Father John, DC evangelist

WASHINGTON – In a matter of days, Father C. John McCloskey III will quietly perform rites in which two more converts enter the Roman Catholic Church.

This latest ceremony at Catholic Information Center will not draw the attention of the Washington Post. But that happened last year when Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas entered the fold. Some of McCloskey's earlier converts also caused chatter inside the Beltway – columnist Robert Novak, economist Lawrence Kudlow and former abortion activist Bernard Nathanson.

"All I am doing is what Catholic priests must do," said McCloskey. "I'm sharing the Gospel of Christ, offering people spiritual direction and, when they are ready, bringing them into the church. ... It's a matter of always proposing, never imposing, never coercing and merely proclaiming that we have something to offer to all Christians and to all people.

"Call it evangelism. Call it evangelization. It's just what we're supposed to do."

But words like "conversion" and "evangelism" draw attention when a priest's pulpit is located on K Street, only two blocks from the White House. The flock that flows into the center's 100-seat chapel for daily Mass includes scores of lobbyists, politicians, journalists, activists and executives.

So it's no surprise that McCloskey's views have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, USA Today and elsewhere. His feisty defense of Catholic orthodoxy has landed him on broadcasts with Tim Russert, Bill O'Reilly, Paula Zahn, Greta Van Susteren and others.

This is a classic case of location, location, location.

McCloskey feels right at home. The 49-year-old priest is a native of the nation's capital, has an Ivy League education and worked for Merrill Lynch and Citibank on Wall Street before seeking the priesthood through the often-controversial Opus Dei movement. He arrived at the Washington center in 1998.

In addition to winning prominent converts, McCloskey has bluntly criticized the American Catholic establishment's powerful progressive wing, tossing out quotations like this zinger: "A liberal Catholic is oxymoronic. The definition of a person who disagrees with what the Catholic church is teaching is called a Protestant."

Many disagree. Slate.com commentator Chris Suellentrop bluntly said that while the urbane priest's style appeals to many Washingtonians, ultimately he is offering "an anti-intellectual approach. All members of the church take a leap of faith, but McCloskey wants them to do it with their eyes closed and their hands over their ears."

It is also crucial that McCloskey openly embraces evangelism and theconversion of adults from Judaism, Islam and other world religions. Formany modern Catholics this implies coercion, manipulation, mind controland, thus, a kind of "proselytism" that preys on the weak. In recentdiscussions of overseas missionary work many Catholics have suggestedthat they no longer see the need to share the faith with others andinvite them to become Christians.

The bottom line: Protestants do evangelism. Protestants try to convertothers. In the wake of Vatican II, Catholics have outgrown this kind ofwork.

"That's pure trash. That's a false ecumenism," said McCloskey. "That'ssimply not Catholic teaching. The Catholic church makes exclusivetruth claims about itself and cannot deny them. It doesn't deny thatthere are other forms of religion. It doesn't deny that these otherforms of religion have some elements of truth in them. ..."But we are proclaiming Jesus Christ and where we believe he can bemost fully found and that's the Catholic church. We cannot denythat." This issue will become even more controversial as America growsmore diverse.

Meanwhile, the number of nominally Christian adults who have not beenbaptized is rising. The children and grandchildren of what McCloskey calls the "bourgeoisie Catholics" are poised to leave the church. Soon,their fading ethnic ties will not be enough. Their love of old schoolsand sanctuaries will not be enough.

"This country is turning into Europe," he said. "People have gotten to the point where they are saying, 'Why bother even being baptized? We don't believe any of this stuff anymore.' I am encountering more people that I need to baptize, because their parent's didn't bother to do that, even though they were nominal Christians.

"In Europe that is normal and this is what is headed our way."

God-talk after The Matrix, part II

Predicting the future is dangerous, especially when a world-be prophet puts her thoughts in writing.

But that's what author Phyllis Tickle did two decades ago when she wrote: "Books are about to become the portable pastors of America." That turned out to be true. Now, in light of "The Matrix," she is updating that prophecy about how Americans talk about faith.

It helps to flashback to a statistical earthquake that rattled the book business.

In 1992 the company that dominates sales to libraries saw a stunning 92 percent rise in its religious trade. Then in 1994 religious sales by the giant Ingram Book Group soared 246 percent. In a few years this niche grew 500 percent, said Tickle, who has covered this trend for Publishers Weekly and in several of her two-dozen books.

The growth "was malignant," she said. "Bookstore owners kept telling me people would vanish into that back corner where the religious shelves were and stay for hours. When they did that, you just knew they should have been going to see their pastors. But they weren't doing that."

These seekers didn't buy into doctrines and denominations. They didn't want "theology." They wanted new ideas, images and spiritual stories. They wanted what Tickle began calling "God-talk" and millions started finding it with the help of cappuccino and Oprah.

