Trust your feelings, Darth?

No wonder Anakin Skywalker seems so confused.

Every time the Jedi apprentice turns around, a spiritual master tells him to trust his feelings, search his feelings or follow his feelings. Trouble is, the young super-warrior in "Star Wars: Attack of the Clones" is a tornado of feelings. He feels love. He feels hate, ambition, desire, frustration, fear and fury.

Yet when he follows his heart, the Jedi tell him to set aside his desires and do his duty.

Well, do feelings trump duty or is it the other way around?

"I don't know what it says in the Jedi handbook, but it's obvious that George Lucas hasn't answered this question," says Catholic writer Roberto Rivera, who is best known for his pop-culture research for evangelical leader Chuck Colson.

"It's especially interesting that the characters that represent the good side of the Force – like Obi-Wan Kenobi – stress the importance of following your feelings. But the characters that represent the dark side – like Chancellor Palpatine -- are also telling Anakin he must learn to trust his feelings. Why do the good guys and the bad guys agree with each other?"

This may sound like the geeky Star Wars nit-picking that thrives in cyberspace, where legions of Lucas acolytes circulate catechisms detailing how many Jedi can twirl on the point of a light saber. But these are not meaningless questions for the generations baptized in images from the original trilogy and its sequels. The grand finale looms ahead on May 25, 2005.

Like it or not, what Lucas says about God and man is important.

"Star Wars is the closest thing many Americans have to a myth – by which I mean the stories that help us make sense of our lives and the world around us, and the traditional means by which cultures transmit their values and beliefs," argues Rivera, in a Boundless.org essay called "Love, Sacrifice and Free Will in Star Wars."

Thus, it matters if Lucas has created a myth that makes any sense, even on its own terms. It matters if the Force provides a coherent framework for the actions of his characters. It matters if Lucas is stuck somewhere between karma and Calvinism, spinning morality tales in a universe ruled by an impersonal "energy field created by all living things" that somehow has a will and a plan for the souls it controls.

After all, notes Rivera, it "was Lucas who called Star Wars the story of a man's fall from grace and his subsequent redemption. These are terms with moral, if not religious, significance."

The key is that Lucas created a pop faith the same way he created his monsters. He took the head of one creature, attached it to the body of another, stuck on the tail of something else and enlarged the result to awesome size.

"I didn't want to invent a religion," Lucas once told journalist Bill Moyers. "I wanted to try to explain in a different way the religions that already existed. ... I put the Force into the movie in order to try to awaken a certain kind of spirituality in young people – more a belief in God than a belief in any particular religious system."

The bottom line: "The conclusion I have come to is that all the religions are true."

Yet Lucas wanted an epic story of good and evil, darkness and light. His films center on the life of an anointed one who "will bring balance" between the yin and the yang of the Force, yet Lucas never defines his terms. He never says what is good and what is evil and why. Heroes and villains alike have to follow their feelings.

"There is zero evidence in the Star Wars films that anyone is ever taught anything about what is right and what is wrong," notes Rivera. "We don't even know why the dark side is dark. It's a mystery. It's a concept with no meaning. ...

"Everybody is supposed to do the right thing, but nobody wants to stop and give any serious thought as to how a person is supposed to know what is the right thing to do. That is a rather important question to leave unanswered, if you stop and think about it."

Where does the Baptist buck stop?

The clergy sexual abuse statistics were staggering.

Local reports from angry, hurt and humiliated laypeople were too horrifying to ignore.

So the assembled church leaders decided that they had to say something, they had to call for some kind of action because they were facing a nasty moral crisis.

"We encourage those religious bodies dealing with the tragedy of clergy abuse in their efforts to rid their ranks of predatory ministers," said their June 12 resolution. "We call on civil authorities to punish to the fullest extent of the law sexual abuse among clergy and counselors. ...

"We call on our churches to discipline those guilty of any sexual abuse ... as well as to cooperate with civil authorities in the prosecution of those cases."

Thus, the "messengers" to the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention acknowledged that America's largest non-Catholic flock has been hit by waves of clergy sexual abuse affecting untold numbers of women, men, teen-agers and children. The resolution, which passed with little opposition, called for "ministers of the gospel – whether they are pastors, counselors, educators, missionaries, chaplains or others – to be above reproach morally, both within the body of Christ and in the larger community."

