon" was neither -- play in which the engaging questions about what happens to us after we die get dealt with in a way that would make us think and that would take religious faith and doubt seriously.

What might be the best play ever written that, at least indirectly, deals with questions of the afterlife and salvation? Would it be "Waiting for Godot" by Samuel Beckett? How would you answer this question? And if your answer is "Miss Witherspoon," I will eventually forgive you.

(The playbill here today is from the Unicorn Theatre's Web site.)

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A CEASE-FIRE IN THE WAR ON CHRISTMAS

Is it time for a truce in the so-called "War on Christmas"? This writer thinks so, and I think she's right on the money. And if you disagree, well, unMerry Christmas to you scrooges.

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P.S.: Time for holiday gift giving is here, and I want to recommend that you give my new book, They Were Just People: Stories of Rescue in Poland During the Holocaust, co-written with Rabbi Jacques Cukierkorn. To read about it and find several ways of ordering it, click here. And remember, all the royalties go to Holocaust-related charities, so feel good about buying lots of copies.

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ANOTHER P.S.: My latest column for The Presbyterian Outlook now is online. To read it, click here. To read previous Outlook columns, look for the link to them under the "Check this out" headline on the right side of this page.

Americans' spiritual mixing: 12-14-09

As many of you are aware, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life last week released a survey showing that " large numbers of Americans engage in multiple religious practices, mixing elements of diverse traditions."

You can read about the survey in detail at the link I've provided in the first paragraph.

What I want to do here today is to suggest some reasons this might be happening. This won't be an exhaustive list, but perhaps it can give us some clues.

* First, Americans seem by nature to be consumers as opposed to disciples. That' word disciple is a traditional Christian term but it means being a committed follower, and that can be true for adherents of any religion. But Americans, in my experience, seem often to shop around to find the best bargains and to find something that appeals to them. When they do this with religion, it's problematic because it tends to emphasize personal choice over spiritual or eternal truths. At any rate, given this shop-around characteristic, it's not suprising to me that Americans "engage in multiple religious practices" from different traditions.

* Next, the level of theological literacy in many faith communities is appallingly low. Being a Christian, I'm most familiar with this problem in Christianity, but it happens in many traditions. People often don't understand their own theology, so they wander around sort of blindly dabbling in this or that tradition, picking up beliefs and practices that sometimes are antithetical to their own community of faith. This is one explanation for the reality that many Christians don't understand the difference between their own doctrine of the resurrection of the body and the quite different old Greek idea of the immortality of the soul.

* Related to the previous point about theological illiteracy is the reality that people often aren't aware of depth of options in their own tradition. For instance, if they have no idea about the mystic tradition in Christianity, they may wander over to test out the mystic traditions of Judaism or Islam to find what they think they are missing when it's quite probable that it's available within their own community of faith's history.

* Finally, there's the traditional American value that we sometimes call rugged individualism. It values the ability for persons to make singular choices unrelated to any kind of communal ethic. In some ways this is a good trait in that it can foster appreciation for other traditions and the choices other people make to follow them. But it also leads to the troubling idea that any path or any combination of paths is of equal value and contains equal amounts of truth. If the Ku Klux Klan version of Christianity is of equal value with Mother Teresa's version, I think we're all in trouble.

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THE MUSLIM VEILED RE-EXAMINED

The Christian Science Monitor has done this interesting piece about the use of the hijab, or head covering, that Muslim women wear, and why its use is spreading. This is another example of a religious tradition that outsiders who don't understand it view with suspicion. But it's also true that in some places -- such as in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan -- the complete covering of women was in harmony with the view that women were second-class citizens with few, if any, rights. The point is that one must understand the motivation of women who wear the hijab before deciding that it's either a symbol of modesty mandated by the religion or a symbol of oppression.

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P.S.: Time for holiday gift giving is here, and I want to recommend that you give my new book, They Were Just People: Stories of Rescue in Poland During the Holocaust, co-written with Rabbi Jacques Cukierkorn. To read about it and find several ways of ordering it, click here. And remember, all the royalties go to Holocaust-related charities, so feel good about buying lots of copies.

Is it the Jewish Christmas? 12-12/13-09

A few days ago I offered this blog entry to try to help people get rid of their misunderstandings about papal infallibility.

This weekend, because Hanukkah starts Saturday, I'd like to try to help people who misunderstand Hanukkah as somehow being the "Jewish Christmas."

Nope. That's not what Hanukkah is, despite the fact that it occurs close to Christmas each year and despite the fact that it's the Jewish holiday that many Christians know best, even though it's far from the most important Jewish holiday (holy day).

