Truth, doubt and Notre Dame

President Dwight Eisenhower's Civil Rights Commission faced high hurdles as it searched for common ground in the tense years after the U.S. Supreme Court began attacking the walls of segregation inside America's schools. After several years of struggle, Father Theodore Hesburgh discovered a bond between his commission colleagues that transcended race and regional differences, noted President Barack Obama, in his historic commencement address at the University of Notre Dame.

All of them liked to fish. Thus, the president of America's most famous Catholic institution – he served for 35 years – arranged for a twilight cruise on the lake at Notre Dame's retreat center at Land O'Lakes, Wis.

"They fished, and they talked, and they changed the course of history," said Obama.

Hesburgh mastered this kind of graceful strategy, as did another hero of Catholic progressives – the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago. The president challenged the graduates to learn from their examples while supporting "movements for change both large and small."

"Remember that each of us," he said, "endowed with the dignity possessed by all children of God, has the grace to recognize ourselves in one another; to understand that we all seek the same love of family, the same fulfillment of a life well lived. Remember that in the end, in some way we are all fishermen."

Notre Dame's president, Father John Jenkins, then underlined this link to the civil rights era by giving Obama a photograph of Hesburgh clasping hands in solidarity with the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Whoever prepared Obama for this triumphant visit did a fine job, noted George Weigel, at National Review Online. The president "hit for the cycle" at Notre Dame, "mentioning 'common ground'; tolerance and reconciliation amid diversity; Father Hesburgh; … problem-solving over ideology; Father Hesburgh; saving God's creation from climate change; pulling together; Father Hesburgh; open hearts, open minds, fair-minded words; Father Hesburgh."

But the speech also offered a provocative statement about Catholic faith and the public square, noted Richard Garrett, a Notre Dame law professor whose areas of research include Catholic social thought and church-state relations.

The president urged the students to have "confidence in the values with which you've been raised. … Be unafraid to speak your mind when those values are at stake." But he also stressed that the "ultimate irony of faith is that it necessarily admits doubt."

"It's beyond our capacity as human beings to know with certainty what God has planned for us or what he asks of us. And those of us who believe must trust that His wisdom is greater than our own," said Obama. This should "humble us. It should temper our passions, cause us to be wary of too much self-righteousness. … Within our vast democracy, this doubt should remind us even as we cling to our faith to persuade through reason, through an appeal whenever we can to universal rather than parochial principles."

It was hard not to connect this pronouncement with the renewed abortion debates that followed Notre Dame's decision to grant Obama an honorary doctor of laws degree. In the end, 80-plus bishops publicly criticized this action, arguing that it violated a 2004 U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops policy that stated: "Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions."

The problem with the Obama's logic, explained Garnett, is that traditional Catholics argue that the sanctity of human life – from conception to natural death – is based on universal, rational principles of human rights, dignity and equality, not narrow, uniquely "Catholic" beliefs.

The bottom line: The church defended the same principles in the civil rights era.

"There's a powerful move at the end of the president's speech to suggest that the Catholic stance on the right to life – the stance of Notre Dame – is a matter of mere faith, and not a reasoned stance at all. … 'Parochial' is a very loaded word to use," noted Garnett.

"So it appears that Obama agrees with what Father Hesburgh believed in the 1960s, but does not agree with what Pope Benedict believes today, which implies that one set of convictions is based on reason and one is not. But from the Catholic perspective, both of these stances are rooted in the very same universal truth."

Finding God on the jagged edge

Screenwriter Joe Eszterhas knows all about strange plot twists and he is convinced that God often sends big messages in the final acts of people's lives. Once a scandalous Hollywood insider, the author of twisted thrillers such as "Basic Instinct" and "Jagged Edge" can quote chapter and verse about life and death in Tinseltown. Consider the ruthless movie mogul who died during a beach vacation when a metal bar fell from a construction crane and pieced his heart. Or how about the Casanova actor whose reputation made his testicular cancer a bit too ironic?

Eszterhas will name names, when confessing his own sins.

The screenwriter's egomaniacal tantrums were the stuff of legends, along with his appetite for alcohol, cocaine and first-person research for the lap-dancing scenes in "Showgirls." Then there was his foul, blasphemous mouth.

It was tempting to connect the dots when he was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2001, said Eszterhas, during his blunt and mildly profane testimony at Biola University's annual conference on faith and the entertainment industry. The resulting surgery claimed 80 percent of his larynx.

"Was it possible," he mused, in his one-foot-in-the-grave voice, "that God had to cut my throat?" Then he heard the harsh commandments for his new life.

"I adored my wife and children, so I tried," Eszterhas told the audience at CBS Studio Center. "I stopped smoking. I stopped drinking. I was trying my best to stay alive. I was trying my best not to die, but I knew that I couldn't do it."