The intent of this is clear. Yet the statement also demonstrates why it will be hard for freewheeling and autonomous Protestant congregations to attack clergy sexual abuse.

While news media have repeatedly focused on abuse among Catholics, Protestant insiders have also long known that many of their own clergy – especially youth workers and pastors who do counseling – were breaking the laws of God and man.

"The incidence of sexual abuse by clergy has reached 'horrific proportions,' " according to a 2000 report to the Baptist General Convention of Texas. It noted that studies conducted in the 1980s found that about 12 percent of ministers had "engaged in sexual intercourse with members" and nearly 40 percent had "acknowledged sexually inappropriate behavior."

Sadly, this report added: "Recent surveys by religious journals and research institutes support these figures. The disturbing aspect of all research is that the rate of incidence for clergy exceeds the client-professional rate for both physicians and psychologists."

Where does the buck stop, when sexual abuse hits Protestant pulpits? The Southern Baptist resolution calls on local churches to discipline sex offenders. Yet the most powerful person in modern Protestantism is a successful pastor whose preaching and people skills keep packing people into the pews. Can his own church board truly investigate and discipline that pastor?

Once that question is asked, others quickly follow.

If the board of deacons in a Southern Baptist congregation faced an in-house sex scandal and wanted help, where could it turn? It could seek help from its competition, the circle of churches in its local association. Or it could appeal to its state convention. In some states, "conservative" and "moderate" churches would need to choose between competing conventions linked to these rival Baptist camps. Or could a church appeal for help from the boards and agencies of the 16-million-member national convention?

Everything depends on that local church and everything is voluntary. One more question: What Baptist leader would dare face the liability issues involved in guiding such a process?

"Just think of all the places where this process could go off the rails," said historian Timothy Weber, dean of Northern Baptist Theological Seminary near Chicago. "One church would have to take the initiative to voluntarily report the information on a bad pastor. Then another church would have to voluntarily go through the process of asking for information so that they can screen a pastor that it is thinking about hiring."

Some state conventions might have the staff and know how to create a data bank of information of clergy sexual abuse. But for Baptist leaders to do so, they would risk clashing with their tradition's total commitment to the freedom and the autonomy of the local congregation.

"The fact is," said Weber, "there is no Baptist clearing house for this information – anywhere. There is no one keeper of the files, nobody out there who has the power to intervene when something goes wrong and people start pointing fingers. There is no there, out there."

A Vatican email gap?

For years, Father Joseph F. Wilson studied the U.S. Catholic clergy register, following the career of the priest who once delivered an unforgettable sexuality lecture at the Dallas seminary.

This mid-1980s forum was attended by all diocesan clergy and embraced by the local bishop, Wilson recalled, even though the speaker warned that the Vatican was reining in his ministry to gays. One urgent question from that talk: Did gay Catholics have only three true options - chastity, sin or suicide?

"The issue of gay teen-agers did come up," said Wilson, now a priest in Brooklyn. "He said he would like to discuss how priests can minister to boys in this situation, but that this was not a subject that could be addressed rationally in the church. He said people got too emotional when discussing this kind of subject."

The speaker was Father Paul R. Shanley.

At the time, the Boston "street priest" was a trailblazer in ministry to sexual minorities. Now he stands accused of being a serial child molester and an apologist for man-boy love.

The Shanley story is emerging in waves of legal documents and headlines from Boston to Dallas to San Diego. But, like so many other plot lines in the sex-abuse crisis, it is also unfolding on the Internet. These days, it's hard to ignore the role of email list operators, chat-room masters, "web log" commentators and ordinary Catholics – with and without collars – who can click "forward" with a mouse.

Wilson, for example, included his reflections on that long-ago Dallas lecture and a host of other issues in a formal letter to the organization Priests For Life. But the conservative priest also emailed it to a few friends, who sent it to some Internet lists, where it reached activists who posted it on the World Wide Web. And so it goes.

Eventually, Wilson's essay surfaced in a media forum at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., where it was quoted along with coverage from The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Commonweal and mainstream sources. This is merely one example of a torrent of digital commentary that is now a normal part of Catholic life behind the scenes.

Designated news media free-for-alls – such as this week's U.S. Catholic Bishops meeting in Dallas - will continue to produce policy statements that inspire close scrutiny and responses from Rome. Everyone pays attention when a crisis hits the global networks and newspapers.