One reason Hanukkah is not the Jewish Christmas is that the event it commemorates -- the rededication of the temple in Jerusalem after a battle for freedom of religion (against Syrian Greeks who wanted the hellenize the Jews) -- occurred in 164 B.C.E., more than 150 years before what Christians call the first Christmas.

Hanukkah is a story about the Maccabees (in Hebrew, Maccabee means hammer and refers to the strength of the family) and includes what Jews then considered a miracle -- oil for lighting the menorah in the temple lasting eight days when there was enough to last only one day. Benjamin Blech, a rabbi and author, calls that "a fitting symbol for the unnatural survival of the Jewish people."

So to celebrate Hanukkah, Jews light the candles on a menorah and also are obligated to put this menorah in a place where it may be seen by passers-by.

Do Jewish families in America feel some pressure to be part of the Christmas tradition of giving gifts to children and doing other things Christians do this time of year? Undoubtedly many do. But they know -- and the rest of us should know -- that Hanukkah is not the Jewish Christmas. Indeed, it's interesting to think about what might have happened had the Syrians succeeded in wiping out the Maccabees and doing away with Judaism then. Would there be Christianity today?

By the way, Tablet Magazine has done a nice FAQ-type posting about Hanukkah. To read it, click here.

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GOD IS BUSY IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Palestinian Christian leaders have issued a statement calling Israeli actions in regard to land the Palestinians consider to be Palestinian "a sin against God and against humanity." It strikes me that all sides in the Middle East conflict have been drafting God into their forces for long enough. Perhaps if the Israelis, the Palestinians, the Christian Zionists, the Muslims, the Christian Orthodox, the ultra-orthodox Jews and everyone else would seek a political settlement that doesn't rely on a particular view of what God thinks, maybe then we might get closer to peace sooner than otherwise. I'm not asking everyone to abandon religious beliefs but, rather, to show some humility in thinking each side knows exactly how God would settle all this.

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P.S.: Time for holiday gift giving is here, and I want to recommend that you give my new book, They Were Just People: Stories of Rescue in Poland During the Holocaust, co-written with Rabbi Jacques Cukierkorn. To read about it and find several ways of ordering it, click here. And remember, all the royalties go to Holocaust-related charities, so feel good about buying lots of copies.

A death-loving religion? 12-11-09

I mentioned here the other day that I've been reading David Aikman's new book, The Mirage of Peace: Understanding the Never-Ending Conflict in the Middle East.

I want to share with you a passage that seems to highlight the distorted view of Islam that has been adopted by the violent extremists. It is, I think, a primary source of the radicalism that has targeted the West, especially the United States, and all civilized people of every religion, and none, must expose it and stand against it.

In his chapter on Iran, Aikman is describing the 1979 revolution there that brought the Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini (pictured here) to power:

"Iranian journalist-in-exile Amir Taheri estimates that, since 1979, more than 100,000 Iranians may have been executed. That total is impossible to confirm. What is not is Khomeini's obsession with death in the cause of Islam. 'To kill and be killed,' the Ayatollah said in an often-repeated mantra, 'are the supreme duties of Muslims.'

"Khomeini in many of his speeches and writings openly justified actions that most people would categorize as terrorism. In one passage he wrote, 'Those who say that Islam should not kill, don't understand [it]. Killing is a great [divine] gift that appears [to man]. A religion that does not include [provisions for] killing and massacre is incomplete.'"

All of this is along the lines of something Osama bin Laden once said: "We love death. The U.S. loves life. That is the difference between us two."

Well, bin Laden may love death, but only for other people. Notice that he's been unwilling to die himself in his cause, preferring to flee and hide.

I suppose in an odd and twisted way that would require lots of explanation, one might say that Christians, too, love death. But by that one could mean only that one looks forward to the possibility of eternal life after death. So it's not really that we love death but that, in the end, we don't fear it. In fact, in Christian theology, death is the great enemy, even though Christians would say that death has been swallowed up in victory by the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Similarly, saying that Muslims love death could be justified only by suggesting that such a statement means that they look forward to the eternal reward spoken of in the Qur'an. To suggest that traditional Islam promotes what Khomeini called "killing and massacre" is ridiculous. And yet there are people who identify themselves as Muslims who follow leaders who say such ridiculous things.

Aikman is quick to note that the victims of Khomeini's alleged love of death "were always people who had opposed the regime or some aspect of its policies, and they were not limited to Iranians in Iran."

When religion preaches hate and death, you can be sure someone has profoundly (and maybe purposefully) misunderstood the message. The task is to make sure young people susceptible to this kind of message get the right message before it's too late and they become part of the problem.

