c. 2004 Religion News Service

Bush’s Re-Election, Gibson Film Tie as Top Religion Stories of 2004

(RNS) The role of faith in President Bush’s re-election and Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” tied as the top stories of 2004 in a survey of religion newswriters.

The online survey of Religion Newswriters Association members was conducted Dec. 10-14 and released Wednesday (Dec. 15).

Gibson also was named the organization’s Religion Newsmaker of the Year, receiving 51 percent of the votes from survey participants. Bush garnered 40 percent of the votes, making him runner-up for the newsmaker designation.

Gibson’s movie, released in February, earned record crowds and DVD sales and sparked extensive discussions about topics ranging from possible anti-Semitism to faithfulness to Scripture.

There has been much coverage about how religion and values played a role in the presidential campaign and the election, with some studies crediting evangelicals with giving Bush his margin of victory.

The third most newsworthy topic, the nation’s religion reporters said, was the issue of gay marriage. Stories covering that topic ranged from court cases to proposed legislation to the mobilization of religious groups on both sides of the issue.

Forty-one percent of 260 eligible RNA members or 108 journalists who write about religion for non-religious news media responded to the survey. They were required to rank their top 20 choices and no tie votes were permitted.

The rest of the top 10 stories chosen are:

No. 4: Several Catholic bishops say they will deny Communion to politicians with abortion rights stances.

No. 5: The Anglican Lambeth Commission criticizes conservatives and liberals and has an apparently unsuccessful attempt to heal the rift caused by last year’s installation of a gay bishop in New Hampshire.

No. 6: The U.S. Supreme Court upholds “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance on technical grounds.

No. 7: Debate continues over the U.S. role in Iraq, with some religious leaders calling for withdrawal and others voicing support for the troops.

No. 8: Two lesbian preachers are tried in the United Methodist Church, with one acquitted and another found guilty. The Presbyterian Church (USA) also continues to deal with differences over homosexuality.

No. 9: The largest settlement in the Catholic sex-abuse cases is reported in Orange County, Calif.

No. 10: High tensions continue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Leaders of the Presbyterian Church (USA) call for withdrawing investments from companies profiting from Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, prompting complaints from some Jewish groups.

Adelle M. Ba

Instructor to Be Investigated for Alleged Comments on Religious Voters

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (RNS) A University of Louisville sociology instructor has had his contract to teach withheld pending an investigation into comments he allegedly made in class saying President Bush was re-elected by “religious zealots” who should be shot with automatic rifles.

In a statement released Sunday (Dec. 12), U of L President James Ramsey said the contract for John McTighe, a part-time sociology instructor who has been employed at the school on a semester-by-semester basis, had been withdrawn for at least the spring semester while university officials investigate comments attributed to McTighe in a conservative student publication.

“We strongly support academic freedom,” Ramsey said in the statement. “The quote attributed to Professor McTighe is unacceptable and not an issue of academic freedom.”

The university’s decision is a victory of sorts for the Tupelo, Miss.-based American Family Association. It orchestrated a campaign last week that generated more than 2,000 e-mails and telephone calls to the university complaining about the comments, according to spokesman Randy Sharp.

In a Dec. 1 column, Brian Yates, publisher of the Louisville Patriot, a privately owned student publication that covers news and sports at the university, quoted McTighe saying Bush’s re-election was a result of “religious zealots who say they are voting on morals. I think we should all buy AK-47s and shoot them all.”

McTighe said his comments were taken out of context and that Yates misquoted him. But Yates, a junior accounting major who pens a column for the monthly newsmagazine, says he confirmed the account in an interview with Katherine McCrocklin Martin, a student in the class who says she voted for Bush in the November election.

“It was one of those stories you hear and your jaw drops,” Yates said. “I looked into the whole issue, and then I contacted the university to see what their position might be. I was informed by (university provost) Shirley Willihnganz that he made the comments, but that he said he was just being sarcastic. At that point, I really wasn’t sure the university was taking the issue seriously. So I wrote the column about the incident, and it just took on a life of its own.”

One reader, a Louisville member of the American Family Association, forwarded Yates’ column to AFA officials in Tupelo, and the religious activist group responded by letting other Kentuckians know about the statements.

“We thought that because (McTighe) was being paid by taxpayers’ dollars, people of faith in Kentucky would be upset their money was being used to promote this kind of thinking,” AFA’s Sharp said. “As a result of those e-mails and phone calls, to the university’s credit, they are now investigating the incident.”

University officials said the investigation will take place after the holiday season when classes resume.

Dennis P. O’Connor

Muslim Scholar Resigns Notre Dame Post

(RNS) Tariq Ramadan, a Muslim scholar whose visa was revoked days before he was to begin teaching at the University of Notre Dame, has given up further attempts to enter the country.

Ramadan, who lives in Switzerland with his family, had shipped his furniture to the South Bend, Ind., campus and was already on the payroll of the university, where he was to teach about religion, conflict and peace-building, when his visa was suddenly revoked last August.

