Saturday, December 24,2005

DC APPEAL-DEMOCRAT FAITH&FAMILY

Rosicrucian Order: Opening

doors of mystery to public
By Patrick May
Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
SAN JO S E - Things don’t
look so hot from where Ian
Niderost is sitting.
From atop telephone poles,
the SBC linem an ponders the
fate of the world - and his own.
“I think about worldly mat­
ters and politics and environ­
mental degradation, all kinds of
far-out things, trying to figure
out the meaning of life all day
long,” Niderost, 28, said. “It
feels like the human race has
taken a wrong fork in the road,
and we need to start fixing
things."
And not ju st phone lines. So
Niderost and 50 other meaning-
Associated Press of-lifers found them selves
John Lillis gestures as he talks in his Omaha, Neb., studio about his hope that radio will revitalize the drawn one recent night to a
shadowy temple on a dark street
Roman Catholic Church.
in San Jose. It was an informa­
tional “salon" sponsored by the
night, the temple felt pretty
close. Somer and others learned
a lot about the order - that it’s
supported by dues and dona­
tions; that it’s not considered a
religion, but a community
where ancient mystical teach­
ings are passed down, often in
secrecy.
They discovered that there
are about a quarter-m illion
R osicru cian s worldwide. And
that through study courses and
ritu als, the members explore
self-healing, consciousness-rais­
ing and the relationships
among all living things.
As Scott put it in her lecture,
Rosicrucians strive “to awake
the psychic sense through sym­
bolism, ritual, sacred space and
m editation."
The salon, an unprecedented
attempt by the order to spread
its message to the general pub­
lic, was part sem inar, part
politics doesn’t seem to be the
answ er,” said the m arketing
consultant. “Since the Rosicru­
cians are a worldwide group
and seem to be well-funded,
maybe they can lead us to world
peace. Who knows?”
Among those who want to
know is Martha del Rio. The 60-
year-old actress drove down
from Berkeley, a mere 46-mile
jaunt in a lifelong quest for spir­
itual growth that has filled sev­
eral pages of her passport.
Much of it. in retrospect, was
wasteful ram bling, she said.
Now the clock is ticking, and
reincarnation calls.
"What I want now is to learn
as much as I can before I die."
she said. “I want to be in a place
where I can choose: Do I come
back to Earth? Or do I first
evolve more, rather than ju st be
in a fog and keep coming back
and making the sam e m is­

