c. 2006 Religion News Service

New Orleans Archdiocese to Close Seven Parishes After Katrina Damage

NEW ORLEANS (RNS) The Archdiocese of New Orleans said Thursday (Feb. 9) it will indefinitely shutter more than 30 badly damaged churches, consolidate dozens of parishes and elementary schools, and permanently close seven parishes in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

The casualties include historic St. Augustine Church, founded in 1841 as the mother parish of black Catholics in New Orleans. The church will remain open for a weekly Mass, but its parishioners will become part of a neighboring parish.

“This plan calls for self-sacrifice in service to the common good,” said Archbishop Alfred Hughes.

Before the hurricane in August, the archdiocese was home to an estimated 491,000 Catholics in 142 parishes. Hurricane recovery is well under way in many of the church’s suburban parishes, but damage is deep in much of New Orleans, Plaquemines Parish and St. Bernard Parish.

Six months after the storm, 35 parishes have no worship life whatever, the archdiocese said. Meanwhile, the archdiocese faces uninsured losses of $84 million, Hughes said.

Officials said the reconfiguration represents their best attempt to ration scarce insurance money and concentrate rebuilding around centers of vitality in a severely flood-damaged region.

It also reflects the extent of the storm damage, which affected nearly a third of the church’s 1,200 buildings across the eight civil parishes that comprise the archdiocese.

For instance, in St. Bernard Parish, the plan consolidates what were once eight churches into one. Plaquemines Parish will have two working Catholic churches where there were once five. And in New Orleans, 24 damaged churches will be consolidated into 11.

In many cases, damaged churches will be shuttered and parishioners told to attend a neighboring parish with more residents or a greater chance of recovery, officials said.

Those dormant parishes will continue to exist on paper, but will not reopen until a returning population can call them back into service and repairs can be financed, Hughes said.

_ Bruce Nolan

Ala. Churches Urged to Take Precautions as Fire Investigation Continues

(RNS) Federal officials investigating a string of nine Alabama Baptist church burnings within five days have distributed information to north Alabama churches to help them avoid arson attacks.

There are no immediate threats, said Special Agent Eric Kehn of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the agency investigating the fires. Five fires occurred Feb. 3, and four happened Tuesday.

Still, Kehn said, churches should take precautions. “At this point, considering what is happening, church members should be vigilant,” Kehn said.

The federal agency continued its investigation, following more than 200 leads that have come in since the latest round of fires. All nine fires are believed to be linked, and Kehn confirmed Thursday (Feb. 9) that one person or one group of persons traveling together in a single vehicle could have set them all.

Investigators are searching for two white men driving a dark sport utility vehicle. Similar, though vague, descriptions of this pair have been reported at or near several of the nine fires that occurred in Bibb, Greene, Pickens and Sumter counties.

The areas where the churches have burned are peppered with tiny, isolated Baptist churches that have no parsonages or neighbors living nearby.

The list federal agents distributed suggests churches take steps to avoid an arson attack, such as illuminating the building with exterior lights, making sure doors and windows are locked, asking neighbors to keep an eye on the building and installing alarms.

Investigators have downplayed any suggestion of racial motivations for the arsons. Five of the churches burned have predominantly black congregations and four have predominantly white congregations. All are Baptist.

_ Andy Netzel

Right-Wing Group Escapes Charges After Death Threats Against Gays

BORAS, Sweden (RNS) A Swedish prosecutor says a right-wing Christian group that issued death threats against 129 famous Swedish homosexuals will face no charges because the threats consisted of biblical quotations.

The threats were posted on a Web site by the country’s branch of the U.S.-based Phineas Priesthood. The list included the names of priests, musicians, TV presenters and athletes, who were called sodomites.

Last November, the Swedish Supreme Court vindicated the Rev. Ake Green, a Pentecostal pastor who was tried on hate speech charges after he used the Bible to call gays a cancerous tumor on society.

Prosecutor Hakan Roswall told the Aftonbladet newspaper that the high court’s ruling prevented him from filing charges against the right-wing group.

“There’s nothing I can do as long as the threats consists of Bible quotations,” Roswall said. He added that the group would walk free from a trial.

Lars Gardfelt, a gay priest in the (Lutheran) Church of Sweden, said the Green acquittal made it acceptable to loathe homosexuals. “There’s a connection between words and murder where hate crime is concerned,” he said, adding that “a low-intensity war of terror using biblical texts is being waged against homosexuals.”

Many commentators, including Green, have condemned the prosecutor’s decision. “I preached on the Bible’s view of a lifestyle. But this is a psychological torture of a group of people. The law should prevent it,” he told Aftonbladet.

Gay rights campaigners say the decision sent out a message that it is OK to threaten homosexuals.

“It is unacceptable to allow extremists to threaten and attack people using the Bible as reference,” Soren Andersson, chairman of the National Association for Sexual Equality, said in a press release.

“Placing people on a death roll must be punishable. The law must be changed if it doesn’t give people protection.”

_ Simon Reeves

Religion Scholars Join Suit to Protest Patriot Act

(RNS) The world’s largest association of religion scholars has joined two other organizations in challenging a provision in the Patriot Act that they say has prevented a prominent Muslim academic from obtaining the necessary visa to teach in the United States.

The American Academy of Religion, along with the American Association of University Professors and the Pen American Center, are suing in federal court on behalf of Swiss national Tariq Ramadan, who was denied entry in 2004 after he was named to teach at the University of Notre Dame.

According to the suit, Ramadan, a visiting professor at Oxford and a scholar on Islam, had been allowed to enter the U.S. as a lecturer up until August 2004, when his nonimmigrant visa was revoked.

The suit challenges a section in the Patriot Act known as the “ideological exclusion provision” and asks the court to consider it unconstitutional.

According to court documents, this section denies U.S. entry to anyone who uses his “position of prominence within any country to endorse or espouse terrorist activity, or to persuade others to support terrorist activity or a terrorist organization, in a way that the secretary of state has determined undermines United States efforts to reduce or eliminate terrorist activities.”

The lawsuit, filed for the groups by the American Civil Liberties Union, claims Ramadan has “been a consistent critic of terrorism and those who use it.”

“Preventing foreign scholars like Professor Ramadan from visiting the U.S. limits not only the ability of scholars here to enhance their own knowledge, but also their ability to inform students, journalists, public policy makers, and other members of the public who rely on scholars’ work to acquire a better understanding of critical current issues involving religion,” said AAR executive director Barbara DeConcini.

Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are listed as the defendants in the suit. Spokespersons for both departments declined to comment on the lawsuit or Ramadan’s visa request.

_ Nate Herpich

Quote of the Day: Bettie Edwards of Boligee, Ala.

(RNS) “Whoever is burning these churches, please let them catch them so they can pay for what they did, because the church ain’t done nothing to them.”

_ Bettie Edwards, an 81-year-old member of Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church, one in a string of Alabama churches damaged by arson in recent days. She was quoted by The Birmingham News.

KRE/PH END RNS