"It's been said that there are two Americas, and what I'd argue is that if there are two Americas, we're not divided economically, we're divided morally," Wendy Wright, president of the group Concerned Women for America, said during a panel discussion entitled "Beyond Our Pocketbooks: Social Issues and the Conservative Movement." On one side, Wright noted, "we have hedonistic Hollywood that imposes their sense of indulgence that the only life worth living is one that indulges itself." "We have the entire Planned Parenthood mentality that says other human beings should be used for your own sexual pleasure, and if someone else is a burden to you, if they are unwanted, then simply eliminate them, abort them," she told the gathering." And then, we have the other America that respects morality, that wants to end pornography in our society because it uses women and children as objects for other people's pleasure," Wright said. That side of America "wants to put an end to the killing of little human beings who have been designated as less than human" because "of where they are located -- inside a woman -- or because of how small they are, or because they don't yet look like you and I do," she added. "This is also the moral America that wants to protect marriage because we recognize that marriage is the distinct union between a man and a woman, and it is the foundation to a stable society."

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On Thursday, syndicated columnist Ben Shapiro agreed with Wright's description. One reason for the moral division in America, he said, is what the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan called "defining deviancy down" because "when society tolerates deviance, it propagates deviance." Moynihan used the example of single motherhood, Shapiro said, which "used to be taboo, then it reached a rate at which we decided that we were going to recognize it as normal and legitimate." "When that happened, it skyrocketed," and now, 40 percent of children born in the United States are born out of wedlock, he noted. "The rise in homosexuality, abortion, single motherhood and pornography is just plain bad," Shapiro said. "Common sense used to tell us these things were bad, but common sense is dying." "Now, we have to have social scientists prove to us that chopping off your own leg hurts your self-esteem and therefore is bad before we decide that we're against self-mutilation," he stated. "Social liberals don't pretend to know right from wrong, or even to care," he said. "They simply claim they have a right to act as they please as long as they're not physically harming you." He described this as a "phantom" right - one that is never explained but "just spring up anonymously, magically." "Conservatives understand, by contrast, that rights are granted to us by our Creator to enrich human existence," he said. As a result, "conservatism is not about standing idle in the face of immorality. It never has been. Slavery didn't hurt white Northerners physically, but they sure had a right to destroy the institution."

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"We've got one party fiercely dedicated to the most radical stances on abortion, homosexual activism and expanding the public square while shrinking the freedoms of tradition-minded Americans," he said. "And they've got the media squarely in their corner, defining the issues in a way that makes the opposition seem mean, churlish, even evil." "The other party doesn't seem to acknowledge or understand the interrelationship between the social and economic issues," he continued. "They think they can do one without the other." As a result, social conservatives "have to talk about these issues a lot to make sure they are the mainstream issues they really are," Knight stated. Also, "we have to talk to the conservative Democrats who were elected the last time around and who stood for family values allegedly and make sure they're doing this in Congress. "Finally, we have to confront candidates in both parties and ask them where they stand on these issues," he said. Wright cautioned against accepting political leaders' rhetoric at face value.

"We have to watch out now for politicians who are giving lip service but are promoting policies that accommodate the immoral lifestyles, the immoral America," she said. "Our challenge is to dig deeper, dig past the slogans, past the titles of laws" to determine if they are "promoting policies that protect human life, that respect life, that honor God. Or are they simply trying to fool us?" Knight also defended the need to focus on and discuss moral issues even during the ongoing struggle against terrorism. "If the social liberals have their way and say the profoundly important cultural issues are no longer on the table because we're fighting this war overseas, I think they are seriously deluded," he stated

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It shows that disaffected Catholics can pull together to find a path to God they believe is more community-oriented, inclusive and -- as the 13 parishioners interviewed for this story kept repeating -- more awash in joy than the official church. But the breakaway church's struggle to bring in fresh blood, and even retain its spiritual leader, also suggests that bucking the Vatican's hard line, discarding traditional teachings and generally going liberal is not a guaranteed way to fill pews. Although Christ the Servant has brought Mr. O'Dwyer (breakaway leader) and his fellow parishioners profound joy, the church has struggled to attract new members and has, in fact, lost members since its founding priest left in September to seek a reconciliation have been reared in the faith that even the disaffected are loath to switch to another church. The bottom line? A softening in the Vatican's stance on female ordination or other controversial issues would be unlikely to usher in a flood of converts to Roman Catholicism. "If there was a change there, the [women] who were already actively involved would probably feel more comfortable with where the church is relative to their particular views," Mr. Bibby says. "But I doubt very much we would suddenly see all kinds of people from the outside coming in."