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OBAMA'S REALISTIC VIEW ON WAR, PEACE

I was quite struck that in President Obama's speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday he, in effect, defended the idea that sometimes war is morally justified. I agree. I am not a pacifist, though it would suit me well if wars simply disappeared and became unnecessary. But sometimes the ideal of peace becomes an idol, and any idol should be condemned by people of faith. I think that's part of what Obama was doing in his speech. Still, I was glad that in referring to the idea of a "just war," he noted how often wars that aren't just have been fought: "Of course, we know that for most of history, this concept of 'just war' was rarely observed. The capacity of human beings to think up new ways to kill one another proved inexhaustible, as did our capacity to exempt from mercy those who look different or pray to a different God." To read the speech in full, click here.

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P.S.: For your holiday giving, don't be shy about buying my new book, They Were Just People: Stories of Rescue in Poland During the Holocaust, co-written with Rabbi Jacques Cukierkorn. To read about it and find several ways of ordering it, click here. And remember, all the royalties go to Holocaust-related charities, so feel good about buying lots of copies.

Remembering Thomas Merton: 12-10-09

Forty-one years ago today, while attending a conference of monks in Bangkok, Thailand, Thomas Merton (pictured here), a Trappist monk and author, was accidentially electrocuted. It was an appalling loss of a brilliant writer and thinker, whose autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, published in 1948 when he was just 33 years old, gained international fame and still is read a lot today.

As the biography of Merton to which I've linked you in the previous paragraph notes, Merton was "arguably the most influential American Catholic author of the twentieth century."

I first became aware of Merton the year he died. I was working on the afternoon Gannett newspaper in Rochester, N.Y., and was then the editor of a weekly tabloid called "listen. . ." inside the paper. I wrote a piece about Merton's newly released book, Faith and Violence: Christian Teaching and Christian Practice. I thought it was full of challenging insights.

In fact, I still have my 1968 copy of that book, and inside the cover are the instructions to the newspaper's art department to turn the book's cover into a display 32 picas wide and 8 inches deep. Well, as I say, I thought then and think now that Merton is deeper than that, but that's apparently all the space I could devote to showing readers the book's cover then.

Merton lived at the Trappist Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky, producing hundreds of articles and dozens of books from 1941 until his death. If you never have read any Merton, you can decide which of his books might interest you. In the meantime, I'll recommend three related books, none of them very recent.

The first is The Abbey of Gethsemani: Place of Peace and Paradox, by Dianne Aprile, who when she wrote this was a columnist with the Louisville Courier-Journal and a member, with me, of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.

Next is Keeping the Faith: A Skeptic's Journey, by Fenton Johnson, who grew up right next to Gethsemani. It's a fascinating read.

And finally, Thomas Merton: Monk and Poet, a Critical Study, by George Woodcock.

Perhaps you have a favorite book either by or about Merton. If so, let us know. It seems to me the world today has a severe shortage of brilliant contemplative minds like Merton's. I'm not sure why, but if Merton were around I'm sure he'd have some good guesses.

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A COURT CASE WITH BIBLICAL ROOTS

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to rule on a really interesting case involving a Christian group at a college and the group's restrictions on membership that violate the college's rules about non-discrimination. The Christian Legal Society at the Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco no longer is a registered student organizaton because it decided that gays and lesbians could not be voting members or hold office. One appeals court ruled against the student group while in a different case, an appeals court ruled in favor of a similar group's membership restrictions. The high court will have to settle it. But, once more, none of this would be an issue if Christians did not misread scripture in such a way as to make them think discrimination of this sort of God's will. 

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ANOTHER P.S.: For your holiday giving, don't be shy about buying my new book, They Were Just People: Stories of Rescue in Poland During the Holocaust, co-written with Rabbi Jacques Cukierkorn. To read about it and find several ways of ordering it, click here. And remember, all the royalties go to Holocaust-related charities, so feel good about buying lots of copies. 

Where faith is growing: 12-9-09

In recent years scholars studying the demographics of Christianity have reported that the faith is growing rapidly in the Southern Hemisphere, particularly in Africa and Asia.

The books to read are The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, by Philip Jenkins, and The New Shape of World Christian: How American Experience Reflects Global Faith, by Mark Noll.

At the same time, folks looking at the broader demographics about religion in general in the United States have shown that Protestants, who once were a huge majority of the citizens, now are barely a majority and may, in fact, be just a plurality now. And they've revealed quite a growth in the number of people who declare themselves religiously unaffiliated, whether atheists, agnostics or something else. A good place to get a handle on all this is by looking at the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public LIfe.

