Some of you may have detected an ecclesiastical tint to my daily meditations of late.

It's no mistake. I have been working closely for several weeks now with an absolutely charming young Roman Catholic priest from Haiti and another Roman Catholic, a banker from Mexico—and a member of Opus Dei, who's been very politely, very persistently trying to coax and cajole me into joining his club.

The problem with Catholicism is, it's not as exclusive a club as I would like. I mean, it's entirely too catholic for me.

I am touched in a way, though, I have to admit. (No, he hasn't touched me like that, silly—get your mind out of the rectory!)

The priest is not the problem, anyway. We drink beer and talk about soccer. He's delightful. It's the banker who wants to save my soul.

Not that that's a problem, either. That's what souls are for, apparently. You're not supposed to use them up and throw them away when they're all out of juice and fried to gristle.  Reduce, reuse, recycle! 

I don't know how people know this, but somehow everybody seems to. I didn't get the memo.

I prefer souls well-worn, maybe even a bit tattered. Like an old pair of blue jeans, or all those pairs of holey underwear I've had for the last two decades and just can't get myself to toss out. (I use them as dust rags when the elastic goes.)

But apparently they're supposed to come out of the wash smelling fresh and looking good as new.

Whatever the case, the problem with soul-savers is that they invariably underestimate the depth of other people's experiences and the seriousness with which others have examined their own lives. Which is another way of saying that aggressive evangelizers think everyone is as credulous as they are. If the snake oil worked on them, it should be good enough for the rest of us.

I don't claim to have it all figured out, but I've got past the snake oil, thanks very much.

Religion should be more than a poor man's pyramid scheme, is all I'm saying.

My Mexican friend and I got a private tour of Holy Cross Cathedral the other day. We wandered in through an unlocked side door and found the custodian, who, once we had assured him we were not there to nick the organ pipes, was more than happy to show us around.

You know why they call it Holy Cross? Because they have a relic of The One True Cross there. The custodian showed us to the chapel where the splinter from the cross was kept in a small, ornate glass box at the base of a crucifix, and my friend set about adoring it.

Then, after wiping the kiss marks from the glass, he turned to the custodian and asked him to point out where, exactly, the piece of the cross was, because he couldn't really see it.

There was a tiny glass cross inside the glass box, and it was there, he said, inside the tiny cross that the piece of The One True Cross could be found.

My friend was like, Oh, OK. And went down on it again. Adoring it some more. But later he admitted to me he was never able to see it.

"But it's amazing, isn't it?" he asked me as we left the Cathedral.

"What's that?" I asked.

"That they have a piece of The One True Cross."

And that, my friends, is faith.