I am not sure whether a discussion of the serious implications of the Madonna rock music video "Like a Prayer" is possible in the contemporary climate of discourse in American Catholicism. Nonetheless, I propose to try. I will discuss the religious theme of "Like a Prayer," Madonna's critique of her religious heritage and the more general issue of the relationship between sexuality and religious imagination.

Some preliminary comments about the audio and video tapes of "Like a Prayer":

1 ) Virtually all the rock music critics agree that technically the music and singing of "Like a Prayer" are the best that Madonna has ever done. Rolling Stone says that it is "as close to art as pop music gets... proof not only that Madonna should be taken seriously as an artist but that hers is one of the most compelling voices of the eighties."

2) The lyrics of the album run from harmless to devout. In the title song, God's voice calls the singer's name, and it feels like home. That "Like a Prayer" is in fact a prayer is evident from the lyrics themselves, from the singer's interpretation of them, and from the critical reaction. In the words of Edna Gundersen in USA Today, "Lyrically 'Prayer' is a confessional feast, with Madonna's Catholic upbringing as the main course. Songs are rife with religious overtones, spiritual and hymnal arrangements and a host of references to joy, faith, sin and power."

The Arizona Daily Star notes that "it is largely a story of renewal and self-determination and it speaks with authority. You can dance, if you want to, but this time there's a heart and a brain behind the beat."

Only those who come to the music and lyrics with a grim determination to find prurience and blasphemy can miss—and then with considerable effort—the God hunger that animates them.

3) The music video is utterly harmless, a PG-13 at the worst, and, by the standards of rock video, charming and chaste. More than that, it is patently a morality play. In the singer's own words it is "a song of a passionate young girl so in love with God that it is almost as though He were the male figure in her life."

The girl in the story witnesses a crime; she sees a black man falsely accused of it; she flees from the criminals and hides in a church; she prays to a black saint (Martin de Porres, one presumes) and falls asleep. She dreams that the saint comes alive and represents God as her lover. She awakens from the dream and realizes that in the power of God's love she can run the risk of doing right. In Madonna's words, "She knows that nothing's going to happen to her if she does what she believes is right." She goes to the police station and obtains the release of the innocent man.

To emphasize the religious themes of the album, it comes steeped in the smell of sandalwood, recalling the church incense of the past and implicitly (if unintentionall) the sandalwood themes of The Song of Songs.

That this is the meaning of the video is clear from its obvious sense, from the testimony of the singer and from the virtually unanimous reaction of the young people who have watched it. (In my sociology of religion class of 150 students, before any comment from me, 30 percent rated the video "PG." 68 percent rated it "PG-13," and 2 percent rated it "R" or "X.")

This is blasphemy? Only for the prurient and the sick who come to the video determined to read their own twisted sexual hang-ups into it. Only for those who think that it is blasphemous to use religious imagery in popular music. Only for those who think that sexual passion is an inappropriate metaphor for divine passion (and thus are pretty hard on Hosea, Jesus, St. Paul, St. Bernard of Clairvaux and St. Teresa of Avila). Only for those whose subconscious racism is offended at the image of a black saint revealing God's love.

The line between blasphemy (the abuse of the divine) and sacramentality (the search for the Creator in the created) may sometimes be thin. One person's blasphemy may be another person's sacramentality—a May crowning is blasphemous for a fundamentalist and sacramental for a Catholic. Fundamentalists may well believe that the use of sexual passion as a metaphor for God's passion, especially in a work of popular art, is blasphemous. Catholics, dedicated as they are to a search for the Creator in creation, can hardly think so.

Even the most ridig fundamentalist or Catholic Jansenist must search desperately to fmd prurience in "Like a Prayer." Madonna's low-cut dress (or slip)? The tender kiss of the (black) saint (God)? The brief image of sensual satisfaction on the face of the woman in the dream as she's caught up in God's love? These would be an "occasion of sin" for young people?

Someone has to be kidding!

An immensely popular, and now critically acclaimed, singer tells a morality story filled with Catholic imagery, and some Christians respond to it with threats of boycotts against Pepsi-Cola (for whom she has made ads and which has lost $5 million because of its cancellation of the ads). Such a response tells more about those who respond than it does about the work of art itself.

In her interviews about "Like a Prayer" and previous songs. Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone has repeatedly described the importance of Catholicism in her childhood and the remnants of Catholic guilt that continue to haunt her life: "If you enjoy something, it must be wrong." In the rock video when the girl grabs a knife and cuts herself, causing stigmata-like wounds on her hands, the wounds represent guilt, Madonna tells us. However, it is not guilt but love that leads the girl to do what she knows is right. Madonna seems to be saying that the guilt that obsessed her Catholic childhood is not enough to produce virtue.