Thus begins the wild conversion story he has shared many times, reading from his book, "Crossbearer: A Memoir of Faith." The turning point arrives with a weeping sinner on his knees, his heart skipping beats, his hands shaking, his voice moaning through his tracheotomy tube. Then Eszterhas hears his own voice mumbling strange words.

"I didn't know why I had said it. I had never said it before," he said. "Then I listened to myself say it again and again and again. 'Please God, help me.' 'Please God, help me.' 'Please God, help me' ... I thought to myself, 'Me, asking God, begging God? Me, praying?' "

Then his pain was gone and he was staring into a bright light. He decided that, with God's help, "I could defeat myself and win, if I fought very hard and if I prayed. ... God saved me from me."

Condensed into the punchy talking points that sell screenplays, Eszterhas said his life has gone from "Malibu to Ohio, from booze to diet Sprite, from Spago to McDonald's, from Sharon Stone to Jesus." Now he walks five miles and prays for an hour every day. With his second wife and their four sons, he worships at Holy Angels Catholic Church in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, where he volunteers to carry the cross in Sunday Mass.

"The twisted little man" who wrote his scripts still lives in his head, he said, but is no longer in charge. The big question was whether Eszterhas could write without the tobacco, alcohol and deadly darkness that fueled his 16 screenplays, which became movies that grossed more than $1 billion.

Eszterhas said he sat frozen at his old typewriter, feeling "like Jack Nicholson in 'The Shining.' " He faced a complete mental block until he pounded out: "This is how I found God or how God found me." The memoir had to come first.

Since then, Eszterhas has written two scripts, including a "narco-terrorism" thriller he thinks would fit Nicholson. He also wants to write a small-budget movie about Our Lady of Guadalupe. In an age in which Hollywood keeps remaking old blockbusters, he wonders why no one has produced spectacular, digital versions of "The Silver Chalice," "The Robe" or "Quo Vadis."

While he wants to keep working, what Eszterhas can't imagine is writing the kinds of scripts that made him rich and famous.

"My head's not really in that place. I mean, the thing that I would like to do very much, in the time that I have left, in terms of my own screenwriting, is to … write some things that reflect my faith," he said. The goal would be to put "the same kind of energy, ... into doing faith-based films that I think can really be commercially viable, that I put into other films of a different sort that became commercially successful."

Notre Dame and her children

The women's clinic nurse confirmed that Lacy Dodd was pregnant, and then told her not to worry because she had "other options." That wasn't the kind of reassurance Dodd wanted, as a University of Notre Dame senior weeks away from her graduation ceremonies. When she returned to campus, Dodd headed straight to Notre Dame's grotto – a small cave modeled after the famous Marian shrine in Lourdes, France.

"I knew this: No amount of shame or embarrassment would ever lead me to get rid of my baby. Of all women, Our Lady could surely feel pity for an unplanned pregnancy," wrote Dodd, in an essay aimed at Father John Jenkins, the university's president. The text was posted online by the journal First Things.

"In my hour of need, on my knees, I asked Mary for courage and strength. And she did not disappoint," she added. "My boyfriend was a different story. He was also a Notre Dame senior. When I told him that he was to be a father, he tried to pressure me into having an abortion. ... 'All that talk about abortion is just dining-room talk,' he said."

Family and friends stood by Dodd's side. Today, a decade later, she is a single mother and her daughter's name is Mary. Dodd serves on the board of Room at the Inn, an organization working to build an on-campus facility for pregnant unwed students at Belmont Abbey College, near Charlotte, N.C.

The timing of Dodd's essay – "Notre Dame, My Mother" – is, of course, linked to her alma mater's decision to invite President Barack Obama to deliver its mid-May commencement address and to receive an honorary doctor of laws degree.

Throughout his political career, Obama has opposed all restrictions on abortion rights, even in late-term procedures. But he has also reached out to Catholic and evangelical voters by pledging to help lessen the need for abortions, through government efforts to aid needy mothers and their children.

Catholic traditionalists and many Notre Dame alumni argue that honoring Obama in this way violates a 2004 U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops policy that said: "The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions."

Three years later, the bishops underlined the importance of this issue, arguing that the "direct and intentional destruction of innocent human life is always wrong and is not just one issue among many."

However, a recent online count found that only 66 bishops, out of 195 dioceses nationwide, have issued public comments critical of Notre Dame's decision. So far, the Vatican has remained silent on the issue.

Meanwhile, a Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life poll found that 50 percent of American Catholics approve of Notre Dame's decision to "invite" Obama, while 28 percent disapprove. However, only 37 percent of white, non-Hispanic Catholics who attend Mass weekly agreed with the Notre Dame decision, compared with 56 percent of those less active in the church. This parallels that fact that 61 percent of these "attend less often" Catholics support abortion rights in all or most cases, as opposed to 30 percent of the "attend weekly" Catholics.

