c. 1997 Religion News Service

Scientology paid government $12.5 million to settle IRS dispute

(RNS) The Church of Scientology has paid the U.S. government $12.5 million as part of a 1993 settlement with the Internal Revenue Service establishing the controversial group’s tax-exempt status.”Bottom line, the document (settlement) is a peace treaty. The war (with the IRS) is over,”Mark Rathbun, a church spokesman told the Associated Press.

The Scientology payment to the IRS was made public in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal. The settlement has ended a dispute between Scientology and the government stretching back to 1967. At that time, the government argued Scientology should lose its tax-exempt status because it was a for-profit business that enriched church officials.

The church responded with an aggressive counter-offensive. The group and its members filed more than 2,200 lawsuits against the IRS and agency officials. As part of the settlement, Scientology agreed to drop the suits and stop aiding members who had filed the suits. In exchange, the IRS ended its audits of 13 major Scientology organizations.

The 1993 agreement represented a sharp reversal for the IRS, which for 25 years refused to give Scientology the blanket tax exemption it routinely gives churches.

In another part of the agreement, the church agreed to set up a tax-compliance committee to monitor its adherence to the settlement and to tax laws.

At the same time, church members were permitted to deduct from their personal income taxes the fees they pay for”auditing,”the church’s counseling technique which members believes purges negative thoughts from a person.

Scientology was founded in 1954 by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard.

Florida school board requests dismissal of suit over Bible class

(RNS) A Florida school board has requested that a judge dismiss a lawsuit attempting to stop it from offering a controversial Bible class.”The curriculum is constitutional, and this lawsuit is premature and has no merit,”said Gene Kapp, spokesman for the American Center for Law and Justice, an organization founded by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson and is representing the Lee County School Board.

The motion to dismiss the suit was filed Monday (Dec. 29), the Associated Press reported.

Earlier in December, People for the American Way, the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida and the Florida law firm of Steel Hector & Davis sued the school on behalf of parents and other residents of the county.

Their suit, in U.S. District Court, charges that the Bible program allows the school to unconstitutionally use the Bible as a history book.

Judith Schaeffer, People for the American Way’s deputy legal director, said there were no grounds to dismiss the suit.”They are running away from the curricula,”she said.”If they can’t defend them, they shouldn’t teach them.” On Oct. 21, the school board voted 3-2 to adopt the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools program. The North Carolina-based program is backed by the Christian Coalition.

High schools in the southwestern Florida school system are scheduled to begin using the program in January. Plaintiffs in the suit have asked the court to prevent the Bible classes from beginning while the case is pending.

Baltimore cardinal visits Cuba in advance of papal visit

(RNS) Cardinal William H. Keeler, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Baltimore, arrived in Havana Tuesday (Dec. 30), bring antibiotics and vitamins in a show of good will in advance of Pope John Paul II’s upcoming visit to Cuba.

Keeler was greeted at the Havana airport by Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega, who earlier this year visited Baltimore. The two are longtime friends.

Both men were elevated to the rank of cardinal at the same November 1994 ceremony at the Vatican. During the recent Synod on the Americas, also held at the Vatican, Keeler and Ortega sat next to each other, the Baltimore Sun reported. “My visit is a pastoral visit,”Keeler said upon his arrival in Havana, the Associated Press reported.

Keeler was accompanied by Kenneth Hacket, executive director of Catholic Relief Services, a church charity. They brought with them about $190,000 worth of antibiotics and vitamins.

During his four-day stay in Cuba, Keeler planned on celebrating a New Year’s Eve Mass in the western Cuban province of Pinar del Rio and a New Year’s Day Mass with Ortega in Havana.

The pope will visit Cuba for the first time Jan. 21-25. Keeler said the papal visit should energize the Cuban church.”Any time Pope John Paul visits a place it’s an occasion for people of faith to be reminded of what the basic gospel message of Jesus is,”Keller told Reuters.

Hindu group vows to limit Christian influence in India

(RNS) A militant Hindu organization vowed Wednesday (Dec. 31) to stop the conversion of members of tribal groups to Christianity in India’s troubled northeastern region.

The group, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-National Volunteers Organization-will in the new year step up its social welfare projects in the northeast in an effort to stop people from turning to churches for aid and then coverting.

The RSS advocates a Hindu nation in India, which now follows a secular constitution treating all religions as equals.

Three of the seven states in India’s northeast are Christian-majority areas but Christians make up only about 2.3 percent of India’s 930 million people. Christian missionaries have been actively involved in religious and social work in the northeast region, irking Hindu activists who say the missionaries’ aim is to achieve mass conversions, Reuters reported.”The northeastern states of our country have turned into a fertile ground for anti-national activities,”Satyanarayan Bansal, head of the New Delhi branch of the RSS, told a news conference in New Delhi. “Aided and abetted by powers inimical to our interest and flush with foreign funds, the church and their agents are employing unscrupulous means to carry on their nefarious activities, including the conversion of the poor and illiterate tribals through deceit,”he added.

Bansal said his organization is beginning a nationwide fund-raising campaign to help build schools and hospitals in the northeast region.”This is not a battle for religion, this is a battle for the integrity of India,”Bansal said.

Jewish militant in Israel convicted of insulting Islam

(RNS) A Jewish militant who provoked rioting in the West Bank city of Hebron by plastering posters in the Palestinian-ruled part of the city depicting Mohammed as a pig stamping on the Koran has been convicted of an act of racism and trying to offend religious feelings.

Judge Zvi Segal of the Jerusalem District Court rendered the verdict against Tatyana Suskin, 26, in a 63-page judgment that took more than an hour to read, The New York Times reported Wednesday (Dec. 31).

Suskin, an immigrant from the former Soviet Union and a follower of the banned anti-Arab Kach political movement, was also found guilty of supporting a terrorist group and endangering life by stoning an Arab’s automobile. She faces a maximum sentence of 26 years in prison but sentencing has been put off to a later date.

Suskin was arrested in June after putting the posters up, an incident that sparked several days of street clashes in Hebron between Palestinian protesters and Israeli soldiers.

Pigs are considered unclean by Muslims and the eating of pork is forbidden under Islamic religious law.

Quote of the day: Margaret Tighe, head of Australia Right to Life

(RNS)”They should be left alone and there should be no more storage of human embryos. It’s an absolutely disgraceful situation where human beings are treated like a manufactured commodity.” Margaret Tighe, head of Australia Right to Life, responding to an announcement that hundreds of frozen embryos will be destroyed as of Jan. 1, 1998, because they have been unused for five years.

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