She has been less explicit about the love imagery and the sense of sacramentality she has also carried with her from her Catholic childhood. Perhaps she is unaware of this second part of her inheritance. Nonetheless it permeates her work. She says she is not sure whether she is a Catholic or whether she would raise a child as Catholic. That is her own personal problem. In fact she sings "like a Catholic" (especially in "Like a Prayer"), and for our purposes in this article that is what counts.

Perceive the paradox: Catholicism in its present formulation passes on to its children both obsessive and imprisoning guilt and a liberating sense of God's love as sacramentalized tn creation and especially in human love. It is a paradox struggling to become a contradiction.

Anyone who listens to the laity knows how bitter are the revulsions of many against their guilt-dominated Catholic childhood and how many of them claim, like Madonna, that they were taught to believe that anything one enjoys must be wrong. Not all Catholics were educated this way; but if we are honest, we must admit that guilt and anger about guilt is widespread among Catholics. That most of them cling to their Catholicism (like Madonna) one way or another is evidence that the appeal of Catholic imagery is stronger than the ugliness of Catholic guilt.

Guilt is the central theme of contemporary Catholicism; the sacramental imagination is transmitted (in 15 countries that fellow sociologist Michael Hout and I have studied recently) either unintentionally or with the sense that, compared to guilt, it is unimportant. Christian leadership often concentrates on what is peripheral and the result of accidental historical circumstances and ignores what is essential and timeless. And organizes boycotts against those who sometimes have a better sense of the sacramental—the lurking presence of God—than they do.

In my sociology of religion class, the division of reaction to "Like a Prayer" was between fundamentalist Protestants, who were uneasy about the "shock" of the juxtaposition of womanly eroticism and the sacred, and Catholics, who were not disturbed by the blending of the two. "Catholics are more sensual," commented a mainline Protestant student. Surely the sacramental imagination ought to make them so; if they are in this era, however, the reason is that they are able to resist the Jansenism that still perdures.

In the present climate within the Catholic Church, the Irish monks would not have dared to convert an Indo-European intercourse symbol into the Celtic cross representing Jesus and Mary and the union of male and female in God. If she wanted to keep clergy and hierarchy happy, St. Teresa would not have dared use the powerful erotic imagery of her mystical writings, nor would St. Bernard have dared to write his commentary on the "Song of Songs" the way he did.

The builders of Romanesque churches would not have (as my colleague at the University of Arizona, Donna Swaim, has told me) used pagan fertility symbols on their altars as signs of vitality to ward off morbidity Fourth-century Roman liturgists would not have incorporated into the Easter Vigil service a pagan fertility ritual that used a candle and water.

Madonna must be denounced and Pepsi-Cola threatened with boycott because she is a sexually attractive woman who dares to link her sexuality with God and re- ligious images; That, gentle per- sons, is the heart ofthe matter.

The link between vitaiity and fertility between life and sex, has been so obvious that, until the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, humankind had no doubts about the pervasive religious imagery of sex and the pervasive sexual imagery of religion. The Irish until the last century used to make love in the fields outside the house where a wake was in process to defy death: Life, continued by sexual union—they told death—is stronger than you are.

It is no accident that Jesus rose from the dead at the time of the Jewish spring fertility festival.

Too often our contemporary Catholic leadership rejects this human experience out of hand. Sex may be necessary for the continuation of the species, but please, lay folk, don't talk about it, don't let its influence seep into your life outside of your bedrooms, don't enjoy it too much, don't let it into your artistic works (especially if they happen to be religious) and don't suggest that the allure of a woman's body in a rock video staged in church can hint at the allure of God.

The novelist Bruce Marshal observed four decades ago that Jansenism is the odd notion that God made an artistic mistake in ordaining the mechanics of human procreation.

The matter is not subject for discussion, as I have learned to my dismay. History, theology, art, archeology, exege- sis—all are simply dismissed as irrelevant when they challenge the deep-seated antipathy toward sexuality that permeates Catholic leadership elites. The laity will be shocked, they tell you, refusing to listen to any other idea. In fact,

When the pope beatifies or canonizes someone, he brings to culmination a long, difficult and intricate process of investigation. It is a pity that some Catholics, especially in English-speaking countries, have lost interest in the saints. This is partly due to pious hagiographers who, lacking historical expertise, have presented a perhaps distorted image of persons who are in fact quite attractive. It can be safely affirmed that no one would be declared a saint unless he or she were attractive, and if you bear with me as I go through the steps leading to canonization, I think this will become evident.    

