c. 2003 Religion News Service
Salvation Army Declines $100,000 Donation With Ties to Gambling
(RNS) The Salvation Army has declined a $100,000 donation from a lottery winner because a local official didn’t want money linked with gambling.
David L. Rush, 71, announced shortly before Christmas he planned to share some of his winnings from the Florida Lotto with the charity. He had one of the four winning tickets in the $100 million lottery jackpot drawing of Dec. 14 and took a $14.3 million lump sum payment, the Associated Press reported.
Maj. Cleo Damon, head of the Salvation Army in Naples, Fla., told Rush he couldn’t take the money and returned the check, which another official of the evangelical organization had accepted.
“There are times where Maj. Damon is counseling families who are about to become homeless because of gambling,” said spokeswoman Maribeth Shanahan. “He really believes that if he had accepted the money, he would be talking out of both sides of his mouth.”
Rush made other charitable donations _ $100,000 to Habitat for Humanity and $50,000 to the Rotary Club of Marco Island _ that were accepted.
“Everybody has a right to be sanctimonious if they want to be,” said Rush.
“I respect the Salvation Army’s decision. I do not agree with it, but that is their prerogative.”
Rush, a financial adviser, said he has made monetary donations to the Salvation Army for four decades.
Update: Disciples Flagship Church Criticized for Same-Sex Union Policy
WASHINGTON (RNS) An evangelical group in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) has called on the denomination’s flagship congregation to change its recent decision to bless same-sex unions.
Last month the board of elders at National City Christian Church in Washington voted to allow the church’s pastor, the Rev. Alvin O. Jackson, to perform a same-sex union ceremony for two women. Jackson is also the denomination’s moderator.
The decision made headlines because the high-profile church is held by a trust that receives support from across the denomination. National City, like all Disciples congregations, makes its own decisions.
Doug Harvey, executive director of Disciple Renewal, called on the church to “either rescind the decision or end its unique relationship with the denomination.”
“The NCCC Trust is a recognized unit of our denomination’s structure,” Harvey said in a statement. “We call on denominational leaders to speak out clearly and firmly on this violation of trust. Silence on their part can only be understood as endorsement of same-gender marriage covenants.”
The Indianapolis-based denomination does not have an official policy on same-sex unions, but Harvey said they are unbiblical. Harvey said he would also pressure donors and the church’s trustees to speak out against the new policy.
In a statement released by the church, National City leaders said they cannot “ask people to check at the door a significant part of their identity.”
“For National City Christian Church, this is not a matter of political correctness, but theological correctness. It is a matter of standing up for what we believe about the gospel.”
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Pope, Billy Graham Continue to Join Bush on `Most Admired’ List
(RNS) Pope John Paul II and the Rev. Billy Graham continued to be cited among the top 10 most admired men in the Gallup Organization’s annual survey, with President Bush cited again at the very top of the list.
The CNN/USA Today Gallup Poll taken in mid-December found that 28 percent of Americans called the president the most admired man in 2002. Bush also topped the 2001 list, with a record 39 percent mentioning him that year.
The pope was fourth on the 2002 list, with 3 percent of those polled mentioning him. An equal percentage named former President Bill Clinton as most admired.
Graham was cited by 2 percent of those polled, giving him a ranking of sixth on the list.
Former President Jimmy Carter, who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize, came in second with 9 percent of respondents citing him. Secretary of State Colin Powell ranked third with 4 percent mentioning him.
Graham has now been cited 45 times on the top 10 list, more than anyone else since Gallup first asked the “most admired” questions in 1948. Pope John Paul II has appeared on the list 25 times.
The survey of 1,009 adults was conducted by telephone Dec. 16 and 17 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Catholic Group Says Parishioners Want Greater Financial Disclosure
WASHINGTON (RNS) A Catholic philanthropy watchdog group says rank-and-file Catholics want greater openness on church finances, especially when it involves expensive settlements related to clergy sexual abuse.
The Washington-based Foundations and Donors Interested in Catholic Activities said a recent poll it sponsored found that two-thirds of Catholics think the church should be “more accountable on finances.”