Catholic radio hopes
Lay leaders see religious radio as a way to whet
people’s appetites, plant seeds for conversion
By Emily Fredrix
Associated Press
OMAHA. Neb. The Homan Catholic
Church is the largest denomination in
America, but you wouldn't know it from
religious radio.
The format is huge behind news talk
and country it was the third-most numerous
format among U.S. radio stations last year,
according to the radio research firm
Arbitron. Yet the number of Catholic
stations is only about 120, according to the
Catholic Radio Association, and there are
about 2,000 religious stations nationwide.
Some broadcasters hope that’s about to
change.
‘‘We want to have somebody listen safely
and anonymously. The only way to do that
is to help stations get off the ground." said
John Lillis, a longtime broadcaster from
Omaha who consults with people who want
to start their own Catholic stations.
The Catholic Radio Association has
several dozen members, and is hoping to
add as many as 200 more if a so-called
“window' of opportunity" from the Federal
Communications Commission opens in the
next year, which the association expects.
The window is the only time that nonprofit
groups, including churches, universities
and public safety groups, can apply for low-
power FM stations.
The association is appealing to the
faithful to raise $150,000 in the next two
months so as many as 200 new stations
could apply to the FCC.
It’s not clear when the filing window will
open. The FCC is considering changing the
rules that govern the stations, which reach
listeners within a 3 1 /2 mile radius in
underserved areas, usually rural or midsize
markets. The first and only open window
for low power FM stations, held in 2000 and
2001, prompted 3,300 applications, the FCC
said. More than 1,200 of the stations were
authorized, and 700 are on the air, with
several dozen applications still pending, the
FCC said.
Stephen Gajdosik. president of the
Charleston, S.C.-based Catholic radio trade
group, thinks people are open to hearing the
denomination’s message, despite the clergy'
sex abuse crisis which has battered the
church for almost four years.
“I think it’s fair to say you have not seen
University who specializes in researching
American Catholics.
For the past 20 years, he said, there has
been a resurgence among people,
particularly younger clergy, to return to
traditional Catholic values and approaches
to faith. Some have been taking to the
Internet, he said, so it’s no surprise that
radio would be next.
Catholics had much success in the early
days of television with the late Archbishop
Fulton J . Sheen, who hosted the popular
1950s show “Life is Worth Living." Since
then, a few major powerhouses in Catholic
media have emerged, including EWTN
Global Catholic Network, which serves both
radio and television. But on the whole.
Catholics just haven’t taken to radio the
way Protestants have, said Doug Sherman,
president and founder of Immaculate Heart
Radio, which operates Catholic stations in
California, Nevada and soon in New
Mexico.
“We were asleep at the wheel,” said
Sherman, one of the founders of the
Catholic Radio Association.
Catholic bishops ignored radio and
instead focused on how to get into television
in the late 1970s and early 1980s, said
William Thorn, director of the Institute for
Catholic Media at Marquette University.
Thorn was a consultant to the U.S.
Conference of Catholic Bishops when it tried
launching the Catholic Telecommunications
Network of America in the mid-1980s. But
that failed by 1990, he said, because of the
way the church is organized, with every
bishop in charge of his own diocese and no
real way to streamline efforts. The network
sent programs to individual bishops, who
then decided on their own what they would
ask local or cable television channels to air,
he said.
Today’s radio climate, from politics to
sports, allows people to connect with their
communities, and that’s exactly what lay
Catholics want to do. Thorn said. Davidson
sees Catholic radio as attractive mainly to
people who already accept the church’s
message.
From an Omaha studio, Lillis plans to
distribute programming akin to National
Public Radio across the country. He
envisions discussions with Catholic
authors, human interest stories about
Catholics around the country’, and a weekly
Rosicrucian Order, "an organi­ encounter session. Midway takes?"
zation surrounded in mystery through her talk, presented in David Goldfarb took a less
since ancient tim es,” according the softly lit temple that lent an rigorous path to reach the
to its literatu re, that was a ir o f m ystery to the event, ancient order - his mom told
Scott led the audience in a
launching a unique member­
ship campaign, “marking a rare
foray into the public eye for an
round of chanting and a medita­
tive experiment to summon the
him about it. The 18-year-old
high school student is taking
Kurt Kroesche’s senior English
organization that has been
shrouded in secrecy for over
collective energy in the room.
Tapping into what Scott
ethics class and "I had a project
about ways to rediscover and
6,000 years.” called “the magic that lies just stim ulate the soul. My mom
Seems the Rosicrucians - a below the surface of everyday said there was this Rosicrucian
experience,” the R osicrucians Museum and that the people
metaphysically oriented group
inspired by the esoteric teach­ may be on to something, Somer there seemed to be in touch with
said after the lecture. the soul. I had no idea what to
ings of the an cien t mystery
schools of Egypt - share many of “I ’m looking for a way to expect, but I was pleasantly su r­
the concerns of guys like bring peace to the world, and prised."
Niderost.
“The state of the world is pret­
ty worrisome right now.” said
Ju lie Scott, grand m aster of the
order and the woman at the
*Trident C onstruction1
t i f f ! » .M i r i i t r ! t ! i i * t f I
lectern the other night, her face
up-lit in an eerie glow. “So we’re
unveiling our existence, letting
people know what we’re about.
It’s not a doomsday thing, but
it’s time to let people know we
need to get our priorities
straight."
In a nutshell: more tolerance,
more inner peace, more spiritu­
al ity
Judging by the salon goers’
body language, that message
touches a nerve these days,
especially in an area of the Rem odel your kitchen and bathroom
country conflicted between a with confidence!
m a terialistic su rfeit and the
very real threat of losing it all at Trident Construction has over 30 years :
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“People in Silicon Valley are award winning projects.
so insecure in their lives," said
From foundation to finish, we
Carol Som er. sittin g near
Niderost in the dark. "You can build it for you!
make a lot of money one week,
your company gets acquired the Call Greg
next, and you’re out of a job. We
can’t travel to Indonesia any­
more or Paris with the riots or
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the faith proclaimed and taught well in
recent decades, and this is simply a means
for the Holy Spirit through his church to
bring the faith out to people," he said.
It’s this desire to get back to the
fundamentals of the church that makes
anti abortion show with interviews with
bishops. He and the seven other consultants
who make up New Evangelization. Inc.,
even have plans to start up to three stations
in Sudan.
“Catholic radio doesn’t save People’s in t h e N o rth S t a t e

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conservative Catholics want to start their souls," Lillis said, “but it whets people’s
own radio stations, said Jam es D. Davidson, appetites and plants the seeds for
a professor of sociology at Purdue conversion."

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