Where does the process of making a saint begin? It begins with the faithful themselves and their relationship to the potential saint. Certain of God's faithful become attracted by the personality and heroism of another person, and in their esteem for that person they experience a desire to follow that particular way to holiness. They come to the point where they think it right to ask that person's help. When the faithful are thus moved to know one of God's especially gifted and to seek the benefits of his or her intercession, it is not done out of superstition. According to theologians, the desire arises out of a special type of knowledge similar to that by which a person makes a living act of faith in Christ. Just as Christ is not only a historical personality belonging to the past, so the potential saint is someone who is vitally present in the contemplation and the inner "sight" of fellow Christians who are moved by faith, hope and love.    

The faithful take it for granted that the potential saint is a friend whose life stretches beyond the limits of his or her earthly existence. When this devotion and attraction becomes widespread, it comes to the attention of the church hierarchy. The hierarchy cannot ignore a devotion that, if authentic, has its origin in the action of God in human hearts. The church therefore must discern whether a genuine or specious reputation for holiness is present, and whether that reputation is based upon a true and objective heroicity of life, which is the hallmark of the saints. If this investigation is begun within 20 years after the death of the esteemed person, it is handled according to what is called the ordinary process. If, however, many years have gone by so that there are no or relatively few persons alive who would have known the subject intimately, then the cause must be conducted as a historical cause.    

In either case, any published or unpublished writings of the candidate for canonization must be examined to see if there is anything contrary to the accepted teaching of the church on faith and morals and if there is any evidence or indication of holiness contained in those writings.    

In an ordinary cause, such as that of the recently beatified Edith Stein, witnesses who knew the candidate are interviewed in order to establish the presence of a genuine reputation for sanctity. It must be shown that the candidate lived a life of more than ordinary Christian holiness, that indeed he or she practiced the theological virtues to a heroic degree.    

In a historical cause such as the case of Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801-90), the investigation into the life, virtues and reputation for holiness is carried on by an examination of written documents, since there were few living witnesses who could be interviewed. To conduct this investigation, a Historical Commission was appointed by the Archbishop of Birmingham consisting of myself, J. Derek Holmes, an ecclesiastical historian, and Gerard Tracy, a historian and archivist who is librarian of the Birmingham Oratory. I served as chairman of the commission.    

In May 1986 the commission completed its work. The material collected contains samples of different facets of Cardinal Newman's reputation for sanctity. To secure this evidence the commission examined both printed and manuscript sources. Among the printed sources were memoirs, biographies, autobiographies and editions of letters by Newman's contemporaries. It also examined newspapers (particularly those containing obituaries of Newman), relevant articles in both contemporary and later periodicals, biographies and studies about him, and reviews of the major biographies.    

Manuscript material researched at the Birmingham Oratory Archives included the following: 68 files of "Miscellaneous Letters," containing letters from occasional correspondents, usually strangers, that are rich in evidence of Newman's spiritual influence; 171 files "Personal Collections," valuable for the evidence yield of Newman's continuing influence over friends and colleagues; 76 files of "Various Collections," showing the beneficial influences exerted upon the faithful by works such as the Apologia, Letter to Pusey and Letter to the Duke of Norfolk. These three collections of letters written during Newman's lifetime are estimated to number 50,000 to 70,000.    

In addition, the commission likewise examined 51 files of correspondence bearing upon a variety of matters concerning Newman's life and writings--all written after his death. These letters were addressed to the Rev. William Neville, Newman's literary executor in the years just after his death, and subsequently to other Oratorians, usually those directly concerned with the study of Newman--Joseph Bacchus, Henry Tristram and Stephen Dessain. Throughout this estimated 70,000 to 90,000 letters, plentiful evidence was found for a genuine reputation for holiness. The commission also went through 15 files of letters reporting favors attributed to Newman's intercession, three files of letters addressed to the first vice-postulator expressing interest in and support for the cause and also giving evidence of devotion, and eight files of letters addressed to the office of the Friends of Newman and to the second vice-postulator. These contained ample evidence of devotion to Newman in recent years and of widespread support for the cause. Finally, documents in other archives and libraries offered further evidence from contemporaries of Newman.

THE COLLECTED EVIDENCE was arranged chronologically from 1835 to the present. One aspect, however, was treated separately from the rest: the evidence for canonization, meaning those documents specifically indicating that Newman would or should be canonized. It must be remembered that the question of canonization was not familiar in 19th-century England when the Catholic Church still comprised a largely unknown minority and, indeed, raised certain suspicions in the English mind. Yet at the time of Newman's death, the idea was raised spontaneously in the national press. Some obituaries argued that Newman was canonizable, and others were convinced of the likelihood of its happening, and this included the distinctly non-Catholic papers. Even the staunchly protestant Evangelical Magazine declared: "Of the multitude of saints in the Roman calendar there are very few that can be considered better entitled to that designation than Cardinal Newman."    

