c. 2005 Religion News Service Update: Ford Yanks Super Bowl Ad After Sex Abuse Victims Complain

(RNS) The Ford Motor Company has yanked a Super Bowl television ad that was criticized by victims of clergy sexual abuse for featuring a priest, a young girl and the word “LUST.”

The 30-second spot for the Lincoln Mark LT, scheduled to air during Sunday’s (Feb. 6) Super Bowl, was called “sickening” by the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) for seeming to trivialize the pain of people who were abused by clerics.

“Of course we had no intention of offending anyone _ and we are frankly surprised there is a negative reaction,” Ford said in a statement issued Wednesday.

The ad showed a priest finding keys to a new truck in the offering plate. Spotting the truck in the parking lot, he longingly moves his hands over the truck before he is interrupted by a little girl and a man, presumably her father and the truck’s owner.

The next scene has the priest placing the letters L and T on a church parking lot sign to spell out next week’s sermon topic, LUST. Throughout the ad, a singer croons Billie Holiday’s “Guilty.”

“We are most interested in making sure that, as we launch our new Lincoln Mark LT pickup truck, … attention is focused on the vehicle and not any controversy,” said Ford’s statement.

SNAP national director David Clohessy said his group was “very grateful” for Ford’s decision to pull the ad. “We’re about healing, and just feel obligated to do what we can to make sure that people who suffered and are still suffering don’t suffer even further,” he said.

But the New York-based Catholic League said SNAP’s “obsession” with clergy sexual abuse “has now reached pathological proportions.”

“It reveals a deep-seated bias against Catholic priests that is very disturbing,” said Catholic League president Bill Donohue. “… Unfortunately, the protesters are so consumed by the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church that they can no longer see straight.”

_ Kevin Eckstrom

Conservatives Support Church Breakaway Bill in Virginia

(RNS) Conservative Episcopalians have come out in support of a proposed Virginia law that would allow them to leave the denomination and take their church property with them.

The proposed law, if passed, would allow churches in the country’s largest Episcopal diocese to leave the denomination. Several large Virginia parishes have been flagships of conservative resistance to an openly gay bishop in New Hampshire.

The proposed law would overturn decades of legal precedent that says local parishes hold their property “in trust” for their denominations. That provision has forced many disgruntled parishes to stay despite anger over the election of openly gay Bishop V. Gene Robinson.

The Episcopal bishop of Virginia, Peter Lee, voted to support Robinson’s election.

The Atlanta-based American Anglican Council said the law would prevent different judges from imposing different decisions on, for example, a breakaway Lutheran church versus a breakaway Episcopal church.

“This bill actually serves to protect all churches and denominations from potentially inconsistent judicial decisions with regard to church property issues,” the group said in a statement.

Churches could keep their property under the proposed law once 10 parishes _ or 10 percent of a diocese _ vote to secede, unless a deed specifies otherwise. Several churches and church-state groups said the law would entangle government in internal church disputes.

“The First Amendment clearly protects churches from this type of intrusion by the government,” said the Rev. Barry Lynn, director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

The bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Bill Mims, attends a new Episcopal parish in Ashburn, Va., that is a satellite of Truro Church, a conservative bastion that is an affiliate parish of the American Anglican Council.

Mims told The Washington Post his church did not push for the bill, although it supports it. His pastor, the Rev. Clancy Nixon, said the church-state issues are a red herring.

“They say it’s about states interfering with internal church matters,” he told The Post. “I think that’s baloney. It’s all about property.”

_ Kevin Eckstrom

Poll Shows Iraq More Important Than Gay Marriage in November Election

(RNS) A poll of religious voters in November’s presidential election shows that Americans had the war in Iraq on their minds more than gay marriage when they cast their ballots.

Religious groups in the United States are deeply divided in their political affiliations and on key issues, according to the poll, released Thursday (Feb. 3). It was conducted by the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics in Akron, Ohio, and sponsored by the Washington-based Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

“The war in Iraq was the most controversial of the public policy issues,” said John Green, director of the Bliss Institute.

