Last week, over our Wednesday morning cup of coffee, a conservative Christian friend smiled as she told me I am the most conservative liberal she has ever met! There was a time when this would have brought anything but a smile to my face. But that day, I laughed out loud. I thanked her for recognizing in me a hard-fought battle that has landed me smack dab in the middle of the road.

The precious Catholic Church in the United States is in trouble. This is not news, of course, to anyone who has watched a newscast or read an American newspaper within the past few years. When I moved from Denver to the Netherlands a year ago, I did not know what to expect, but I was certain things