c. 2004 Religion News Service
Update: Employee Files Suit Over Removal of Cross in County Seal
(RNS) Government leaders in Los Angeles County voted a second time to remove a small cross from their county seal. The American Civil Liberties Union said the religious symbol in the government seal was unconstitutional.
During a raucous three-hour meeting on Tuesday (June 8), county supervisors voted 3-2 for the second time in as many weeks to remove the cross _ meant to represent the Spanish missionaries who settled the area _ from the seal.
More than 1,000 angry citizens gathered at the supervisors’ chambers to protest the decision, and more than 100 people condemned the decision in three hours of testimony.
“It’s a religious frenzy,” said Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, who voted to remove the cross, as quoted in the Los Angeles Times. “I’m not going to lower myself to talk to a group of people like this. I don’t have to be harassed.”
The board voted June 1 to remove the cross. The seal, which appears on all county vehicles, meeting rooms and employee badges, also features a Spanish galleon, a tuna, a dairy cow, the Hollywood Bowl, engineering tools, oil derricks and Pomona, the Roman goddess of gardens and fruit trees, to represent agriculture.
County lawyers told the leaders in the nation’s largest county that the cross would be hard to defend against a threatened lawsuit by the ACLU.
Still, the cross may yet end up in court, after the Thomas More Law Center filed suit on behalf of a Christian county employee, Ernesto Vasquez, who said the decision represented hostility towards Christians.
“The county supervisors were sadly mistaken if they believed that Christians would just roll over and let the county treat them as second-class citizens,” said Robert Muise, associate counsel for the Thomas More Center.
Ben Wizner, an ACLU attorney, told the Times that the board had “shown leadership in the truest sense. The board is not ignoring or erasing the county’s history. It’s honoring that history without making some residents feel unwelcome.”
Southern Baptists See Increase in Missions Donations
(RNS) The Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board received $136 million from a Christmas offering that will enable it send more missionaries abroad than previously planned.
“Because Southern Baptists gave so unselfishly to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, we are sending out more missionaries this year,” said International Mission Board President Jerry Rankin, in a written statement.
“The result will be that more people groups will be engaged and more individuals will hear the gospel.”
Southern Baptists donated $136.2 million to the offering named for a missionary to China in the 1800s, amounting to an increase of 18.4 percent over 2002, the board announced.
The mission board limited missionary appointments and reduced U.S. staff last year after giving fell short of its $125 million goal by almost $10 million.
After projections showed the agency would exceed its $133 million goal for 2003, trustees voted in May to send 200 more short- and long-term missionaries than previously planned.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Gibson Sues Cinema Company Over Disputed `Passion’ Revenues
(RNS) Mel Gibson, who produced the blockbuster film, “The Passion of the Christ,” has sued the Regal Cinema theater chain for allegedly breaking its contract on the film’s box office revenues.
Gibson, in a lawsuit filed Monday (June 7) in Los Angeles Superior Court, said the 6,000-screen company owes him more than $40 million, plus punitive damages, according to the Reuters news agency.
Gibson charged he was due 55 percent of gross ticket revenues, but Regal only gave him 34 percent. The controversial film about the death of Jesus earned almost $370 million in domestic markets.
A spokesman for the theater company was not immediately available for comment. Regal Entertainment Group operates 6,119 screens at 562 locations in 39 states. The company also includes United Artists Theatres and Edwards Theatres.
Coalition Challenges Use of Church to Support Anti-Gay Amendment
(RNS) A gay-rights coalition has charged that a Montana church was engaged in political activism, and should register with the state as an “incidental political committee” because it was used as part of a satellite television meeting to drum up support for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages.
Lawyers for the Canyon Ferry Road Baptist Church in East Helena, Mont., reply that any registration requirements place an “onerous” burden on their First Amendment, free-speech rights.
This particular skirmish in the war over who gets to define marriage and the political means that the opposing sides may employ to attain their ends began on May 23.
It was a Sunday night, and during their six o’clock service, the pastor at Canyon Ferry Road Baptist, the Rev. B.G. Stumberg, piped in a satellite television program organized by the Family Research Council (FRC) called “The Battle for Marriage.”
According to the FRC the program was sent out to approximately 700 churches and featured FRC President Tony Perkins, Focus on the Family’s James Dobson, and several other conservative commentators who “challenged the churches of America to get involved in the fight to protect marriage at the national level.”
After the broadcast, the church passed out petitions that called for the passage of a state constitutional amendment that would define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. If the petition gains 41,000 signatories, it will be placed on the ballot this November.