But is the Vatican paying attention to the digital chorus?

During an Easter season trip to Rome, journalist and scholar George Weigel said he felt as if he had stepped into a "time warp" as he met Vatican officials who were only then facing revelations and emotions that had rocked American Catholics three to four months earlier.

"People were not sure how much of this was real and how much of it was hype. People were unsure as to how much more was coming," said Weigel, author of "Witness to Hope," the 992-page authorized biography of Pope John Paul II.

Weigel was amazed. Clearly there was some kind of "information gap" between the U.S. Catholic establishment and Rome, he said. Also, the worldly European press had remained silent, perhaps due to a jaded view of American obsessions about sex. But something else was wrong.

"Suddenly it dawned on me that the Vatican is simply not, to this day, a part of the Internet culture," said Weigel. "There are a few people who take the trouble to go online every morning or evening. ... But in the main, what we have become used to and what frames our emotional responses to these questions, namely real-time information and a constant flow of chat, commentary, argument and so forth, ... none of this exists over there."

Wilson, for one, finds it hard to believe that such an "information gap" still exists.

"I know people in Rome have that attitude: We look backward over 2000 years and forward into eternity," he said. "But there are Americans over there who understand what is happening. ... And this information has been sent to Rome for years, by mail, special delivery, telegram, fax, FedEx, Candy-Gram and however Americans choose to deliver information of vital importance."

Religion, relief and risk in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON – There are rumblings from western Afghanistan that the office for the "Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice" is back.

That may not sound bad. But this is the network that enforced the Taliban's codes for clothing, grooming, family life, prayers and myriad other details of daily life. It used beatings, torture, imprisonment, discrimination and other forms of terror.

On the evening news, the Taliban is defeated and on the run. But the reality on the ground may be different. If the office for the "Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice" is alive, the Taliban's heart is still beating.

"Significant numbers of former Taliban officials or supporters appear to be in the process of attaching themselves to the new power structures," according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. "Many elements of the victorious anti-Taliban forces also have past records of human rights abuse, including religious intolerance and restrictions of the rights of women."

Far from the diplomats and satellite dishes in Kabul, the Taliban's version of Sunni Islamic law may rule – with summary public executions for murder, amputations for theft and stoning and lashing for adultery.

Nobody really knows. The commission thinks somebody needs to find out.

In a report this week to the White House and Congress, it urged the expansion of an international security presence beyond Kabul, with more attention focused on the actions of local commanders and tribal leaders. It is crucial – since religion is at the root of this crisis – that someone promptly be assigned to the Kabul embassy to defend religious liberty.

"If the United States government is not prepared to send such a person, our commission is," said commissioner Felice Gaer, of the American Jewish Committee.

Gaer repeated this pledge a half dozen times during one press briefing. The commission will decide on a course of action by the end of June.

It may seem strange to place such an emphasis on religious liberty for minorities in a land in which Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jews and Christians may number only in the hundreds. But there also have been atrocities committed by the Sunni Muslims – 85 percent of the population – against Shiite Muslims.

"Some people have the view, 'Well, what do you need religious freedom for?' because this is a country that is 99 percent Muslim," said commissioner Nina Shea of Freedom House. "There are many difficulties with that. Under the Taliban we saw how a harsh interpretation of Islam was imposed on everyone, whether they wanted that interpretation or not. This is a concern for the individual rights of Muslims as well as for minority religious groups within Afghanistan."

The commission report's bottom line is that "a future Afghanistan that respects human rights, including freedom of thought, conscience and religion," is much less likely to be a staging ground for terrorism. But there is another reason to stress issues of faith and tolerance – it is crucial that religious charities and relief groups are able to safely resume their work.

But who decides who is a relief worker and who gets jailed as a missionary? Ask Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer if this question matters in Afghanistan.

The U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: "Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion in teaching, practice, worship and observance."

This implies that all kinds of people – from atheists to evangelists – can speak their minds and strive to change other people's minds. But Afghanistan remains a land in which converting to another faith can be fatal. Inviting someone to convert to another faith can be fatal, as well.

The goal right now, said Shea, is to focus on issues of security and the rule of law.

"This report," she said, "is not about making Afghanistan safe for Christian missionaries to go in and convert the country. ... We are talking about basic rights of religious freedom that have been violated, probably more severely in Afghanistan than in almost any other country in the world in recent years."