NATION - Raymond Flynn to lead Catholic Alliance

National Catholic Reporter, March 26, 1999 by Matt Kantz

Former ambassador to head Catholic political group

Raymond L. Flynn, the former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, will head the Catholic Alliance, a political action group that began as an offshoot of the Christian Coalition.

"It's doing what I believe in and what is consistent with the social justice position of the Catholic church," said Flynn, who is a former Democratic mayor of Boston and was the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican from 1993 until 1997.

Flynn's job will be to encourage Catholics to participate in politics and provide a voice for what he termed "working-class Americans" on issues of social welfare, economic parity and opposition to abortion and euthanasia, he said.

The Catholic Alliance was founded in 1995 as a branch of the conservative Christian Coalition and is based in Oakton, Va. The group, which claims 125,000 members, broke from the Christian Coalition two years ago. Its former president, Keith Fournier, recently stepped down.

General Mills discontinues controversial grants

General Mills announced it has "phased out" grants to Planned Parenthood. The grants had caused controversy in northwest Indiana, where local Catholic schools had withdrawn from the company's "Box Tops for Education" program.

In December, when the Gary diocese's schools office learned that General Mills, which runs the "Box Tops for Education" program, was funding a Planned Parenthood of Minnesota educational program, diocesan school superintendent John Shields asked schools to cease participation in the program.

Reatha King, president of the General Mills Foundation, said the foundation has "phased out several grants," including the one that provided $17,000 to $18,000 annually for the Planned Parenthood program.

"In a review of grant-making, a new strategic emphasis is heavily weighed in two measurable areas -- educational achievement for K-12 students and reducing the level of crime violence," she said. To fund more community-based programs, King said, "we had to free up other funds."

Shields said he was exercising caution about the General Mills announcement. "It is our understanding that our stand had an effect in General Mills' rethinking of allocating their funds," he said. "We do not know if this is a definitive change as of yet. If it is, then we will continue with the `Box Top' program, but at this time we are taking a wait-and-see approach."

Christian Catholic to raise $21 million for 2000 election

The Christian Coalition announced March 11 a campaign to raise a record $21 million for its effort to mobilize 15 million conservative voters in the 2000 presidential election.

"We are launching, effective today, the most massive effort to mobilize the grassroots in our history," coalition founder Pat Robertson told a news conference.

Flanked by supporters, Robertson said the campaign, called 21 Victory, "may be the most important initiative of the organization in its 10-year history." The coalition has asked 50,000 supporters to contribute $20 a month for the next 21 months,

The coalition's election year strategy calls for training 1.5 million conservative political activists and expanding conservative influence beyond its stronghold in the South, Southwest and the Midwest to include What Robertson said are the key swing states: New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Illinois.

Court leaves rulings intact in clinic cases

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear California appeals in a dispute over sidewalk counseling at abortion clinics.

Without comment March 8, the court turned away competing appeals from the city of Santa Barbara and two women who picket at abortion clinics and attempt to persuade women not to have abortions.

The court let stand a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that stopped enforcement of a Santa Barbara ordinance that forbids picketing, counseling and verbal or silent protests within a "floating bubble zone" -- within 8 feet of anyone who is within 100 feet of a clinic.

The court also let stand the appeals court ruling upholding the section of the ordinance that prohibits such protests within a "fixed bubble zone," of 8 feet from clinics or their driveways.

Ruling last August, the appeals court said the "floating bubble zone" was too broad and that the law was not designed to impose the least possible impact on the free-speech rights of the women who sued. But the fixed zone was upheld, with the court noting that injunctions establishing much larger zones have been upheld.

Minnesotans fight funds for abortion

Forty-seven antiabortion Minnesotans, most of them Catholic, are fighting a state law that allows public money to be used for abortions.

In a lawsuit filed Feb. 26, the plaintiffs asked a U.S. District Court judge to require the Minnesota Department of Human Services, headed by Commissioner Michael O'Keefe, to stop paying out medical assistance claims to abortion providers.

The plaintiffs object to "being forced to pay taxes to pay for other people's abortions" -- particularly when the legal justification for abortion in the 1973 Roe v. Wade case "is that it's a matter of privacy," said the lead plaintiff, Jim Tarsney, president of St. Louis Park-based Minnesota Lawyers for Life.