"We live by the work of our hands and also have some left for helping out those who are maybe less fortunate," says the abbess of St. Mary's, Ireland's only Cistercian monastery for women.

In the brave new world of social media, says communication professor Stephen O'Leary, church authorities from pastors to the heads of denominations "no longer have the kind of control they once did."

"Patients require that one-on-one encounter, the Samaritan function of being a physician," says writer and Stanford Medical School professor Abraham Verghese. "When the physician examines the patient, this is an incredibly important ritual."

"Patients require that one-on-one encounter, the Samaritan function of being a physician," says writer and Stanford Medical School professor Abraham Verghese. "I'm convinced that when the physician examines the patient, this is an incredibly important ritual."

Watch more of our conversation on the Catholic Church, sexual abuse, divisions over health care reform, and questions about the church's moral authority.

"For me Reiki is another form of prayer," says spiritual director Lauri Lumby Schmidt. But a member of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops says this holistic healing practice is "not of God."

"Women religious say this represents an investigation or an attack on the American way of being church, which has stressed more lay involvement, more religious involvement, collegiality, more accountability demanded of the bishops," says National Catholic Reporter editor Tom Fox.

The Vatican reported this week that the number of Catholics in religious orders around the world continued to decline. But there are a few places where the reverse is true. Betty Rollin found a Dominican teaching order in Nashville fairly bursting with dedicated young nuns.

There is a group of Benedictine nuns in Missouri who bake and sell millions of Communion wafers, small and large. But some would-be communicants complained that they are allergic to the gluten in the wheat in the nun's wafers. So they could not receive Communion. For the sisters that was a challenge.