And in 1999 everything changed again.

"When 'The Matrix' came out, it became the best treatise on God-talk that has ever been made," said Tickle. "It could not have been done with a book. It could not have been done with words. ... The primacy of place in creative, cutting-edge God-talk has shifted from non-fiction in the 1980s to fiction in the 1990s and now it is shifting again to the world of the visual, especially to the kinds of myths and stories we see in movies such as 'The Matrix.' We're talking about the manipulation of theological fantasies and this is a natural fit for visual media."

"Theology," she said, is found in the world of doctrine, history, academic credentials and ecclesiastical authority. But "God-talk" thrives far from most pulpits. Its standards are flexible, evolving, user-defined and rooted in small communities. This is a true "democratization of theology," she said, and can been seen as an extension of Protestantism's division into thousands and thousands of independent denominations, movements and churches.

But God-talk leaders are more likely to work in popular media than in religious institutions. As creators of "The Matrix" trilogy, Andy and Larry Wachowski are touching millions of lives. The first film grossed $460 million worldwide and shaped countless movies, computer games, music videos and commercials. Now, "The Matrix Reloaded" – on a record 8,517 screens – topped $130 million at the box office in its first four days. "The Matrix Revolutions" hits in November.

Writing in the Journal of Religion and Film, James L. Ford of Wake Forest University argues that these films offer a powerful fusion of themes from Buddhism, clashing brands of Christianity, Greek mythology, cyber-culture and legions of other sources.

"It is impossible to know what narratives will become the foundation myths of our culture," noted Ford, in his "Buddhism, Christianity and The Matrix" essay. "But epic films like The Matrix are the modern-day equivalent of The Iliad-Odyssey ... or various biblical myths. Indeed, one might well argue that popular films like 'The Matrix' and 'Star Wars' carry more influence among young adults than the traditional religious myths of our culture."

Tickle can trace this trend for decades, from the generic God of Alcoholics Anonymous to the nearly generic God of "Touched By An Angel," from the rise of the self-help publishing industry to waves of immigration that brought the mysteries of Eastern religion to Hollywood.

Mainstream religious leaders can argue about the ultimate meaning of all this, she said. But they cannot ignore it.

"The Matrix" has "posited a new theological framework," she said. "Now we have to find out the details. What is the primal cause for this world? Where is God? Who is God? Does what is going on in these films support or oppose a basic Judeo-Christian approach to morality? We don't know the answers to these questions yet"

God-talk and The Matrix I

The words of the scripture are clear: everything changes when someone is born again.

"Before his first or physical birth man was in the world of the matrix. He had no knowledge of this world; his eyes could not see; his ears could not hear. When he was born from the world of the matrix, he beheld another world," wrote Abdul Baha, son of the Bahai prophet Baha'ullah, nearly a century ago. Truth is, "the majority of people are captives in the matrix of nature, submerged in the sea of materiality."

When freed they gain a "transcendent power" and ascend to a higher kingdom.

Perhaps even to Zion.

Wait a minute. Does this mean that millions of moviegoers lining up at 8,400-plus theaters to see "The Matrix Reloaded" will witness the Bahai version of a Billy Graham movie? Or is this trilogy a door into a kung fu vigilante Buddhism?

Or is it some kind of neo-Christian parable?

The World Wide Web is jammed with sites offering precisely that spin. Isn't Keanu Reeves playing a super-hacker called Neo, a messiah whose coming was foreseen by the prophets, a Christ figure that is reborn, baptized, murdered and resurrected? Isn't his real name Thomas Anderson (Greek "andras" for man, thus "son of man")? Doesn't a character named Trinity save him?

Acolytes have compiled pages of similar references. Isn't Neo's teacher Morpheus a John the Baptist figure? Why is their ship called the Nebuchadnezzar? And it's a "Mark III, no. 11." Perhaps that is Mark 3:11, which says of Jesus: "Whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and shouted, 'You are the Son of God!' "

There will be plenty of fresh clues in "The Matrix Reloaded" and the upcoming "The Matrix Revolutions." When it comes to spiritual goodies, this franchise that critics call the "R-rated Star Wars" has something to intrigue or infuriate everyone – from Hollywood to the Bible belt.

No one questions the impact of "The Matrix," which grossed $170 million in the United States, $460 million worldwide and influenced countless movies, computer games, music videos and commercials. But the devotion of its true believers is revealed in another statistic. It was the first DVD to sell more than 1 million copies.

Meanwhile, Andy and Larry Wachowski have religiously avoided doing interviews that might dilute the mystery surrounding their movie.

But a fan in a Warner Home Video online chat session did mange to ask: "Your movie has many and varied connections to myths and philosophies, Judeo-Christian, Egyptian, Arthurian and Platonic, just to name those I've noticed. How much of that was intentional?"