Along these same lines, this report deals with a faith that is growing, too -- perhaps in a surprising place. Islam is said to be booming in Latin America.

The report focuses on Brazil -- especially Sao Paulo -- but it looks as if Islam is experiencing substantial growth in South America generally. Now, Christianity -- especially Catholicism -- still is overwhelmingly dominant on that continent, and there are even predictions that before this century is out South America will be predominantly Pentecostal.

So the ebb and flow of religious and non-religious growth must be seen over the long haul to make sure, for instance, that the recent spurt of Islam isn't a temporary phenomenon.

By the way, in early August I gave blog readers figures on world religious adherents. You can find that by clicking here and going to the end of that posting.

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STANDING AGAINST PREJUDICE

The ban on mosque minarets passed in Switzerland recently is drawing criticism from not just Muslims but also from Christians and Jews, this report says. Good. The referendum was xenophobic move that puts all religions on notice that their followers may be next.

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P.S.: Someone educated me about this the other day and I thought it worth passing along. Someone has put together a global Web site for Christians who want to make charitable donations to any of dozens of projects and ministries all over the world. Click here to have a look.

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ANOTHER P.S.: For your holiday giving, don't be shy about buying my new book, They Were Just People: Stories of Rescue in Poland During the Holocaust, co-written with Rabbi Jacques Cukierkorn. To read about it and find several ways of ordering it, click here. And remember, all the royalties go to Holocaust-related charities, so feel good about buying lots of copies.

On papal infallibility: 12-8-09

Over the years I've heard lots of misunderstandings about the idea of papal infallibility in the Roman Catholic Church.

Today is a good day to get into that subject because it was on this date in 1869 that the First Vatican Council opened, and it was that council that defined papal primacy and infallibility. This was contained in a document entitled Pastor Aeternus, and it affirmed that the pope possesses and exercises infallibility when he speaks ex cathedra (meaning from his chair) in his office as pope when defining doctrine regarding faith and morals.

Many people -- especially Protestants -- speak erroneously about the pope being infallible in everything he says or does. The Catholic Church has never claimed that. In fact, only two times has a pope specifically declared an "article of faith" to be dogmatically (an important word) infallible -- both times about Mary and once in 1854, before the First Vatican Council formally defined such infallibility. That 1854 declaration (which also happened on Dec. 8) had to do with the Immaculate Conception, which many people think refers to the birth of Jesus but actually refers to the birth of Mary, mother of Jesus. The other article of faith dogmaticaly declared to be an infallible teaching was released in 1950 and had to do with the Assumption of Mary.

This is not to say that the Catholic Church considers all other teachings fallible and perhaps even in error. Rather, as the online Catholic Encyclopedia notes, "That the church is infallible in her definitions on faith and morals is itself a Catholic dogma, which, although it was formulated ecumenically for the first time in the (First) Vatican Council, had been explicitly taught long before and had been assumed from the very beginning without question down to the time of the Protestant Reformation."

One informal way to think about this is that Catholic teaching is simply assumed to be without error. But if some dispute about it arises or it is challenged in some way, the pope may feel it necessary to declare the teaching an infallible article of faith just to make sure everyone is clear. Click here for an interesting blog entry about all of this.

There was some dispute about whether Pope John Paul II's mid-1990s declaration that the church would never have women priests was an infallible teaching. Click here for the idea that it was declared infallibly. Click here for the contention that it was not infallibly taught. This latter piece, by the way, contains a definition of three modes of infallible Catholic teaching.

Well, look, the point of all this is that people (especially those of us who are Protestants or at least not Catholic) would do well not to toss around the idea that everything a pope does or says is, in the church's view, infallible. That's just not so. And although we may not understand all the nuances of the teachings and doctrines of faith traditions other than our own, it seems to me we have an obligation not to spread misinformation -- and certainly not to do so willingly our out of purposeful ignorance.

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THE POPE'S WORD ON CLIMATE CHANGE

One of the things Pope Benedict XVI has not said infallibly but, nonetheless, well, is his message to the worldwide climate gathering in Denmark: Live responsibly. What that means for most of us is to simplify our lives. Boy, do we Americans need to paid heed to that lesson -- although, of course, it flies in the face of the hopes of people who want the consumer to lead us out of the recession.

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P.S.: For your holiday giving, don't be shy about buying my new book, They Were Just People: Stories of Rescue in Poland During the Holocaust, co-written with Rabbi Jacques Cukierkorn. To read about it and find several ways of ordering it, click here. And remember, all the royalties go to Holocaust-related charities, so feel good about buying lots of copies.