Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 27, 1994 TAG: 9407290055
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Cal Thomas
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In Pompano Beach, Fla., an attorney is poised to seize the building, Sunday-morning offerings and other assets of a church in a case that should alarm constitutional scholars and others concerned about the excessive reach of government and its increasing hostility to religious people who believe their faith compels them to apply that faith in the public arena.
The facts are these. New Covenant Church, a conservative Presbyterian body, sold some of its land a decade ago to a doctor, who subsequently opened an abortion clinic. Members of the church, who believe abortion is immoral and against God's will, began picketing the clinic. The ruling body of the church (known as a session) made it clear that the decision to picket was not officially sanctioned by the church.
The pastor, George Callahan, allowed Operation Rescue to rent the building for one night to hold a rally. Some who attended, including the Rev. Callahan, conducted a sit-in at the abortion clinic on March 31, 1989. The clinic, assisted by the local chapter of the National Organization for Women, filed suit alleging that the defendants conspired to illegally blockade the clinic in violation of the patients' supposed constitutional right to an abortion, to financially bankrupt the abortion clinic, and to physically intimidate and harass employees and patients. The court returned a judgment of $1 against the defendants.
But the NOW attorneys sued the church under the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act - RICO - and won a judgment for $234,000 in attorneys' fees. The clinic's lawyer agreed to settle for $200,000, but the church did not have that much cash on hand. So, this month, the lawyer began the process of seizing the church building and its other assets. The judge agreed to delay the forfeiture of the church property if the church would find $210,000 (including interest should the judgment be upheld) and place it in an escrow account while it appeals his ruling.
Callahan called several churches around the country, and they lent him the money.
Even those who favor ``a woman's right to choose'' an abortion should be concerned about a case that allows the state to confiscate the property of a church because a few members and the pastor - acting as an individual citizen and not representing his church - decide to exercise what they regard as their moral obligation and their constitutional right to peaceably assemble and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.
In the various protests, sit-ins and demonstrations that characterized the civil-rights and the anti-war movements, often civilly disobedient protesters found sustenance and a home in Catholic and Baptist churches. Had RICO been in effect during the boycotts, sit-ins and protests of the civil rights era, black Baptist, Catholic and African Methodist Episcopal churches all over America could have been seized by angry white businessmen upset over the economic damage caused to their businesses by blacks who boycotted or blockaded because of segregation.
This growing trend to single out abortion and those who protest it because of religious convictions for special persecution and prosecution should disturb civil libertarians and those whose voices supported the deeply held convictions of Vietnam and civil rights demonstrators. What goes around, comes around, and if the government can order the seizure of a church simply because one uses the building for a rally that leads to a protest the government doesn't like, where is the end of this?
If church-state separation means anything, it ought to cut the other way when the state invades the church and declares there is no king but Caesar.
Los Angeles Times Syndicate
by CNB