Decades earlier, Frederick William Faber, a leader with Newman in the Oxford Movement, had claimed that the Cardinal was the man of the 19th century most likely to be canonized. This he affirmed on more than one occasion. After Newman's death, the suggestion for his canonization occurs in private correspondence, and in 1907 a future Archbishop of Birmingham expressed his continual hope that Newman would be "the first canonized saint of the Second Spring." The tremendous and overwhelming response to the first published appeal for Newman's canonization in 1941 revealed how strongly that hope had continued to be nourished in the 20th century. Ever since the introduction of the cause in 1958, expressions of support have been continuous and widespread, not only in English-speaking countries but in Germany, France and Italy as well.    

Newman's spiritual influence is overwhelmingly testified to during his lifetime, at his death and since his death, including this very year. One recurring assertion cannot be forgotten: "I, like thousands of others, owe my soul under God to Newman." This has been affirmed by Catholics, non-Catholic, priests, religious and lay persons.    

What were some of the particular facets of Newman's sanctity that struck his admirers? One was his otherworldliness. A contemporary of Newman pointed out that "no one has made us feel as he has done the detachment of the pilgrim from all earth's closest ties." Those who heard Newman preach were particularly struck by the feeling that he had a vivid perception of the invisible world, some even expressing the belief that he had been given a glimpse of heaven. This otherworldliness was combined, as many said, with an intense interest in the affairs of this world. Still others were struck by Newman's tremendous simplicity and forthrightness, his honesty and sense of justice, his deep and profound humility. The commission discovered that Newman was particularly reticent about his gifts of material help to the poor. There is hardly any mention of it in his letters and diaries, but it was remembered in Birmingham by the recipients of his charity and testified to by Father Neville.    

During Newman's lifetime both Catholics and non-Catholic who felt spiritually indebted to him sought autographs or signed photographs with his blessing. At the time of his death--though somehow I was not expecting this--requests were made to the Oratory for relics, and before the burial, religious objects were both sent and brought to be touched to the bier.    

The commission submitted its material bound in fascicles--sections of documentation--of 80 to 90 pages each. Three sets of 76 fascicles each were assembled from our research: They totaled approximately 18,000 pages. These included six fascicles with regard to the history of the cause, 22 fascicles dealing with the life and virtues of Newman, 17 fascicles containing evidence of Newman's reputation for sanctity and 20 fascicles presenting evidence of his spiritual influence, including samples of favors attributed to his intercession. Finally there were 11 fascicles containing the censor's reports on Newman's writings. Here the commission was aided by other people. Censorship was no small task considering that the published works of Newman range around 90 volumes and that for each work two censors were required.    

All the material was presented to the Diocesan Tribunal in Birmingham and then forwarded by the tribunal to the Congregation of Causes. Shortly afterward I was appointed Postulator of the Cause. The most important part of my work is to write what is called the positio, the case for Newman's sanctity, drawn from the materials collected by the commission. The positio wilI be examined by various committees within the Congregation of Causes. These committees will make the decision whether or not to recommend to the Holy Father that the virtues of Newman be declared

The end of the second session of the Second Vatican Council, Cardinal Leo Jozef Suenens of Belgium asked his fellow bishops: "Why are we even discussing the reality of the church when half of the church is not even represented here?" This provocative question, midway through a council that was then totally male, was a breakthrough that prodded council members to invite a few "token" women to the ensuing sessions.

Myths. "Jesuit education" is a familiar couplet like "Roman Empire" or "Viennese waltz." Most people associate Jesuits with education, although not all they have heard about this association is so. From time to time, for instance, a journalist or a student writing a term paper will call the switchboard of a Jesuit school to ask what Jesuit source contains the remark that goes something like this: "Let us have the education of children until they are seven, and you may have them thereafter."

No reference can be given, however, because that legendary saying is not just spurious but is the exact opposite of what actually was said in the first draft of the famous Jesuit plan for schools, the Ratio Studiorum. The six veteran teachers who in 1586 wrote the Latin essays making up that draft recommended that no boy be admitted to a Jesuit school before he is seven. Children less than that age, it explained, are troublesome and need nannies, not schoolmasters: "Molestissimi et nutricibus potius indigent quam ludimagistris."

The second draft of the Ratio in 1591 was equally cool toward the kindergarten bunch. Beginning students, it said, must not be so young that they fuss about trifles (nor so old that they upset class discipline), and they must have learned to read and write correctly. Otherwise, the sight of their compositions will turn their teacher's stomach. Nevertheless, besides the myths, there is also a reality.

Origins. The third and final draft of the Ratio Studiorum was promulgated in 1599 by Claudio Acquaviva, who in 1581 had been elected the fifth General of the Society of Jesus, an office he held until his death 34 years later.