If 2004 had one code word, it might be "values." But as Humpty Dumpty said, a word can mean whatever one chooses it to mean. Indeed, nuanced voices on values often were lost in the clash of extreme sound bites. Looking back:
Conservatives flex their muscle
A potent mix of traditional and fundamentalist churches and special-interest groups made unprecedented efforts to persuade people to cast their vote based on conservative religious values and to re-elect President Bush. Bush not only won Protestant votes in the heartland but Midwestern Catholic votes as well.
Rival presidential candidate John Kerry spent the campaign season under a "wafer watch" after a handful of Roman Catholic bishops said they would not offer the pro-choice candidate communion. Although Pope John Paul II himself has given communion to abortion-supporting politicians, U.S. bishops disagree over the lines of "faithful citizenship" and their own pastoral prerogatives.
Passions clash over 'The Passion'
Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ inspired Southern Baptists, Pentecostals and other conservative Christian groups to lease theaters, attend screenings and set record DVD sales.
Moviegoers wept with emotion, watching the sumptuously detailed — and shatteringly violent — account of Christ's suffering for the sins of all mankind. In the film, the hands driving the nails into Christ on the cross were Gibson's.
Pastors preached it as a message of salvation. Even Christian scholars who disagreed over theological fine points praised its powerful story of love and sacrifice and worried that complaints about the movie were veiled attacks on the Gospel itself.
But critics pointed out the script was based on controversial sources far from the Bible, including the visions of an anti-Semitic nun. Some Jewish leaders feared that the movie would inspire inter-religious violence. It did not.
Anglican divisions deepen
When the Episcopal Church USA approved an openly gay bishop in 2003, it horrified traditionalists and triggered open warfare between those who say the Bible condemns homosexual behavior and more liberal voices in the U.S. branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion.
Nine dissenting dioceses and several hundred parishes formed their own network, spurning U.S. Episcopalian bishops and turning to conservative bishops in Africa for pastoral leadership. But the network's calls for the Episcopal Church USA to be disciplined were unsuccessful.
The report by an international commission, which took a yearlong look at conflict within the Communion, did little to quell the potential schism. "There remains a very real danger that we will not choose to walk together," it said. The first clue may come at a February meeting in Ireland of the 32 primates.
Gay marriage debate
The first and, to date, only legal weddings for same-sex couples began in May in Massachusetts. Officials in San Francisco, Sandoval County, N.M., and New Paltz, N.Y., offered marriage licenses to gays earlier before courts invalidated their actions. Defense-of-marriage forces pushing for a Federal Marriage Act were unsuccessful; however, 11 states passed amendments in November defining marriage as between one man and one woman.
God and the Pledge
A U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June leaves "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance despite an appeal by California atheist Michael Newdow that his daughter should not be forced to hear sectarian language in elementary school. Although the ruling was applauded by conservative religious groups, the ruling was not based on the First Amendment but rather on a technicality: that Newdow, a divorced father, did not have legal standing to bring the lawsuit.
Conservatives were less happy with other U.S. Supreme Court choices: It upheld a ruling that Washington state could not be required to finance a scholarship for ministry study and left standing a ruling that Catholic Charities in California must pay for employees' contraceptives.
The governor of Florida is appealing to the high court, asking it to overturn a ruling by the Florida Supreme Court in the case of a brain-damaged 41-year-old woman, Terry Schiavo. The court concluded that a law, designed by the state Legislature to require doctors to reinsert the feeding tube keeping Schiavo alive, was not constitutional.
Church scandal aftershocks
U.S. bishops are still accounting for the spiritual, financial and emotional costs of the scandal of child sexual abuse by clergy. The first national audit of Catholic dioceses found overwhelming compliance with the church's policies on preventing and reporting abuse and caring for victims.
But a second report by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, released in February, found that 4% of U.S. priests in the last half-century had been involved in abuse. By November, the cost of litigation, settlements and care for victims and abusers passed $772 million, a USA TODAY study showed. The dioceses of Portland, Ore.; Spokane, Wash.; and Tucson declared bankruptcy in the face of more lawsuits.
In Boston, epicenter of the scandal, the bishop acknowledged that declining donations were among the many reasons for reconfiguring the entire diocese and closing 67 parishes. Primary reasons, he said, were demographic changes and a shortage of priests, which experts say will drive more parish closings. But the lesson of Boston in 2005 may be the church finally calling on the laity to participate more in church governance.
A frail but forceful pope
Pope John Paul II, 84, suffering visibly from Parkinson's disease and other ailments, marked the 26th year of his historically long pontificate by publishing his fifth book, traveling to Lourdes, France, in June to honor a peasant girl's vision of Mary and continuing to issue influential letters and give speeches.
In April he told a special meeting on the ethical and medical care for people in a persistent vegetative state that it was morally required to provide such patients with nutrition and hydration. He called removal of that support "euthanasia by omission."