The FADICA poll, conducted by the Gallup Organization, also found that 79 percent of Catholics who attend Mass “frequently” want full disclosure on abuse-related settlements, and 68 percent want independent public audits of church finances at all levels.
“Church leadership should be slow to conclude that all is well with the parish Catholic,” said Charles E. Zech, an economics professor at Villanova University who oversaw the survey. “Clearly those in the pew continue to support the church because they do not want to harm its charitable mission.”
Just more than half _ 55 percent _ of Catholics surveyed fear that the legal settlements will impact the church’s ability to minister to the poor. In the scandal-scarred Archdiocese of Boston, officials have considered bankruptcy and selling property in order to settle abuse lawsuits. Donations to Catholic Charities are also significantly lower.
“When you have 78 percent of your giving public out there saying they want a full accounting of the cost of the sexual abuse crisis, that’s something to pay attention to,” FADICA director Francis Butler told the National Catholic Reporter.
Meanwhile, in California, victims were given 90 days to settle out of court with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the Diocese of Orange in hopes of avoiding a trial. The agreement came Wednesday (Jan. 1), the same day a new law went into effect that lifts the statute of limitations on sex abuse cases for one year. The Los Angeles Times reported that as much as $150 million in insurance may be available to cover settlements.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Pope Opens New Year With Holy Land Peace Appeal
VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope John Paul II has opened the new year with an appeal for peace throughout the world and called on all believers to seek an end to the “fratricidal and senseless conflict” in the Holy Land.
“Peace is possible and necessary,” the 82-year-old Roman Catholic pontiff declared in his homily at a New Year’s Day Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica.
“Peace,” he said, “is the most precious good to invoke from God and to build with every effort through concrete gestures of peace on the part of every man and woman of goodwill.”
Both in his homily and in a message issued in advance of World Day of Peace, which the Catholic Church celebrates on Jan. 1, the pope marked the 40th anniversary of Pope John XXIII’s 1963 encyclical “Pacem in Terris” (Peace on Earth).
Noting that John XXIII wrote with hope at a time when the world was caught up in the Cold War and “the nightmare of atomic war weighed on humanity,” the pope said his teaching applies also to the crises of today.
John Paul made no direct reference to fears of war in Iraq and new tensions over North Korea, but he asked prayers that the “threatening tensions of the moment” be settled by peaceful means “in harmony with the principles of international law.”
Vatican officials have said the church would not consider a preventive strike against Iraq to be a “just war.”
Speaking with evident emotion of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians in the Holy Land, the pope asked, “How can you not turn your gaze with apprehension and sadness to that holy place where Jesus was born?
“Bethlehem! The Holy Land! The dramatic and persistent tension in this region of the Middle East makes the search for a positive solution to the fratricidal and senseless conflict that for too long has bloodied it all the more urgent,” he said.
“The cooperation of all those who believe in God is needed, conscious that authentic religiousness, far from putting individuals and people in conflict against each other, drives them instead to build a world of peace together,” he added.
John Paul spoke of the Middle East again as he addressed tens of thousands of pilgrims who gathered in St. Peter’s Square below his study window for the noon Angelus prayer. The crowd included some 10,000 participants in a peace march organized by the Catholic Sant’Egidio Community of social activists.
The pope called on world leaders to “do all that is possible to find peaceful solutions to the many tensions in the world, in particular in the Middle East, averting more suffering to those populations already so tried.”
“May human solidarity and law prevail,” he said.
Quote of the Day: Evangelist Jerry Falwell
(RNS) “If a massacre were being conducted against people of color, God forbid, or groups like gays and lesbians, there would be an understandable outcry that would demand change. It is a tragedy that Christian lives do not seem to have the same value to the national media.”
_ The Rev. Jerry Falwell, an evangelist and pastor based in Lynchburg, Va., speaking to Baptist Press, about the coverage of attacks on Christians by Muslims. He made his comments shortly after Southern Baptist workers were killed in a Dec. 30 attack on a hospital in Yemen.
DEA END RNS
