It emanates from the changes in the Church. The change in style from high liturgy to the whiny adolescent voice accompanying the plucking of the guitar string of the new folk mass in the 1960s was accompanied by the change in content, reduced to a one-note protest against abortion. Perhaps that is why Obama received 54% of the Catholic vote.

Obama’s faux hip style would likely appeal to those who go for today’s kumbaya forms of worship, such as the holding of hands during the “Lord’s Prayer” in many masses. Or the priest I heard in Holley, New York, who had come off the altar and into the aisle to talk in a confidential, folksy manner to the congregation who looked like they had just stopped into mass between their other activities that required no more sartorial effort than stepping into a pair of jeans. In the flattering soft tones that Flannery O’Connor would have zinged, he went on about the “Father, Son, and Mother Spirit.” To my horror, he explained this new feminine conception to the approving nods of the congregation’s Eves.