Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, who happens to be running for governor of the Volunteer State, has caught a bunch of flak for his recent comments on the stump suggesting that Muslims might not merit First Amendment protection. Asked to comment on the proposed construction of an Islamic community center in Murfreesboro, he said, "You could even argue whether being a Muslim is actually a religion or is it a nationality, way of life or cult, whatever you want to call it. Now certainly we do protect our religions, but at the same time this is something we are going to have to face."

This has tempted me to wonder out loud if Ramsey's understanding of the First Amendment is that laws can be made prohibiting the free exercise of cults, to point out that one man's cult is another's religion, etc. But averse as I am to shooting fish in a barrel, and always actuated by a desire for deeper understanding, I figured I'd try to determine where Ramsey's coming from.

Where he comes from is Blountsville, which is about as deep as you can get into Upper East Tennessee. That's the hilly part of the state that has given the world NASCAR, thanks to the pressing need moonshiners had to outrace the revenooers. The local soft drink, brewed by Tri-City Beverage in Johnson City, is Dr. Enuf, originally sold as a tonic for hangovers, which is definitely what you get if you make a habit of drinking what they're running down from the hollers. The drink's marketing slogan is "Enuf is Enough," which, I can attest, is also true.

When it comes to cults, the most famous local variety features churches with names like the Church of God with Signs Following and the Church of Jesus with Signs Following and the Holiness Church of God in Jesus Name--all offshoots of the Church of God (Cleveland, TN) that, based on Mark 16: 17-18, favor the handling of snakes and the drinking of poison as signs of election. They also follow a distinctive way of life that eschews alcohol, carbonated beverages, coffee, and tea; smoking; dancing; the use of cosmetics and jewelry; and recourse to medical doctors. Male co-religionists greet each other with a vigorous hug and the "holy kiss," a mouth-to-mouth osculation. [continues after jump]

The prosecutors overreached...sez I.

In the indispensable Commonweal, Nicholas Cafardi, dean emeritus of Duquesne Law School and eminent canon lawyer, does a yeoman's job of trying to sort out the Vatican's sexual abuse story. The basic problem is this: In his 2001 letter clarifying John Paul II's motu proprio establishing the authority of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in sexual abuse cases, future pope Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger noted that the authority of the CDF (over which he presided) was "in force until now" (hucusque vigens). That is to say, such authority, granted in the 1922 papal letter Crimen Sollicitationis, had not been not superseded by the 1983 revision of canon law, which appeared to place authority elsewhere.

But, Cafardi contends, in order to maintain "bureaucratic bella figura" (proper form), Ratzinger fibbed. The CDF didn't really have, or at least didn't understand itself to have, authority over such cases. Rather than acknowledge that he had won the authority in a struggle with the Congregation of the Clergy and its lenient leader, Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, Ratzinger gave the impression that nothing had changed. So in what might be taken as a bit of re-revisionist history, the "Historical Introduction" appended to Benedict's new set of norms points out that between 1994 and 2001, "no reference was made to the previous competence of the Holy Office [as the CDF was formerly known] over such cases." Previous or in force until now? You be the judge.

Well, OK. Cafardi's major point is that this is the kind of thing that happens when laws are promulgated in secrecy. What he doesn't offer is an explanation for why the Vatican, in 1962 as well as 1922, was so determined to keep under wraps the fact that the CDF was responsible for conducting trials of priests charged with the sexual crimes outlined in Crimen--such that bishops would only be informed of it on a need-to-know basis. If then.

This can't have been because no one was supposed to know that soliciting sex in the confessional was a serious canonical crime. As Cafardi points out, that had been the case for centuries. The only explanation I can come up with is that Rome did not want it generally known that the CDF was responsible for conducting laicization trials of priests charged with ugly sex crimes because, well, then people might want to know who was being tried and what the outcome was. And that could only create...scandal.

Be all that as it may, it's evident that when the Holy Office/CDF regained its authority over sexual abuse cases, it was with less authority than it had under Crimen. That's because, hitherto, there were no statutes of limitations for matters under CDF jurisdiction. The supposed increase in the limitation for sexual abuse cases, from five years in the 1983 Canon Law to 10 years in 2001, to 20 years in the latest papal instruction, shouldn't obscure that fact.  

On the country's religious founding.

