‘Basics’ of the Faith Draw Thousands

DENVER ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS, Sept. 6—Speaking to an audience of some 3,000, Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput initiated Back to Basics, a nine-month program of talks that he will give on the Catholic faith, according to a report in the Denver daily newspaper.

“Like the biblical 5,000 who stormed a hillside hungry for loaves and fishes, [the event] looked like a testament to another kind of hunger — for meaningful, truth-filled faith,” observed religion writer Jean Torkelson.

Archdiocesan officials were not certain how many people would be interested in the series, and only set up folding chairs for 200. They were happily surprised when the auditorium of the John Paul II Center — the archdiocese's chancery office and new seminary — filled to overflowing, wrote Torkelson.

“The idea began after a Catholic publishing house, Servant Publications, asked Archbishop Chaput to write a book reflecting on next year's [Great] Jubilee,” reported Torkelson. “Archbishop Chaput told the crowd, yes, he's writing the book and what's more, ‘You're going to help.’”

The book will be based on the 90-minute forums, split evenly between the prelate's formal remarks and the question and answer periods that will follow.

Torkelson placed the encounter within the context of a national Catholic revival that has been apparent in Denver for some time.

She wrote: “Consider one listener, Kevin Augustyn, 22. The handsome, 6-foot-2-inch man from Fort Wayne, Ind., is one of 72 future priests enrolled at the new seminary.

“As a kid, none of his peers took Catholicism seriously … Then in high school his faith exploded as he met teens ‘standing up and witnessing, who loved Christ and the Church.’ That kind of robust Catholicism ‘was a revolution — I mean, a revelation,’ Augustyn said, correcting himself. Maybe he had it right the first time.”

Churches Get Scammed

REUTERS, Sept. 2—Securities regulators are warning that churches have increasingly been targeted for financial scams, reported the wire service.

The North American Securities Administration Association is warning religious groups to be wary of con artists attempting to gain trust by appealing to their faith, said Reuters in a story on how a number of religious groups have been fooled in recent months.

Cases reported by the wire service include a financial consultant who cheated 30 senior citizens out of $6 million, gaining their trust by espousing Christian values. Another man raised money from local churches for a fake telephone company that supposedly was minority-owned and operated.

In Florida, Reuters said, seven people from Greater Ministries International Church will go on trial for money laundering and mail fraud. The group may have cheated 17,000 people, many of them Christians, out of nearly $200 million.

“Just because someone in church, even the minister, said something about an investment is so, doesn't make it so,” said the Securities Administration's Bradley Kolnik. “Be very skeptical of returns that sound too good to be true, because they probably are.”

Prayer Revolution at High School Football Games

LOS ANGELES TIMES, Sept. 4—The last-minute ruling of a federal court judge allowed a 17-year-old student to lead a prayer before the start of a high school football game in Santa Fe, Texas, Sept. 3.

Asking for a safe game and goodwill in the audience, Marian Lyn Ward concluded her invocation “in Jesus' name,” said Times reporter Claudia Kolker. “Almost instantly, the audience rose to its feet to roar and clap its approval.”

She added: “The bleachers were packed to show support for the right to have an invocation.”

The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans had previously decreed that prayer could be used to “solemnify” Santa Fe High's graduations — but that football games lacked the “singularly serious nature” to merit public prayer. Even prayers before graduation, the court ruled, had to be nonsectarian and non-proselytizing.

“The dispute has reverberated far beyond Santa Fe. Effective in Louisiana and Arkansas as well as Texas, the ban on football game prayer provoked several instances of civil disobedience in Texas, where pregame prayers are a longtime tradition,” said Kolker.

Kolker said some observers “believe hundreds of other schools planned defiance of the appellate ruling during this football season, ranging from football game invocations to mass recitations of the Lord's Prayer.”

Hours before Ward's prayer at the Santa Fe game, though, in response to a lawsuit filed on her behalf, a U.S. district judge in Houston granted a temporary restraining order, barring the Santa Fe school from punishing her if she defied the previous court's ruling by giving a prayer.

Judge Sim Lake said the district guidelines “favor atheism over any religion” and therefore amounted to “state-sponsored atheism.”