TEXTBOOK CALLS CATHOLICISM `FALSE RELIGION'

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 21, 1993                   TAG: 9303210207
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: D4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE                                LENGTH: Medium
TEXTBOOK CALLS CATHOLICISM `FALSE RELIGION'
A social studies textbook used at a nondenominational Christian school that has more than 20 Catholic students says Roman Catholics practice a "false religion."
The principal of Greenbrier Christian Academy defended his school's use of the text. "We will not let the Catholic Church dictate to Greenbrier Christian Academy what we do or do not teach," Principal H. Ron White said Thursday.
The book - "Heritage Studies for Christian Schools" - is produced by Bob Jones University Press of Greenville, S.C. The fundamentalist university stresses a literal interpretation of the Bible.
At Greenbrier, the book is required reading for the school's 43 fifth-grade students. The book says Catholicism does not "preach the truth of the gospel - that Jesus Christ paid for all our sins by His death on the cross, and that only by trusting Him alone can we be saved."
Dan Ollinger, director of product development for secondary level textbooks at Bob Jones University, defended the entry. "When there is false teaching going on, we feel it is our duty to expose it," he said.
Patrick Riley, a spokesman for the Washington-based Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, rejected the book's assertion.
"Far from denying that salvation comes" from Jesus alone, "we hold that only by trusting in him can we find salvation," Riley said.
A local priest, the Rev. Randy Rule of Prince of Peace Catholic Church, sent a letter last week to the more than 1,000 households in his Chesapeake parish urging parents not to send their children to Greenbrier.
White said if his school was being anti-Catholic, it would bar Catholics from enrolling.
Another area school, Atlantic Shores Christian School in Virginia Beach, also uses the textbook.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB