On Good Friday, David Heimann mourned the death of Jesus Christ in the presence of the pope. And for the first time Sunday, he will be able to celebrate the resurrection of Christ in St. Peter's Basilica.

But Rome was not his only destination on this pilgrimage.

Heimann, of Rogers Park, has traversed the back alleys of Beijing where Chinese Catholics largely worship in secret; visited the cathedral of Las Vegas, where gamblers seek forgiveness; and wandered the ruins of sanctuaries that have suffered the trials of time or persecution.

By year's end, the 32-year-old former youth minister plans to visit at least 365 churches in just as many days, spanning 35 countries and five continents. He is chronicling each step of his journey on his blog, www.adsodalitatem.org (the Latin means "toward solidarity"), and linking satellite images of the churches he sees.

In an era when so much attention is paid to issues that divide parishioners, such as abortion, Heimann prefers to focus on the indisputable ties that bind the Catholic Church in an increasingly secular world.

What did the Egyptian government accuse him of?
According to the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, Kareem stands charged with the following alleged crimes: (1) Spreading data and malicious rumors that disrupt public security; (2) Defaming the President of Egypt; (3) Incitement to overthrow the regime upon hatred and contempt; (4) Incitement to hate "Islam" and breach of the public peace standards; (5) Highlighting inappropriate aspects that harm the reputation of Egypt and spreading them to the public.

One has Psalms, the other has podcasts. One creates meaning out of Latin, an ancient language; the other finds new meanings through derivatives of common words, like "digg," "friendster," or "flickr." One community meets every Sunday, the other meets with every click of a new web browser window.

Alone, the power of the church is as undeniable as the power of the web 2.0 upswing. While the former has been around for centuries, permeating every inch of the globe, the latter has needed but a few years to make its mark on the Internet landscape. And each, in some ways, is following the same business model: the church wants followers every bit as much as MySpace does.

But in the cross-section between the two juggernauts lies a barren desert.

"The church is probably handicapped in the sense that the least likely place you'll find twenty-somethings is in a church," said Kevin Hendricks, creator of the 30,000 visitor-strong blog Church Marketing Sucks. "The few of us who are there are stepping up and trying to pull the church kicking and screaming into the 21st century, and it happens in small ways."

Wallis said Christian conservatives have limited the discussion to abortion and same-sex marriage, two fears that mobilized voters in 2004, and that voters care about more than two the issues.

"We must insist that the ethics of war — and whether we tell the truth about going to war — these are moral values issues too," Wallis said. Democrats have pinned part of their midterm strategy on voters' restlessness with the war in Iraq.

The Red Letter Christians campaign plans to use voter guides for congregants and briefings for their leaders to argue education, poverty and the environment are all evangelical issues. Wallis also launched a new blog this week at BeliefNet.com, debating with former Christian Coalition head and failed Republican Georgia lieutenant governor candidate Ralph Reed.

Jesus is not God; he was only a man.

Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene. They had a daughter Sarah and their bloodline lives on in Europe today.

Mary Magdalene is to be worshiped as a goddess.

The Bible was put together by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine.

Jesus was viewed as a man and not as God until the fourth century, when he was "deified" by Constantine.

The Gospels have been edited to support the claims of later Christians.

In the original Gospels, Jesus directed Mary Magdalene, not Peter to establish the Church.

There is a secret society known as the Priory of Sion that still worships Mary Magdalene as a goddess and guards the secret of Jesus’ bloodline.

The Catholic Church is aware of all this and has been fighting for centuries to keep it suppressed.

The Catholic Church is willing to and often has assassinated the descendents of Christ to keep his bloodline from growing.

Dutch evangelical Christians are to hold a round-the-clock prayer vigil to ward off the forces of evil on Tuesday - the so-called Devil's Day.

They believe that the sixth day of the sixth month of 2006 has great significance for evil-doers and Satanists who revere the number 666.

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The reference to 666 is taken from the Biblical book of Revelation, which talks about the events leading to the end of the world.

Revelation 13:18 states: "If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man's number. His number is 666."

I decided I would, for the first time as an adult, read the Bible. And I would blog about it as I went along. For the millions of Jews and Christians who know the Bible intimately, this may seem obscene: Why should an ignoramus write about the stories and lessons that you know by heart and understand well? I don't intend any kind of insult. My goal is not to find contradictions, mock impossible events, or scoff at hypocrisy. Nor am I quite stupid enough to pretend that Judaism (or Christianity) is just the Bible. Jews are not only the People of the Book but the People of Many Books. There is the rest of the Hebrew Bible—the Prophets and Writings, the vast commentary of the Talmud, the stories of the midrashim, and thousands and thousands of years of other law and story and commentary. This 4,000years' worth of delving and discussion is totally unfamiliar to me—I can't hope to compete with its wisdom.

I'll spend the next few weeks (or months) finding out. I'll begin with "in the beginning" and see how far I get. My wife, struck by my new biblical obsession, gave me a wonderful Torah translation and commentary for Hannukah, the Etz Hayim, which was prepared by conservative Jewish scholars. I'll read that and dip into the King James and other translations on occasion.

Four years later St. Blog's Parish has grown to include hundreds of Catholic bloggers (possibly more than six hundred). The parish includes apologists, speakers, writers, priests, nuns, monks, brothers, poets, jesters, theologians, military (active & veterans), seminarians, novices, deacons, artists, mothers, fathers, high school students, college undergrads, families, friends, and so much more!

