c. 2008 Religion News Service

Grassley: Some investigated ministries making changes

WASHINGTON (RNS) Ministries headed by evangelists Joyce Meyer and Benny Hinn are both changing the way they operate even as a Senate probe into alleged lavish spending by six prominent ministries continues, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said Monday (July 7).

“Both Joyce Meyer and Benny Hinn have indicated that they are instituting reforms without waiting for the committee to complete its review,” said Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, in an update on the investigation he began last year.

“Self-reform can be faster and more effective than government regulation.”

Roby Walker, a spokesman for Joyce Meyer Ministries in Fenton, Mo., confirmed that changes are being made but could not release details on Tuesday.

Don Price, a spokesman for Benny Hinn Ministries in Grapevine, Texas, also declined to comment in detail but said “reforms and improved governance practices” were being shared with Grassley’s office.

Grassley’s update noted instances of “whistleblower intimidation” where former employees “have received phone calls reminding them of their confidentiality agreements and threatening lawsuits if the agreements are breached.”

Jill Gerber, a spokeswoman for the committee, would not disclose which ministries were involved in such calls, and declined to elaborate on the changes planned at Hinn’s and Meyer’s ministries.

Grassley’s update described the responses from Hinn and Meyer as “in good faith and substantively informative,” but said the others are “incomplete” or “not responsive.”

Broadcaster Kenneth Copeland has reportedly said his Texas-based ministry will not respond even if a subpoena is issued. Grassley’s memo said staffers are “consulting with Senate attorneys about next steps.”

In other cases, staffers continue to contact ministry lawyers and officials in hopes of further cooperation.

“Sen. Grassley still very much wants to avoid subpoenas and hopes that those ministries will agree that subpoenas would be an unnecessary step,” Gerber said.

The other ministries under investigation are: Bishop Eddie Long’s New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Ga.; Creflo Dollar Ministries in College Park, Ga., and Randy and Paula White, who co-pastored Without Walls International Church in Tampa, Fla.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Catholic bishops reject changes to Mass prayers

WASHINGTON (RNS) The nation’s Catholic bishops have rejected a new translation of Mass prayers, a rare instance of U.S. prelates denying a Vatican-ordered liturgical change.

While ballots are still coming in, it’s clear they won’t add up to the 166 needed to pass the new translation, said Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. A two-thirds majority of the USCCB’s Latin rite bishops is required for approval.

Walsh said she could not recall another instance in which the U.S. bishops have rejected a full document of Vatican translations, though they have at times tinkered with individual phrases and words.

At the bishops’ semi-annual meeting in June, several prelates said the newly translated prayers, traditionally spoken by priests at Mass, were stilted and incomprehensible. One called them a “linguistic swamp.”

After an inconclusive vote at the bishops’ meeting in Orlando, Fla., the bishops not present at the gathering were asked to vote by mail.

Known as the “Proper of Seasons,” the prayers are said on Sundays, Holy Days and during liturgical seasons such as Lent, and change from day to day. Examples include the opening prayer, prayers said over the bread and wine, and prayer after Communion.

The late Pope John Paul II ordered the new translations to increase fidelity to the original Latin. Some Vatican liturgists say the church moved too quickly _ and sloppily _ in translating the Mass into local languages after the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s.

The rejected translation will come up again, with amendments, at the USCCB’s next meeting in November, Walsh said.

The bishops have already approved one section of new Mass translations, including many prayers spoken by lay Catholics for a generation, despite the objections of a vocal minority.

Ten more sections of the Mass remain to be approved and implementation is likely several years away, according to USCCB officials.

_ Daniel Burke

Retired Methodist clergy offer to bless gay marriages

(RNS) Adding fuel to the growing controversy over gay marriage in California, a group of retired United Methodist clergy has volunteered to perform same-sex marriages, a move that conservatives call a “surrender to popular fashion.“

“These retired clergy are turning their backs on 2,000 years of church beliefs and practice as well as the United Methodist Discipline they agreed to uphold as part of their ordination vows,” Mark Tooley, executive director of United Methodist Action, said in a statement.

At the church’s California-Nevada Conference’s annual meeting last month, 82 retired clergy volunteered to perform same-sex marriages, which became legal in California on June 16. Methodist rules restrict clergy from presiding over such marriages.

“We choose to follow the tradition of our church for full inclusion of the people to whom we minister,” said the Rev. Don Fado, a retired minister from Sacramento, who led the clergy’s efforts.

The retired clergy offered their services as stand-ins for active ministers who could be punished or even defrocked for taking part, Fado said, although he viewed such a scenario as unlikely.

Prior to the meeting, Bishop Beverly J. Shamana had encouraged ministers to be “prayerful and discerning” about participating in such ceremonies, and cautioned ministers that they could face discipline for participating.

UMAction, which opposes same-sex marriage, criticized the clergy’s offer as a betrayal of Methodist values, and said the move reflected a larger problem within the United Methodist Church.

“As failed clergy of dying churches, they are attempting to jump on the latest fad,” Tooley said. “Trying to seem relevant, they instead look silly.“

“I do not call ministering to the marginalized and the people rejected by society as a fad,” Fado said in response. “It is rooted in the ministry of Jesus.”

_ Tim Murphy

Quote of the Day: Gary Anderson, chief deputy clerk in Newport News, Va.

(RNS) The “deputy clerk that waited on them suspected something was amiss, or, actually, a mister.”

_ Gary Anderson, chief deputy clerk in Newport News, Va., on the attempt in March of two men to get married. One of the men told Virginia clerks he was a woman. Anderson was quoted by The Washington Post.

KRE/CM END RNS