This led to shifts among groups such as mainline Protestants, Green said, traditionally a Republican constituency.

In 2004 mainline Protestants split their votes between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry, Green said, adding that more progressive Protestants voted Democratic than in 2000 because of the war in Iraq and tax cuts.

In identifying key election issues, the Pew poll clarified frequently cited exit polls taken on Nov. 2 identifying voters as compelled by “moral values,” Green said. Green said those exit polls were vague, not specifying what issues voters tied to “moral values.”

In the Pew poll, respondents _ 2,370 adults randomly chosen from a national sample first interviewed last spring _ rated the importance of social, economic and foreign policy issues, and then named the set with the greatest impact on their vote.

“We said, for example, `How important were social issues such as abortion and gay marriage to your vote?”’ said Green.

Social issues had the least impact on voting, according to the poll, and foreign policy issues, such as the war in Iraq and terrorism, had the greatest.

However, Bush’s primary constituencies _ the most traditional Catholics, mainline Protestants and evangelical Protestants _ rated social issues as most important.

Green said the poll’s results have lessons for both Democrats and Republicans.

Democrats should pay attention to voters in the center if they want to win elections, he said. Republicans also need to look to a middle ground, because if they concede too much to the most traditional religious groups it could cost them support among those closer to the center.

“The deeply divided religious landscape means that President Bush needs to proceed more cautiously,” said Green.

_ Celeste Kennel-Shank

Canadian Religious Groups Mobilize to Fight Proposed Gay Marriage Law

OTTAWA (RNS) Canadian religious groups are mobilizing for a long fight over Canada’s same-sex marriage legislation, despite government assurances of legal protection for faith groups that refuse to perform such marriages.

On Tuesday (Feb. 1), the minority Liberal government introduced legislation to legalize same-sex marriage across the country. A newspaper survey showed the legislation is likely to pass, despite strong opposition from some religious groups.

The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, for one, was not mollified by the Liberal minority government’s pledge that clergy and religious institutions will be protected if gay marriage contravenes their beliefs.

“The protection for religious freedom is an empty promise,” said Janet Epp Buckingham, legal counsel for the fellowship, which represents some 1,000 churches across 40 denominations. “The Liberal bill provides little in the way of assurances that religious freedoms will be protected if the legal definition of marriage is changed.”

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops has united with several Muslim, Sikh, Hindu and Orthodox Jewish groups to oppose the draft legislation, which is expected to be voted on in June.

Last month, Marc Cardinal Ouellet, archbishop of Quebec and primate of Canada’s Roman Catholic Church, warned that the bill “threatens to unleash nothing less than cultural upheaval whose negative consequences are still impossible to predict.”

That was soon after Toronto’s Catholic archbishop, Cardinal Aloysius Ambrozic, sent a letter to Prime Minister Paul Martin urging the government to use the Charter of Rights’ notwithstanding clause to override an earlier Supreme Court decision that allowed Ottawa to change the traditional definition of marriage.

The court had also ruled that religious freedom to refuse to solemnize gay marriage is already protected by the Charter.

But observers say the government has gone further by including the explicit protection of dissenting faith groups in the draft law’s preamble as well as its body.

The bill “does not affect religious marriage nor does it affect the rights of religious officials to refuse to solemnize a marriage because of their religious belief,” Justice Minister Irwin Cotler told reporters.

Other government officials have repeatedly stressed that the law refers to civil marriage only.

The government has promised a free vote on the bill, meaning Canada’s 308 MPs will vote according to their consciences. A poll published last week in the Globe and Mail newspaper showed that 139 MPs backed the bill, 118 opposed it and 49 were undecided. Almost 30 Liberals said they will vote against it.

_ Ron Csillag

Quote of the Day: Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Terrell Owens

(RNS) “I’ve got the best doctor that anybody could have, and that’s God.”

_ Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Terrell Owens, about defying a doctor’s medical opinion that he should not play in Sunday’s Super Bowl. He was quoted in USA Today.

MO/PH RNS END