c. 2000 Religion News Service
Controversial `God, the Devil and Bob’ Canceled
(RNS) “God, the Devil and Bob,” the controversial animated television program, has been canceled by NBC.
Twenty-two affiliates had opted not to air the program, which lasted for only four episodes.
The cancellation, which the network decided Wednesday (March 29), was the result of low ratings rather than the affiliates’ boycott, said NBC spokeswoman Leslie Reed.
“It came in last place every week,” she said. “I suspect a lot of it was because it aired at 7:30 in Central Time. People didn’t feel it was an appropriate family show and so they didn’t tune in.”
But the show also was competing for viewers’ attention with the popular “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” and lost.
“Obviously that was a significant thing because `Millionaire’ crushes everything in its path,” Reed told Religion News Service.
The situation comedy featured the main character, Bob, dealing with the moral challenge of deciding between good and evil. God is depicted as a beer-drinking, sunglass-wearing character who resembles the late Grateful Dead singer Jerry Garcia.
The cancellation means the network will not air an upcoming episode titled “God’s Girlfriend,” along with eight others that were ordered but never shown. That episode was to feature Elizabeth Taylor in a guest-star role as a woman who held the job of God’s prophet before Bob did. She would have been portrayed as having a crush on God.
The American Family Association and the Council on American-Islamic Relations were among groups that believed the show was inappropriate.
“AFA always encourages people to speak out when television content offends them,” said Donald Wildmon, president of the conservative Tupelo, Miss.-based organization that addresses the influence of media on society.
“This was one instance when a network listened.”
CAIR had described the show as a “tasteless and trivial portrayal of God.”
Oakland Bishop Apologizes for `Grave Evil’ of Sexual Abuse
(RNS) Decrying the “grave evil” of sexual abuse, a Roman Catholic bishop in California publicly apologized Saturday (March 25) to victims of sexual abuse by priests, according to the Associated Press.
“The failure of many of the leaders of the Catholic Church to confront this abuse head-on, to … remove priest abusers and other employees from active ministry, or to take the side of the victims, has been one of the more distressing aspects of the church’s recent history,” Bishop John S. Cummins told about 130 people who gathered for a reconciliation ceremony inside a lodge in the Oakland hills.
The service was held there to honor the wishes of those who did not want to step inside a church, and symbolized “a beginning, a step down a very long path that we hope will lead to forgiveness from those we have offended,” according to diocese chancellor Sis. Barbara Flannery, who helped organize the event.
Sonia Rubino was one of about 10 victims who spoke during the ceremony. Sexually abused as a child in El Salvador, Rubino said she still avoids passing churches, but thinks the reconciliation service was an important step toward easing wounds.
“Victorious _ that’s what I feel _ victorious,” she said. “It was a breakthrough for me, breaking the ice and speaking the truth. It’s my truth and I will continue speaking.”
Earlier in March, Pope John Paul II asked for forgiveness for sins the “sons and daughters” of the Roman Catholic Church had committed throughout history, as did Catholic leaders nationwide, including Cardinal Roger M. Mahony in Los Angeles. Mahony included victims of sexual abuse in his apology to specific populations such as homosexuals, women and people of other faiths.
Norwegians Allow Atheists to Counter Calls to Prayer, Church Bells
(RNS) The city council in Oslo, Norway, voted Wednesday (March 29) to let Muslims broadcast prayer calls for the first time from rooftops, and will let atheists do the same to announce meetings and proclaim “God does not exist.”
Prior to the council’s decision, the ringing of church bells was been the only legal prayer call in Norway.
Wednesday’s ruling permits Muslims to use outdoor loudspeakers once every Friday (the Muslim holy day) to broadcast the Islamic prayer call “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great.” The broadcast must not exceed 60 decibels or continue longer than three minutes.
Earlier in January the council granted Muslim priests permission to broadcast the call to prayers five times a day. In protest of that decision, and in protest of rules that allow Christians to ring church bells, the Norwegian Heathen Society applied for permission to announce meetings via loudspeakers atop roofs. The French press reported that the group initially wanted to broadcast five-minute calls up to 10 times a year.
“Since the church bells and the preaching from the mosques have taken over the public space, we want to be able to do the same,” said Harald Fagerhus, secretary of the Norwegian Pagan Society, a group that had said it planned to broadcast excerpts of the universal declaration of human rights.
The council’s decision was a “victory of great symbolic importance,” said Abid Raja of the World Islamic Mission, the group that filed the broadcast application.
“It means our religion is respected on the same lines as other religions,” he told the Associated Press.”
But he objected to the 60-decibel limit.
“If that is true, either they misunderstood or we’ve been tricked,” he said. “What is the point of a call to prayer that is a whisper? We’ll have to try it on Friday and see if anyone can hear it.”
Pope Acknowledges That `Human Frailty’ Has Led Priests to Sin
(RNS) VATICAN CITY _ Pope John Paul II acknowledged Thursday (March 30) that “human frailty” has led priests to sin. But, he said, Christians still put their faith in “the power of Christ” that nevertheless works through their ministry.
In his customary Holy Thursday letter to the world’s 404,208 Roman Catholic priests, issued this year from the Upper Room in Jerusalem where Christians believe that Jesus gathered with the apostles for the Last Supper, the pontiff said that frailty and weakness were present in priesthood from its very beginnings.