To which the brothers replied: "All of it." While calling their beliefs "nondenominational," they did confirm that Buddhism plays a major role in "The Matrix." When asked if their work was shaped by the ancient Christian heresy called Gnosticism, they cryptically replied: "Do you consider that to be a good thing?"

While the first film draws images and details from many conflicting traditions, its worldview is deeply rooted in Eastern religions, especially Buddhism and Gnosticism, according to Frances Flannery-Dailey of Hendrix College and Rachel Wagner of the University of Iowa. Clearly, the big idea is that humanity's main problem is that it is "sleeping in ignorance in a dreamworld" and the solution is "waking to knowledge and enlightenment."

Writing in the Journal of Religion and Film, they note that the Gnostic messiah brings salvation through a secret truth that lets believers wake up and escape the shabby reality that surrounds them. Through training in the discipline of "stillness," this savior learns that what appears to be the real world is an illusion he can manipulate with his will. It's a gospel of esoteric knowledge, not repentance and grace.

But Wagner and Flannery-Daily ask: Where are the Gnostic gods in "The Matrix"?

"Divinity may ... play a role in Neo's past incarnation and his coming again as the One. If, however, there is some implied divinity in the film, in remains transcendent, like the divinity of the ineffable, invisible supreme god of Gnosticism, except where it is immanent in the form of the divine spark in humans."

Touched by an urban legend

Did you know NASA scientists proved that God really made the sun stand still just like it says in the book of Joshua?

Have you responded to the urgent prayer appeal from Mrs. Fatima Abass Yakubu Idris, the wealthy Nigerian widow cancer victim who wants to donate $7.2 million to your church?

Did you hear about the upcoming movie in which Jesus and his disciples are gay?

Surely you've seen this email bulletin: "CBS will be forced to discontinue 'Touched by an Angel' for using the word God in every program." Now, the disciples of atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair have "been granted a federal hearing on the same subject by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in Washington D.C. Their petition, Number 2493, would ultimately pave the way to stop the reading of the gospel of our Lord and Savior, on the airwaves of America."

It's hard to believe that after 30 years and 30 million letters to the FCC, this false report continues to haunt pulpits, pews and the Internet.

Believe it. The O'Hair, FCC and "Touched by an Angel" email is back in the top 10 at the San Fernando Valley Folklore Society's sprawling "urban legends" site (www.snopes.com). And with the Angels era ending at CBS, Cathy Holden is bracing herself for more right-wing email blaming the show's demise on a vast left-wing conspiracy.

This will all end up in a revised entry at www.TruthMiners.com, her website that strives to convince other conservative Christians that passing along half-truths, scams and urban legends is not a doctrinally sound thing to do. Her niche-audience page includes 100 of the most common emails and links to larger secular research sites.

"This story will not die. I mean, 'Touched by an Angel' has been on for nine years," she said. "Anybody who reads a newspaper knows that everybody who's involved says it's time to end the show. But people who send these emails don't read newspapers. Then they get an email about that atheist O'Hair lady and they say, 'That's it!'

"You just want to tell them, 'Get over it. Go on with your life.' "

Holden became fascinated with urban legends when she helped a Baptist church outside Orlando start its website. The minute she signed on the junk emails rolled in, including a new incarnation of the O'Hair report. It took five minutes online to dig up the truth.

The church lady who forwarded the rumor said she did it for fun. What's the harm?

"I said, 'Wait just a minute. I just told you this is a lie and you don't care?' ... Ever since, I've been trying to get people to realize that a lie is a lie. This is not harmless. People get hurt. Christians have to believe truth matters," said Holden.

The O'Hair story originally was read in pulpits, shared at prayer meetings and printed on church mimeograph machines. Now people simply click "forward" and their email goes global.

Most of these messages take two forms – outrage and inspiration. A major theme is that mainstream media hide the truth, said Holden.

"There's that vast conspiracy out there ... and it's keeping us from hearing all of the really bad stuff that our enemies are doing. The media also keep us from hearing any inspiring stories about good things that are happening. All that gets covered up, too. So we have to pass on these stories by email in order to beat the conspiracy. You see?"

So untraceable stories spread about President Bush leaving a reception line to evangelize a teen-ager, a pastor's wife preaching to passengers on the doomed Alaskan Airlines Flight 261 and a little girl's testimony converting actor John Wayne. The list goes on and on.

"The bigger the story the more we like it," said Holden. "We can be really syrupy, sappy people and we tend to fall for things that grab our heartstrings. It's all about our feelings. ... My ultimate hope is that if we can get people to care about what is going on in their Internet lives, then this new concern about truth may actually spread into other parts of their lives at home and at work and at church. Wouldn't that be interesting?"