The Parish has received some press attention and even holds its own annual Catholic Blog Awards (thanks to Joshua LeBlanc (cyberCatholics.com). While the parishioners are largely from the USA there are a few who are not and we hope to gather in more bloggers from around the globe to make St. Blog's Parish an even larger Catholic presence on the internet.

In fact, Edgeworth Church is just one of many evangelical churches using emerging technology - from online forums to podcasts - to attract a coveted crowd of teens toyoung professionals.

Across the country, evangelicals are tapping into the marketing power of popculture. Today churchgoers can listen to praise music on their iPods,watch sermons online and keep in touch with their pastors or fellowcongregants through social networks and church blogs.

"The whole evangelical movement has just bought lock, stock and barrel intothe blogging format," said Daniel Harrell, associate minister at ParkStreet Church in Boston.

"There is a lot of feeling outside the evangelical community that whatever you get by using this (technology) is not going to be substantive. It's too quick, too easy," said Allen Wolfe, director of the Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College.

Many pastors admitted concern over the issue but said the churches frequently remind their congregations that services aren't meant to be watched online or listened to over an iPod.

"To miss church and catch it on the Web or radio is one thing," Harrell said. "To skip church and catch it on the Web or radio is another."

The conservative organization has spent the last few years trying to escape the best seller's shadow, after the novel portrayed Opus Dei as a murderous sect fixated on power and self-mutilation.

But now the low-profile spiritual community is starting a drive to improve its image ahead of a major film based on the book -- and that campaign begins at the group's front door, where a sign invites fans of the Dan Brown novel to learn about "the real Opus Dei."

"The unfortunate thing is there are going to be tens of millions of people who will read the novel and see the movie and have that be their only exposure to Opus Dei," said Brian Finnerty, a spokesman for the group. "Because the book is marketed as being in some ways factual, it's difficult for people to tell where the lines between fact and fiction are."

It must be said immediately, however, that the reality in Opus Dei is quite different from what one finds in The Da Vinci Code. In fact, I'm a little afraid that, should someone who's seen the movie happen upon a real cilice and discipline they'd just laugh -- like someone who shows up for a duel expecting to see a .44 Magnum only to face a water pistol instead.

In The Da Vinci Code, the cilice is a notched leather belt studded with metal barbs which cut the flesh and cause Silas to bleed profusely.

In reality, the cilice (pronounced "sillis") is a small metal chain with sharp points facing inward. No leather, no belt, no notches. Of course, it's uncomfortable (this is penance, after all), but it shouldn't cut the flesh or cause bleeding. The version used by members of Opus Dei is worn around the thigh, and the custom within Opus Dei is to wear it two hours a day -- except on Sundays, feast days, and certain times of the year.

Welcome to the world of "Godcasting," where religious and inspirational podcasts come from Presbyterians, Mormons, Jews, Buddhists and, yes, even pagans. Depending on your point of view, these programs may strike you as fun, convenient, or blasphemous. But they're rarely boring.

Godcasts have multiplied faster than most other types of podcast programming and have emerged as one of the genre's most popular. Vonhogen's Catholic Insider program ranks as No. 3 -- ahead of programs with streaming jazz, rock songs, or general news -- on portal PodcastAlley.com, which lists 2,884 podcasts. And Catholic Insider keeps on moving up in the charts.

So are many of the other 171 religious and inspirational podcasts out there that bear such names as Wired Jesus Podcast (a program for tech-savvy Christians) and Outchurched. The latter features Ryan King and Dan Tripp, both of whom once aspired to the ministry but became disillusioned with the church. They created a blog and podcast aimed at one of the largest Christian demographics: people who have left the church. In one podcast, King and Tripp discuss why they stopped attending services. "Both of us wouldn't care if the church died," says Tripp.

And the Pagan Power Hour podcast includes information about casting magic spells and proper foods to cook for pagan holidays.

Odeo (odeo.com), a podcast directory, plans to encourage more churches, synagogues and mosques to use them, said Adam Rugel, the Web site's director of content. Odeo lists a broad variety of religious podcasts, including programs from Buddhists, Muslims and Jews.

Despite the variety of religious podcasts, Christian programs make up by far the largest segment of the category. Shows range from recordings made at the kitchen table to slick broadcasts with pulsing music and crisp audio, like that of "RevTim" (www.godcast.org/categories/revtimPodcast/).

This voice "is fresh, bold, innovative, diverse, and rebellious (and) will ultimately bring a new globalized culture to the planet," a company statement said.

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Founding contributors to the new blog include, apart from the three Chopras and Kapur, filmmaker Muzaffar Ali, actors Nandita Das, Anupam Kher, Rahul Khanna and Rahul Bose, politician Milind Deora and environmentalist Vandana Shiva.

When the Rev. Mark D. Roberts started his blog, he envisioned a small outreach to his community and parishioners at Irvine Presbyterian Church in Irvine, Calif.

A little more than a year later, the blog reaches far beyond that, drawing 1,500 visitors Monday through Friday and 2,000 on weekends.

"I have readers literally all over the world," says Roberts, pastor of a 750-member congregation. His review of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ has drawn more than 25,000 visitors since the film's release, and it continues to draw readers by the hundreds.