c. 2005 Religion News Service Church Wins as Italian Voters Boycott Referendum on Assisted Fertility ROME (RNS) Voters heeded the call of Pope Benedict XVI and Italian church leaders to sit out a nationwide referendum that would have eased severe restrictions on assisted fertility and embryo research, results showed Monday (June 13). The Interior Ministry announced that only 25.9 percent of Italy’s 50 million eligible voters cast ballots Sunday and Monday. A minimum turnout of 50 percent plus one was needed for the referendum to be valid. “The abstention from the referendum in Italy is an example for all the states of the European Community,” Norbert Martin, a professor of sociology at the University of Kloblenz, Germany, and member of the Pontifical Council for the Family, told the Vatican news agency Fides. Emma Bonino, a former European Union commissioner who was a leader of the “Women for Yes” campaign, conceded the turnout was lower than she expected but said the 10 million people who did vote yes “is a spur to resist.” The four questions presented to voters were aimed at easing controversial restrictions on assisted procreation and embryo research that were approved by the parliament in February 2004. Some 1.5 million people signed petitions calling for the referendum. The current law, among the tightest in Europe, bans the use of donor eggs and sperm, allows no more than three embryos to be transplanted into the uterus at one time, prevents screening of embryos for genetic disorders, gives embryos full legal rights and limits embryo freezing and research. Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the pope’s vicar for Rome and president of the Italian Bishops Conference, told voters that by abstaining they would deliver a double no to attempts to ease restrictions. The German-born Benedict, elected pope in April, gave his strong backing to the campaign to avoid the polls. Addressing the Italian Bishops Conference last month, he said that human life “can never be reduced to a means but is instead an end in itself.” Leaders of the yes campaign, including Nobel Prize-winning scientists, said they feared that opponents would use a failed referendum to renew attempts to repeal Italy’s abortion-rights law. _ Peggy Polk Creator of Easy-to-Read Bible Dies (RNS) Kenneth Taylor, creator of the easy-to-read Living Bible, died of heart failure Friday (June 10). He was 88. “We’ve lost a giant,” said Eugene Habecker, president of the New York-based American Bible Society. “This was a gentleman who has made a massive impact on the church.” The Living Bible was a paraphrase of Scripture. With a master’s degree in theology, Taylor began interpreting the Bible in the 1960s so his children, confused by the popular King James translation, could read and understand it. Unable to interest any publishing companies, he founded Tyndale House, which published the Living Bible in 1971. For the next three years, Taylor’s paraphrase was the best-selling book in the United States, and Tyndale House became one of the country’s largest Christian publishers. Born in Portland, Ore., in 1917, Taylor was the son of a Presbyterian pastor. He received a doctorate of theology from Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1944 and began to paraphrase the Bible while commuting by train to his job at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. Evangelist Billy Graham gave Taylor a major boost early on by distributing “Living Letters,” Taylor’s version of books in the New Testament, to audiences at Graham’s crusades. Some scholars criticized Taylor’s paraphrase for changing the original meaning of the Bible. Tyndale House published a revision of the Living Bible in 1966. The newer version, called the New Living Translation, retained the conversational style of Taylor’s original, but only after consulting a board of biblical scholars. While Mary is “great with child” in the King James Version (Luke 2:5), Joseph’s “fiancee” is “obviously pregnant” in the New Living Translation. The Living Bible sold more than 40 million copies and was translated into more than 100 million languages. Taylor also founded the Christian Booksellers Association, the trade association of the Christian publishing industry, in 1950. One of Taylor’s sons, Mark, is now president of Tyndale House, based in Wheaton, Ill., best known in recent years for publishing the successful “Left Behind” series. Taylor died in Wheaton and is survived by his wife and 10 children. _ Nancy Glass Update: Lutheran Official Urges Zimbabwean Government Restraint

(RNS) The Rev. Ishmael Noko, general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation, has called on President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe to restrain the country’s police and security forces from carrying out harsh evictions against the poor in Harare and other cities.

Mugabe’s crackdown on the urban poor and their informal market areas has left an estimated 200,000 people homeless and another 30,000 in custody, according to United Nations officials.

The government says the campaign is aimed at cleaning up urban areas and illegal trade in foreign currency.

Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since it achieved independence in 1980, has come under increasing criticism from religious, human rights and international agencies for his autocratic governing. Zimbabwe’s economy has been in a free fall since the government embarked on a campaign of seizing white-owned farms and turning them over to blacks, often party members and their relatives rather than the landless poor to whom they were promised.

Noko, in a June 9 letter to Mugabe, affirmed his support for calls by Zimbabwean church leaders asking the president to engage in a “war against poverty, not against the poor.”

The Zimbabwean campaign has been given various names, most recently, according to Noko, “Murambatsvina,” which means “remove rubbish.”

Noko said the people expelled from their homes and businesses are “not `rubbish’ but human beings.”

“I cannot believe any government genuinely committed to helping the poor and dispossessed could engage in such actions,” Noko told Mugabe in the June 9 letter.

Noko said the government bears a significant degree of responsibility for the economic difficulties that have led so many Zimbabweans to resort to any means available to support their families.

While the government has a right and duty to maintain law and order, Noko said there are other ways of achieving the goal than “putting such a large number of people who are already poor into an even worse situation.”

_ David E. Anderson

Baptist Legislator Opposes New Jersey Devils’ Satanic Mascot

(RNS) A Baptist state legislator from New Jersey is taking issue with the satanic symbol and religious name of the New Jersey Devils.

“This is an age where symbolism is very important,” State Assemblyman Craig Stanley told the Associated Press. Stanley is a Baptist deacon whose resolution to rename the hockey team is to be introduced in the Assembly next month.

Under his plan, a new name would be chosen in a statewide competition.

Stanley’s district includes parts of Newark, where the team plans to move into a $310 million, 18,000-seat downtown arena in September 2007.

The team’s mascot is a red, cartoonish figure with a goatee and horns. Devils fans have rallied it around it as their team has won three Stanley Cup championships.

Devils management opposes the proposed changes.

“I can assure you the Devils name will never change, and I think there are more important things to be thinking about than something that will never happen,” chief executive officer Lou Lamoriello told the AP. “It’s who we are and what we want to be.”

_ Angela Delli Santi

Quote of the Day: Don Kilgore of Philadelphia, Miss.

(RNS) “There are those who dread this being reopened. And there are those of us who see it as an exorcism.”

_ Don Kilgore, attorney general of the Philadelphia, Miss.-area’s Choctaw Indian tribe. Quoted by USA Today, he was referring to the opening Monday (June 13) of the trial of 80-year-old Edgar Ray “Preacher” Killen in the slayings of three civil rights workers.

MO/PH END RNS