Alumni and current students know that these kinds of divisions also exist at Notre Dame, said Dodd. Notre Dame students also face crisis pregnancies and some young women there are convinced that they must have abortions in order to stay in school.

While others focus on the political implications of honoring Obama, Dodd said she worries about the impact of this symbolic event on women in the commencement audience who are wrestling with the same secret she faced 10 years ago.

Thus, she ended her essay with this question to the priest who currently leads Notre Dame: "Who draws support from your decision to honor President Obama – the young, pregnant Notre Dame woman sitting in that graduating class who wants desperately to keep her baby, or the Notre Dame man who believes that the Catholic teaching on the intrinsic evil of abortion is just dining-room talk?"

These kinds of influences make a difference, said Dodd.

"I think that Notre Dame needs to be in the lead when it comes to supporting women who face unplanned pregnancies," she said. "Notre Dame needs to be on their side – always."

Baptist take on spirituality

Don Whitney knows what happens when people hear that a Southern Baptist seminary is offering a doctor of philosophy degree in spirituality. "For many people, connecting 'Baptist' and 'spirituality' is like 'military' and 'intelligence.' They just can't picture those two words together," said Whitney, director of the new Center for Biblical Spirituality at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.

But for Baptists, he stressed, it's crucial to underline the word "biblical" in front "spirituality," in order to stress the center's ties to Protestant reformers who rejected what they believed were the errors of Rome.

When Whitney and his colleagues talk about spirituality, they emphasize images of the great Charles Spurgeon spending hours in Bible study before preaching, laypeople meditating on the symbolism in John Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress" and missionaries weeping while praying for the lost. They do not focus on monks chanting ancient prayers day after day, night after night, generation after generation.

"Why should we go to people who have locked themselves behind a door for 50 years if we want to learn about true spirituality, when the Bible tells us to go out and be salt and light in the world? ... This is not to say that we shouldn't go outside our tradition in order to learn, but we are saying that it's important to go to our own guys, first," said Whitney.

"We believe that biblical, Evangelical spirituality has not been tried and found wanting. It simply has not been tried."

The potential impact of this project is great, if only because 20 percent of all students attending U.S. seminaries study on Southern Baptist campuses. The center opened in January and seminary leaders believe they can handle five students in the Ph.D. program and 10 in their doctor of ministry program. While graduate programs teaching spirituality exist in a few U.S. seminaries, this Ph.D. program is the first targeting scholars and clergy among evangelicals.

One of the first challenges the center will face is defining "spirituality," a word that means one thing on the Oprah Winfrey Show and something else altogether then it appears in textbooks describing traditions in various world religions. For modern Americans, the word is so vague that it's almost meaningless, said church historian Michael Haykin, who teaches in the Southern Seminary programs.

Nevertheless, the word has great power and its appeal must be understood by anyone who wants to understand contemporary American religion.

When most Americans hear "spirituality," said Haykin, they think of "all of those areas in their internal experiences in which they come into contact with things that transcend daily life. ... It's all incredibly nebulous. The key is that the whole ritual of institutionalized, formal religion has nothing to do with this, for most people today."

Thus, researchers keep running into increasing numbers of un-churched adults who identify themselves as "spiritual," but not "religious." These seekers are interested in "spirituality" that is connected to emotions and personal experiences, but not in formal "religion" that comes packaged with history, doctrines and rules.

Meanwhile, many Protestant believers are anxious to escape what they believe is the dry, formal, merely rational approach to worship and prayer that dominates mainstream churches. Some turn to charismatic or Pentecostal churches and some turn to the so-called "emerging churches" that try to weave some ancient Christian prayers and disciplines into their progressive, "postmodern" take on faith.

"What unites all these people is an emphasis on personal experience," said Haykin. "For all of them, 'religion' is a bad word, something they are trying to get away from."

The Southern Seminary programs, he added, will emphasize that Protestant pioneers such as John Calvin and Martin Luther were interested in early Christian spirituality, but rejected what they believed were newer Catholic traditions. Then again, students will also study the works of latter reformers, such as the Puritans, who stressed personal piety while criticizing what they saw as the formalized, ritualized traditions of the Presbyterians, Lutherans and others.

This cycle keeps repeating itself, generation after generation.

"We already have people accusing us of trying to smuggle a kind of Roman Catholic approach to faith into an evangelical seminary," said Haykin. "What we are saying is that the Protestant reformers were trying to get past the whole medieval Catholic world and reconnect with the ancient church and its approach to the spiritual life. That's what we are trying to do, too."