Making his own effort to explain Latino Catholic support for same-sex marriage in California, Joseph M. Palacios offers the following:

It is important to note that modern Latin Catholicism has a dual nature: it is "conservative" in the sense of family communalism and tradition that the church offers, yet it is classically "liberal" in the sense of not wanting the Catholic Church to have power in political life-- particularly after the long historical experience of the Latin American Church "meddling in politics." As Mexicans put it: "No meta en la política." A sizable majority of U.S. Latino Catholics shares these attitudes with them. Increasingly they are joining their Latin counterparts in accepting gays and lesbians as part of the social family that is both Catholic and liberal.

This makes sense to me--particularly since so large a proportion of Latinos in California have roots in Mexico, where keeping the church out of public life has been a state ideology since the revolution.

What's worth pondering are the implications of this for Catholicism in America. Over the past couple of decades, the (mostly non-Latino) hierarchy has become increasingly inclined to meddle in politics--an inclination most recently manifested in the USCCB's effective alliance with the Republican Party in seeking to block health care reform.

As the church becomes increasingly Latino, it will be interesting to see if the rank and file become "Americanized" into a more assertive political stance, or if they stick to their own inclination, and continue to ignore the bishops' heated rhetoric about how (in this case) same-sex marriage signals the end of civilization as we know it. It's even possible, I suppose, that the bishops will take a deep breath and consider the virtues of keeping a respectful distance between the church's norms and the norms of a pluralistic civil society.

The most notable result of the new Public Religion Research Institute survey of attitudes toward Proposition 8 is the divide between Latino Catholics and Latino Protestants. The former are more in favor of same-sex marriage than any other ethno-religious group in the survey; the former are more opposed. (That's Catholics 57-38 in favor versus Protestants 73-22 opposed.) The correlation that's caught most attention is the disproportionately high number of Latino Catholics (41 percent) who think of God as an impersonal force. Although we're unfortunately not given a number for Latino Protestants, we are meant to assume that most of them regard God "as a person with whom one can have a relationship."

I can't dispute the Catholic number, but it makes no sense to me as an explanation. Latino Catholicism is, by all accounts, rich in personal connection--to the Virgin Mary and other saints, for example. I'd suggest that for Latino Protestants--as for evangelicals generally--same-sex marriage is a major issue, in effect a defining element of their faith. For Latino Catholics, it's not.

A few days ago, WaPo's Michelle Boorstein put up a plaintive post on the newspaper's Under God blog asking for help in finding out what's up with the faith-based initiative out in the dozen federal departments that have dedicated officials embedded in them.

I've been requesting access to even a few of these offices for more than six months, but am getting nowhere with the White House. And the people who run the offices aren't allowed to say three words to a reporter.

If you know what these people do, or if you know someone who knows what these people do, or if you have some good ideas for us as we explore what these people do, please e-mail me: boorsteinm@washpost.com

Boorstein's the local religion beat reporter, and no one's done more to cover the faith-based initiative since Obama took office. If anyone ought to have access to the relevant federal officials, she should. Why the hell shouldn't the public be entitled to know what's going on? It's hard to avoid the conclusion that religion, like race, has become something of a toxic subject at the White House. It's also hard to avoid the conclusion that, actually, not much is happening.

The most consequential of the departmental appointments thus far has been Peter Groff, the former president of the Colorado state senate, who took the faith-based position at the Department of Education last year. Earlier this month, he resigned to become CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. What did Groff do while he was at DOE? He doesn't seem to have had much to tweet about. Maybe he'll talk to you now, Michelle.  

For the story I wrote back in 1993.

Tea Party paladina and Southern Baptist Sharron Angle, the Republican running to unseat Harry Reid in Nevada, recently offered the following interpretation of Thomas Jefferson's famous 1801 letter to the Danbury Baptists, in which he interpreted the religion clauses of the First Amendment as erecting a "wall of separation" between church and state.

"Thomas Jefferson was addressing a church and telling them a wall of separation had been put up precisely to protect the church from being taken over by a state religion," Angle said last month in an interview on "Face to Face With Jon Ralston." "That's what they meant. They didn't mean we couldn't bring our values to the political forum."

Sure, it's spitting in the wind, but for the record, the Baptists in Connecticut were not seeking protection from "being taken over by a state religion." What they objected to was that, under Connecticut's Standing Order, the state taxed all citizens to support, well, the church of their choice. (If you didn't have one, the taxes went to the Congregational church, which in those days dominated the local religious landscape.)

The Baptists didn't want the state forcing them to support even their own church. The very idea of the state doing anything to advance religion was anathema to them. Like Jefferson the deist, they were the strictest of separationists, which was way they had looked to him for help. Sharron Angle and most of her fellow Southern Baptists have backslid pretty far from that old-time religion.

My take, from my turn in Georgia, over at Beliefnet.