Ramadan is the author of “Western Muslims and the Future of Islam” (Oxford University Press) and has written and spoken widely on how the Muslim religion is compatible with secular European values.

Supporters allege that Ramadan’s critical stances against the war in Iraq and against Israel were the reason for the revocation. Ramadan had applied in October to reinstate his entry visa, but that appeal ended with his resignation of the faculty appointment.

Ramadan cited family stress as the reason for abandoning his quest to teach in the United States.

“As you may imagine, my family has experienced enormous stress and uncertainty during this period, and I keenly feel the need to resolve our situation,” he wrote in a letter to R. Scott Appleby, who directs Notre Dame’s Institute for International Peace Studies.

Appleby, in a statement, said that Ramadan would have made a valuable contribution to the study of Muslim religion and culture.

“Faculty and students at Notre Dame and at other U.S. universities were looking forward to engaging him productively on a variety of issues central to our times. Such dialogue, we believe, is an essential requirement to a deeper understanding of the complexity of the Muslim world,” he said.

Holly Lebowitz Rossi

Crystal Cathedral Conductor Kills Himself At Calif. Megachurch

(RNS) The Rev. Robert Schuller has expressed how “deeply saddened” he is by the Friday (Dec. 17) suicide of the orchestra’s conductor at the Crystal Cathedral megachurch.

Johnnie Carl, 57, killed himself in a bathroom at the Garden Grove, Calif., facility after a nine-hour standoff with police, The Associated Press reported. The incident, which began with Carl firing several shots in his office, started on Thursday afternoon and ended with Carl’s death early Friday morning. No one else was injured.

“Johnnie was a beloved member of our church family and close personal friend,” Schuller, 78, senior pastor of the Crystal Cathedral, said in a statement. “He was a creative genius whose beautiful arrangements and superb conducting set new levels of excellence for sacred music.”

Carl, who had struggled with depression, had been on the staff of the cathedral for almost 30 years and was known worldwide as a composer and conductor. He arranged more than 3,500 musical pieces, according to church officials.

The Crystal Cathedral canceled Thursday performances of its “Glory of Christmas” production known for its combination of carols, flying angels and live animals but announced Friday that the performances would resume that evening.

Schuller was at home when the incident began and came to the command post set up by police. Police were unable to play a message he taped there for Carl.

The ministry includes a 10,000-member congregation and the “Hour of Power” weekly television program, which will celebrate its 35th anniversary in 2005.

Carl arranged music for the program and the church and served as musical director of its Christmas and Easter productions.

His music has been performed by artists such as Celine Dion and John Tesh, the London Symphony and numerous others.

Michael Nason, Schuller’s spokesman, said Carl had talked to him in the past about despondent feelings “just a sense of personal pressures, job, and things around him, dealing with people around him.”

Adelle M. Banks

Pope Establishes Good Samaritan Foundation to Help AIDS Victims

VATICAN CITY (RNS) With a personal donation of $132,000 in seed money, Pope John Paul II has established the Good Samaritan Foundation to help the world’s neediest AIDS victims, the Vatican said Friday (Dec. 17).

Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, president of the Pontifical Council for the Pastorate of Health and head of the new foundation, told a Vatican news conference that the foundation will steer clear of controversy over condoms.

The Catholic Church rejects all forms of artificial birth control and has questioned the effectiveness of condoms in preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS. It contends that only chastity and fidelity provide reliable protection against AIDS.

But Barragan said the debate over condoms was irrelevant because the foundation’s focus will be on treatment of those already suffering from the disease rather than on prevention.

To argue over condoms, he said, “seems like when, during the capture of Constantinople, there was discussion of how many devils could be on the point of a needle.”

“I think that it is one thing to discuss the moral problem of the means and to have the positions that we Catholics have, and another thing to assist the sick. While prophylactics are being discussed, yes or no, every day thousands of people are dying of AIDS,” he said. “That (discussion) doesn’t concern me. What concerns me is that people are dying and we must help them.”

Barragan said that in addition to the initial contribution from the pope, the foundation has already received money from Italy and Mexico.

“This,” said Jose Luis Redrado Marchite, secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Pastorate of Health, “is a drop that we hope will become an ocean.”

The Catholic Church currently operates 26.7 percent of the centers assisting HIV/AIDS victims worldwide. It ranks third in assistance behind governments and UN organizations.

Barragan said the foundation will work both with Catholic and non-Catholic aid centers. He said it will avoid duplicating other operations and instead pinpoint its funds to help “the most abandoned.”

Peggy Polk

Aging Pope Tells Vatican Aides He Relies Increasingly on Their Help

VATICAN CITY (RNS) In a rare reference to his increasing frailty, Pope John Paul II told his Vatican aides Tuesday (Dec. 21) that with the passing of the years he relies more and more on their help.

The 84-year-old pontiff made the admission at his traditional pre-Christmas audience for the staffs of his household and of the Roman Curia, the administrative and judicial bodies that help him govern the Catholic Church.