“For all the frailties of their priests,” he said, “the people of God have not ceased to put their faith in the power of Christ at work through their ministry.”
John Paul has written a Holy Thursday letter to priests each year since the start of his pontificate in 1978. According to the Gospel of John, it was at the Last Supper on Holy Thursday that Jesus celebrated the first eucharist and made the apostles the first ordained priests.
This year, the pope completed the letter in Jerusalem during his pilgrimage last week to the Holy Land and signed it on March 23 after celebrating Mass in the Cenaculum, the Upper Room believed to be the site of the Last Supper.
“The eucharist is the point from which everything else comes forth and to which it returns,” John Paul wrote. “Our priesthood was born in the Upper Room together with the eucharist.”
Presenting the letter at a Vatican news conference, Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, said in answer to a question that the pope was writing in general terms and not referring specifically to such scandals as cases of pedophilia among priests in recent years.
“We are of the same material even if there is a priestly transformation,” the cardinal said. “The flesh is the same, and there was only one flesh without sin. A list of sins is not necessary.”
Archbishop Csaba Ternyak, secretary of the congregation, disclosed that the pope will mark his 80th birthday on May 18 by celebrating Mass with some 2,000 priests making Jubilee Holy Year pilgrimages to Rome from throughout the world. He said it will be the largest such celebration in church history.
John Paul said in his letter to priests that they, like the apostles, are no different from the rest of humanity.
“It is true that in the history of the priesthood, no less than in the history of the whole people of God, the dark presence of sin is also found,” the pontiff said. “Here in the Upper Room why should this amaze us?
“Not only did the betrayal of Judas reach its climax here, but Peter himself had to reckon with his weakness as he heard the bitter prediction of his denial,” John Paul said. “In choosing men like the twelve, Christ was certainly under no illusions: It was upon this human weakness that he set the sacramental seal of his presence.”
RNS Wins Four Awards for Religion News Coverage
(RNS) Religion News Service garnered four awards for its breaking and in-depth news coverage from the Associated Church Press, an association of some 200 religious and religion-related magazines, newspapers and news services, at its annual meeting in Chicago.
The RNS winners included first place awards of excellence to RNS Moscow correspondent Frank Brown in the in-depth coverage category for a series of articles from Belgrade during the war over Kosovo and to RNS Jerusalem correspondent Elaine Ruth Fletcher in the theme/section/series category for her pieces on the Holy Land’s altered environmental landscape.
RNS Editor David E. Anderson also won a first place award in the coverage of denominational conventions for a series of articles on the National Council of Churches and its financial woes. Adelle M. Banks, RNS national correspondent, won a second place award in the news story category for her report on the resignation of Henry Lyons as head of the National Baptist Convention.
U.S. Catholic, a magazine published by the Claretians; Sojourners; The Other Side; the Christian Century; and Canada’s Anglican Digest dominated the awards ceremony. U.S. Catholic picked up 13 awards including eight firsts and was named Best-in-Class denominational magazine. Sojourners won 11 awards, including Best-in-Class nondenominational magazine. The Other Side also won 11 awards, including two first place awards and second place in the Best-in-Class category.
The Anglican Journal won 10 awards, including Best-in-Class in the newspaper category.
Arizona Southern Baptists Accept Severed School Ties
(RNS) The Arizona Southern Baptist Convention has accepted the severing of formal ties with Grand Canyon University, a Christian university in Phoenix.
Delegates to a special session of the state convention voted March 23 to permit the change of relationship with “great disappointment.”
Some delegates were angered by the school’s action and others voiced support for the decision by the university’s trustees, reported Baptist Press, the news service of the Southern Baptist Convention.
One resolution passed at the meeting voiced disappointment that the university’s board “chose not to pursue the option of open dialogue but rather acted in a unilateral manner in severing their formal and familial relationship with the churches of the Arizona Southern Baptist Convention.”
The resolution also said the decision was final.
Officials of the school have said they made the decision based on legal advice and do not intend to turn it into a secular institution.
“We have always been and we will always be a Southern Baptist college,” said Gil Stafford, president of the university. “We choose cooperatively to work with this convention.”
Stafford told delegates that he could not divulge some of the reasons for the decision to be independent due to “attorney-client privilege.”
Asked if the Baptist Foundation of Arizona’s recent filing for bankruptcy related to the action, Stafford said, “I’m sorry, but I cannot respond to anything that is related to attorney-client privilege.”
The foundation has been an agency of the state convention.
Stafford said in the past that the board’s auditor and legal counsel told trustees that if Grand Canyon was legally tied to the state convention, its financial statements should be consolidated with the convention.
He had said such a consolidation could endanger the school’s accreditation because it might prompt concerns that the university does not have academic freedom.
Quote of the Day: America, a Catholic magazine
(RNS) “After all the controversy, it might have been wiser for the church to refuse to let any priest be chaplain until the House got its act together and ensured that the appointee would be selected through a bipartisan and ecumenically sensitive process.”
_ An editorial in the Catholic magazine America, commenting on the recent appointment of the Rev. Daniel Coughlin, a Catholic priest, as chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives. Coughlin was chosen after another Catholic priest was passed over for the job, angering Democrats who accused the Republican leadership of anti-Catholic bias.
KRE END RNS
