From a Christian perspective, the answer to all of that is not power, as it is in the modern perspective. It's love. It's self-sacrifice. That's what love is all about. The marriage ceremony says it very well: sacrifice is difficult, but love can make it a joy.

Law is a process. If there is equality of process for everybody, then that's our definition of justice. Whether or not what is done is right or wrong, you follow the process. And so, the end result is just by definition within that alternative universe that is American law. Most people still operate within a moral universe where principles of good and bad and what is right and wrong in itself, and not just as a result of the process.

Interest in religion is not necessarily interest in God. Religion in public life means a set of ideas, an ideology that has certain positions. Religion is then one more ideology among others. Religion is about God. Religion begins with a relationship to God, not a relationship to an idea. It is God who is an actor, not just individuals who have certain beliefs who are actors. God is an actor.

This is a real presence which includes every dimension of who Jesus is: body and blood, human soul and divine person. The consecrated Eucharistic species are the Lord and therefore command our adoration. We do not adore ourselves, nor the ordained priest, nor the Bible, even though these are vehicles for Christ's spiritual presence; we do adore the Eucharist, this blessed sacrifice made really present sacramentally.

God's is the causality at the level of our being, and therefore the roots of our freedom. Ours in causality is determinative of what kind of being we're going to be through our free choices, what kind of action we are going to do through our decisions.

The Church is our Mother, which means it is an internal voice. It is not a set of external rules. That's what isn't understood about Catholicism in this Protestant culture. It means that your conscience is formed by the Church, but in the end you're responsible for your own activities.

If you, however, separate reason and faith so that it's purely a rationalistic scheme, it will end in violence. If a pure faith scheme - sometimes called the fundamentalist scheme in modern parlance - you'll end in violence too.