c. 2008 Religion News Service

Leader of breakaway Catholics says no reconciliation yet

VATICAN CITY (RNS) The leader of a breakaway group of conservative Catholics said that the legacy of the church’s modernization in the 1960s prevents traditionalists from reconciling with Rome, despite the Vatican’s recent revival of traditional liturgy.

“Without despairing, without impatience, we see that the time for an agreement has not yet arrived,” wrote Bishop Bernard Fellay, in a letter addressed to “friends and benefactors” of the Society of Saint Pius X.

The letter, dated April 14, was posted Saturday (April 19) on the Web site of the organization’s DICI news service.

Founded in 1970 by the late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the SSPX has consistently protested the changes wrought by the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, including the replacement of the so-called Old Latin Mass with a newer liturgy typically celebrated in local languages.

Lefebvre died in 1991, three years after he was excommunicated by the Vatican. Last July, Pope Benedict XVI lifted restrictions on the Latin Mass, expressing hope that the move would lead to reconciliation with Lefebvre’s followers.

But Fellay’s letter complains that this liturgical change “was not accompanied by logically correlative measures in other domains of the life of the church. All the changes introduced at (Vatican II) and in the post-conciliar reforms which we denounce … have been confirmed.”

Fellay argues in particular that the ecumenical movement encouraged by Vatican II has undermined the doctrine that “outside the church there is no salvation,” and weakened a biblical imperative to convert non-Catholics to the faith.

“These new perspectives have evidently turned relations with other religions upside down,” Fellay writes, asserting that the changes amount to “a new and very profound mutation which is being imposed on the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”

_ Francis X. Rocca

Kenneth Copeland seeks IRS review

WASHINGTON (RNS) One of the ministries that has refused to cooperate fully with a financial investigation by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has invited the Internal Revenue Service to conduct an inquiry of its own instead.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries of Newark, Texas, made the request of the IRS on April 7.

“We told the IRS in a letter that we welcome them to come and make inquiry of us and we will provide answers to the IRS regarding questions that Sen. Grassley has,” said John Copeland, the ministry’s CEO. “The church desires to protect its and all other churches’ First Amendment rights, and by this action, we believe we are doing just that.”

Grassley’s office reported March 31 that four of the six ministries he has been investigating are cooperating with requests to provide him with financial information.

Creflo Dollar Ministries in College Park, Ga., has also refused to submit financial records, and sent a letter to the Senate Finance Committee in late March expressing concerns about congregants’ privacy. Grassley, the panel’s top-ranking Republican, and committee Chairman Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., had asked ministries that weren’t cooperating fully to submit materials by March 31.

Jill Gerber, a spokeswoman for the committee, said Tuesday (April 22) that both Copeland’s and Dollar’s ministries continue to decline to send the requested information.

“As for the Copeland request for an audit from the IRS, Sen. Grassley has always said that the IRS enforces existing law, while Congress evaluates the adequacy of existing law,” she said. “The two functions are completely different.”

Rusty Leonard, founder of MinistryWatch.com, a North Carolina-based watchdog organization, called the efforts by Copeland “deceptive and misleading” because any investigation by the IRS would be confidential.

Lawrence Swicegood, director of communications for Kenneth Copeland Ministries, said the ministry has provided 291 pages of information to Grassley.

“While we did not provide 100 percent of what the senator (requested) … we did in fact cooperate to the extent that was appropriate,” he said.

The other ministries under investigation are Joyce Meyer Ministries in Fenton, Mo.; Benny Hinn Ministries in Grapevine, Texas; Randy and Paul White, who co-pastored Without Walls International Church in Tampa, Fla., and Bishop Eddie Long’s New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Ga.

_ Adelle M. Banks

UpDATE: Vicar fired after spitting on congregants

LONDON (RNS) An Anglican vicar has been fired from his post for feuding with and spitting at his parishioners over his attempts to modernize his 13th century church and make it more “inclusive.”

After nine often turbulent years, Rev. Tom Ambrose has been stripped of his job at St. Mary and St. Michael Church, near the English university town of Cambridge, in what was described as a case of “pastoral breakdown.”

Bishop of Ely Anthony Russell ordered Ambrose’s disqualification after an ecclesiastical tribunal appointed last year heard evidence of his “arrogant, aggressive, rude, bullying, high-handed, disorganized and at times petty behavior.”

The 61-year-old vicar fell out with his parishioners over his efforts to implement a series of innovations, including installing toilets, ordering pews removed to make room for a coffee area, and changing the date of the harvest supper.

In his ruling, the bishop agreed with Ambrose’s accusers, writing that he was particularly “astonished and dismayed” over two occasions “on which it is said that Dr. Ambrose spat” at his grumbling worshippers.

The vicar’s supporters blamed the feuding on “vitriolic abuse from the old guard” at the church. Ambrose insisted he was innocent of the charges, and his wife Gill told journalists he was discussing his dismissal with lawyers, with an eye to possibly launching an appeal.

_ Al Webb

Quote of the Day: Baptist minister and lawyer Oliver “Buzz” Thomas

(RNS) “How should people of faith respond to this gathering environmental storm? First, we must stop having so many children. Clergy should consider voicing the difficult truth that having more than two children during such a time is selfish.”

_ Oliver “Buzz” Thomas, a Baptist minister and lawyer, writing in a commentary for USA Today about how religious groups’ opposition to birth control is leading to overpopulation that Earth cannot sustain.

KRE/RB END RNS