Catholics stand together during Sunday Mass to recite the "Profession of Faith," a creed that defines precisely what it is that makes them Catholic."We believe in God ... We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ ... We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church."
The prayer covers a lot of ground, from God's creation of the Earth to Christ's birth and crucifixion to the promise of life in heaven.
Most churchgoing Catholics memorized the words as children and consider the creed a statement that unites them in a common belief.
And yet, when they walk out of church at the end of Mass, they still find plenty about their faith to argue about.
The arguments have been passionate in recent weeks as Cincinnati's Catholics debated Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk's decision to punish Sister Louise Akers for publicly supporting the ordination of women priests.
Pilarczyk told Akers she could not teach in archdiocesan schools until she renounced her stance on the issue. A week after she refused, a parish priest in Westwood dismissed a volunteer religion teacher, Carol Egner, for writing a letter to The Enquirer supporting Akers and her position on women priests.
The decision to punish the teachers not only rekindled debate over the ordination of women, but also highlighted a long-running tug-of-war between traditionalists and progressives over the future of the Catholic Church.
"What's happening with Akers is not an isolated case," said John Allen, an author and columnist who covers the Vatican for the National Catholic Reporter, an independent weekly newspaper. "It's a small piece of a much bigger picture."
The struggle within the church has intensified in the past few years as conservative Catholics, energized by the appointment of Pope Benedict XVI, pushed for stricter adherence to church teaching. They have praised a Vatican investigation of women's religious orders, welcomed a return to traditions such as the granting of indulgences and cheered Pope Benedict's declaration that Catholics must "not seek to adapt the faith to the fashions of the age."
They also supported Pilarczyk's decision to get tough with Akers over the ordination of women, which some consider a vestige of a liberal theology that took hold in the 1960s and 1970s after the Second Vatican Council.
The council, also known as Vatican II, launched reforms that some theologians now say were misinterpreted as an invitation to change the central teachings of the faith to better mesh with the changing secular world.
"Vatican II wasn't intended to set off a liturgical civil war, but that's what we got," said Rich Leonardi, a Cincinnatian who writes the conservative Catholic blog Ten Reasons. "There was a tendency to think the church should just go with the flow, to move with the world rather than to move the world.
"That ship has sailed. There's no intensity around that movement any more."
Catholics who favor reform dispute Leonardi's take on their views, saying they remain active and committed to changing their church from within. They acknowledge, however, that they face more challenges today than they did just a few decades ago.
"I do think there seems to be a trend among bishops around the country to get much more hard-line about women's issues," said Christine Schenk, director of FutureChurch, which favors a "discussion" about women's ordination but has not endorsed the idea.
"It's a mystery to me, but talking about women's equality in the church is threatening at some level."
Dealing with dissent
Conservatives have gained momentum in the past decade among the laity, in seminaries and in the church hierarchy. They have taken to blogs, TV and radio and have become more active in church affairs and in secular politics.
That was evident earlier this year when bishops and thousands of lay Catholics publicly opposed President Barack Obama's speech at the University of Notre Dame on grounds that his pro-choice stance conflicted with Catholic teachings.
"What we're living through right now is a kind of reaction against what was seen as an excessively liberal period," Allen said.
From the outside looking in, divisions within the church are not all that visible because polls show America's 70 million Catholics tend to hold views similar to those of the general population.
But those polls also show that Catholics who describe themselves as "orthodox" or who attend Mass regularly are more closely aligned with their church's teachings on issues such as abortion, homosexuality and embryonic stem cell research.
These are the Catholics who have embraced what some call the "Catholic identity movement," which calls for closer adherence to the traditions and teachings that separate Catholics from other Christian faiths.
"A watered down Catholicism that asks nothing of its members shouldn't expect to get anything in return," Leonardi said.
One of those teachings is the all-male priesthood. While not referenced in Scripture, it is based on sacred tradition passed down over 2,000 years and is specifically referenced in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
In other words, the male priesthood is non-negotiable.
"The church has no authority to ordain women," said archdiocese spokesman Dan Andriacco. "It is not an open question."
He said the discipline imposed on Akers and Egner is not part of a wider crackdown on dissent, as some fear, and the archdiocese has no interest in rooting out rank-and-file Catholics who don't agree with everything the church does, including the 60 percent who tell pollsters they support ordaining women.
"There is no witch hunt," said the Rev. Earl Fernandes, dean of Mount St. Mary's Seminary. "We're a big church. We try to help each person to grow in faith."
'Spirit of openness'
Dissent is nothing new for Catholics. The church's positions on birth control, celibacy for priests, the Latin Mass and a host of other traditions and teachings have been argued for decades, or even centuries.
Priests and bishops know not every Catholic will adhere to every teaching of the faith, and most say there is room on some issues for healthy debate, or at least for disagreement.
"We want to have a fundamental spirit of openness," Fernandes said.
Church officials say Akers and Egner crossed a line because they are teachers who publicly challenged church teachings. Their argument goes something like this: Religion is about belief, and those who believe women should be priests don't believe what the Catholic Church teaches. They believe what Methodists teach.
That doesn't mean they have to quit the church, but it does mean they aren't permitted to teach.
"We want our teachers to be authentic," Fernandes said. "We want our teachers to believe what they teach."
Both Akers and Egner say they would not express their views on women's ordination in their classes, and they consider themselves loyal to their church and to the core beliefs recited every Sunday in the Profession of Faith.
They say there should be room in their church for them to do the work they love, even if they disagree on the ordination of women.
"Catholics have a very long tradition of various beliefs and the ability to talk about them," Egner said. "Sometimes things change."
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