“Venerated and dear brothers, thank you for your presence and for the affection with which you surround me,” John Paul said. “The passing of the years makes one feel ever more keenly the need of the help of God and the help of men.”

The pope praised his aides for the “constant tuning” with which they work with him “at the service of the universal church, each carrying out the task given to him.”

Reviewing key events of 2004, John Paul stressed the importance of ecumenism, calling it “urgent to reconstruct full communion between Christians.”

“We thank God that the ecumenical force at various levels is intensifying thanks to constant contacts, meetings and initiatives with our brothers of different Orthodox and Protestant churches and ecclesial communities,” he said.

The pope stressed the importance of two visits to the Vatican by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, in June for the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul and in November to receive relics of the 4th century Sts. John Chrysostom and Gregory of Nazianus.

The pope also recalled his pilgrimage to the French shrine of Lourdes in August and his efforts there “to encourage European Catholics to remain faithful to Christ.”

The visit to Lourdes followed a rebuff by the writers of the new European Constitution, who refused his appeals for a reference to Europe’s Christian roots in the document’s preamble.

“It is, in fact, in one’s heart that one feeds those Christian roots of Europe from which in no small part depends the solid and just future of the continent and the entire world,” he said.

Peggy Polk

Survey: Catholic Institutions Wary of Investing in Violence and Sex

(RNS) A new survey shows that when Roman Catholic institutions invest their endowments, they increasingly want to make sure their dollars aren’t funding media enterprises that conflict with their moral values.

The finding emerged this month (December) from a 2004 survey of 151 Catholic institutions, including colleges, dioceses, religious orders and hospitals.

In comparing these results with those from their last survey in 2001, Christian Brothers Investment Services Inc. identified a growing wariness toward companies that profit from depicting violence and sex.

When ranking their chief social concerns, Catholic institutions put production of pornography at No. 3, up from No. 10 in 2001. In another shift, violence in the mainstream media hadn’t made the top 10 concerns of 2001, but this year it claimed the No. 6 slot.

The eighth biggest worry this year was a combined concern about sexually explicit content in mainstream media and the business of distributing pornography.

Abortion repeated this year as the No. 1 social concern of Catholic institutional investors, followed by environmental justice, which was not included in the 2001 survey. Concern to advance universal access to health care shared the No. 3 slot with concern to limit pornography production.

Other issues dropped in priority, such as the use of “sweatshop” labor, which fell from the No. 2 slot in 2001 to number eight in 2004.

“We go through this exercise to ensure that our socially responsible investing policy is aligned with the views of our participants,” said Christian Brothers Executive Vice President Francis Coleman. “As a result of these findings, we will be looking to increase our emphasis on promoting environmental justice and also curbing violence in the media.”

Investing with an eye toward what the church considers social responsibility has become a hallmark of investing by Catholic institutions. In this year’s survey, 83 percent of responding institutions claimed a goal of investing all their assets in alignment with their moral values.

To achieve their goals, institutions re-affirmed a two-pronged approach. Most survey respondents indicated support for avoiding companies whose products are irreconcilable with Catholic values, while elsewhere using shareholder clout to shape corporate policies according to Catholic values.

G. Jeffrey MacDonald

Davey and Goliath Return to TV With Snowboard Christmas Special

(RNS) After spending 30 years in the celluloid closet, Davey and Goliath, the beloved animated duo of a boy and his talking dog, will return to television with a full-length Christmas special.

“Davey and Goliath’s Snowboard Christmas” will air on the Hallmark Channel at noon on Saturday (Dec. 19) and Dec. 26. Davey Hansen and his conscience-ridden dog will be joined by friends Sam, who is Jewish, and Yasmeen, a Muslim.

The stop-motion animation characters developed a loyal following between 1960 and 1975 and have recently been resurrected by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which owns the rights to Davey and Goliath.

The original Davey and Goliath were developed by Art and Ruth Clokey, who also developed the Gumby and Pokey characters. The Clokeys were also involved in the next generation of Davey films.

Although Davey and Goliath were recently featured in a sassy Mountain Dew ad that raised eyebrows with some Lutherans, the hourlong special is their first full-length animated adventure. As usual, Davey gets into trouble after ignoring the advice of his dog, Goliath.

“During this adventure, Davey learns some dazzling snowboard maneuvers and some very important lessons about the real meaning of Christmas, and about understanding and respect for people who are different than he is,” said the ECLA’s Kristi Bangert.

Church officials had hoped to get the special on a major network like ABC or CBS but were unable to sign an agreement or finish production to meet network deadlines, said John Brooks, a church spokesman. Brooks said Hallmark, as a family-owned entertainment network, is an “excellent fit” for Davey and Goliath.

Kevin Eckstrom

Quote of the Week: Evangelist Franklin Graham

(RNS) “If I just fed people and that’s all I did if I clothed people and that’s all I did I would be cheating people. I would be holding back the most important information that I have to give them. It would be a sin for me not to share with them my faith.”

Evangelist Franklin Graham in an interview with Newsweek

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