This is where the church ran afoul of state election laws, say the Montanans for Families and Fairness, an anti-discrimination coalition that filed a complaint with the state commission for political practices.”We certainly respect the church’s right to free speech and to preach on the values that they believe in,”said Rob Hill, a spokesman for the group.”But if they are going to engage in outright political activities, there are reports that they have to file. If the people on our side have to file these reports, then they do as well.” Tim Fox, the attorney for the church, says that the congregants have every right to discuss topics like marriage that “get to the very heart” of their faith. “When an issue that might otherwise be considered political affects the definitions and deeply held beliefs of a faith, they are well within their rights to discuss it within their church,” Fox said.
According to Montana law an “incidental committee” is any group of two or more persons that makes a “purchase, payment, pledge or gift of money or anything of value made for the purpose of influencing the results of an election.”The state commissioner for political practices, Linda Vaughey, decided to look into the matter.
Before her investigation began, however, Fox and lawyers from the Alliance Defense Fund, which is helping to represent the church, filed a lawsuit in the federal courts against Vaughey and the Montana laws, asserting the election regulations violate the federal Constitution. Moreover, they say, the church never paid for the broadcast and thus does not qualify as an “incidental committee.”
A spokeswoman from Vaughey’s office declined to comment on the suit and said that the investigation will probably not begin for several weeks, since there are several complaints on other matters that were filed before this one.
_ Daniel Burke
Pope Announces Special Year of the Eucharist Opening in Mexico in October
ROME (RNS) Pope John Paul II, presiding over an open-air Corpus Domini Mass in the heart of Rome, announced Thursday (June 10) that he has called a special Year of the Eucharist opening in Mexico in October.
The 84-year-old Roman Catholic pontiff drove to the Basilica of St. John Lateran, the cathedral of Rome, for the Mass, which ended with a procession along the broad, tree-lined Via Merulana to the Basilica of St. Mary Major.
It was the first time this year that John Paul has left the Vatican to lead a Mass across the Tiber River in Rome. Because Parkinson’s disease and arthritis have limited his mobility, papal celebrations normally are confined to St. Peter’s Basilica.
The pope on May 27 named Cardinal Bernard Law, the former archbishop of Boston, to serve as archpriest of the Basilica of St. Mary Major, but Law’s name did not appear in the order of service for the feast known formally as the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ.
“I am happy to announce a special Year of the Eucharist,” John Paul said in his homily. “It will start with the World Eucharistic Congress, planned for Oct. 10 to 17, 2004, at Guadalajara, Mexico, and it will end with the next Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, which will be held in the Vatican from Oct. 2 to 29, 2005.”
The theme of the synod will be “The Eucharist: Source and Summit of the Life and the Mission of the Church.””The Supper of the Lord is not only a convivial meeting but also, and above all, the memorial of the redeeming sacrifice of Christ,” the pope said.
“We re-live this stupendous reality in today’s Solemnity of Corpus Domini, in which the church not only celebrates the Eucharist but goes solemnly in procession, announcing publicly that the sacrifice of Christ is for the salvation of the entire world,” he said.
_ Peggy Polk
Anglican Archbishop of Armagh Calls for End of Irish Paramilitaries
LONDON (RNS) The question of what should replace the paramilitary activity that has been such a feature of life in both of Northern Ireland’s communities over the past 35 years has been raised by Church of Ireland Archbishop Robin Eames of Armagh.
Eames raised in a lecture three weeks after his Catholic opposite number Archbishop Sean Brady explored the same subject of reconciliation in an earlier lecture in the series.
“Paramilitary influence controls life in many working-class Protestant and Roman Catholic areas,” said Eames. “Allied to attacks of a sectarian nature on individuals because of their religious or political identity, protection rackets, drug distribution, and intimidation through such as punishment beatings continue. It is also true that alienation from democratic political processes is a growing element.”
What, he asked, happens once there is an end to paramilitary activity?
“How will so-called normal life operate? For many, paramilitarism is a way of life, a fact of life. How will society accommodate those who have found status and social activity because of paramilitarism? What replaces the criminal activities of these groupings? Has society alternatives to offer once it all ends?”
Calling on both sides to learn to see through each other’s eyes as well as their own, Eames said a major step forward called for even more than understanding each other’s fears: “It calls for forgiveness and the open understanding [that] we have all contributed to the fears of others.”
_ Robert Nowell
Quote of the Day: Vice President Dick Cheney
(RNS) “This was the Ronald Reagan who had faith, not just in his own gifts and his own future, but in the possibilities of every life. The cheerful spirit that carried him forward was more than a disposition; it was the optimism of a faithful soul, who trusted in God’s purposes, and knew those purposes to be right and true.”
_ Vice President Dick Cheney, speaking Wednesday (June 9) at the ceremony marking the arrival of the casket carrying the body of former President Ronald Reagan to the Capitol Rotunda.
DEA END RNS
