Before the end of this year, the...

Before the end of this year, the Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese will launch a Spanish-language newspaper, Vida Nueva, or New Life, and a localized version of The Tidings, the archdiocesan weekly newspaper, Archbishop Roger M. Mahony announced this week.

The Tidings’ board of directors approved the plan--which Mahony called “completely revolutionary in Catholic journalism”--that will create two separate newspaper staffs producing papers to be mailed free to about 1 million homes in the 3.4-million member archdiocese.

It is hoped that advertising revenue will support the newspapers. “Some ad agencies are skeptical about placing ads in the Spanish-language newspaper, but we think it will be well read in the Hispanic community,” said Bill Rivera, acting editor of The Tidings. “Our surveys show a very enthusiastic response there.”

The bold step was taken inasmuch as the 95-year-old Tidings has been under 50,000 circulation for years and is losing about 2,000 subscriptions annually, Rivera said.

The paper will be developed in steps until the entire archdiocese from La Mirada to Lompoc is covered. The first English-language edition will be formed for the San Pedro Pastoral Region with the other four regions getting their editions in intervals of six to nine months, Rivera said. Vida Nueva will debut in selected areas of Los Angeles.

Local news will be featured--down to “grade-school volleyball scores . . . (and) the meetings that are going on within the parishes because that’s where the community is,” said consultant Scott Schmidt, former publisher of the Daily News of Los Angeles.

Mahony will step aside as publisher, although he will have an “Ask the Archbishop” column, officials said. A publisher-chief executive officer and editors for the English- and Spanish-language papers will be sought.

The present Tidings has only four people on the editorial staff, but “it will be close to 35 people when we get all tooled up,” Rivera said.

STATISTICS

The number of uniform-wearing “young soldiers” affiliated with the Salvation Army in 15 Western states jumped 61% during the 1980s, according to figures compiled at the Western Territory headquarters in Rancho Palos Verdes. The number grew from 4,661 at the end of 1979 to 7,506 by September. “Many of our future officers will come from these young people aged 7 to 14,” said a spokesman, who added that Latino and Asian youths in the Southwest and Southern California especially contributed to the growth. Sunday school membership at Salvation Army churches, known as corps community centers, also grew from 13,628 to 19,442 in the same period.

TALKS

“The Religion of the Goddess” will be described by author-archeologist Marija Gimbutas at the 11 a.m. service Sunday at First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles. Gimbutas, professor of archeology at UCLA, is known for her research on ancient civilization in Europe. Her post-World War II research in the field, which inspired many later feminist researchers, was the subject of a special seminar last November in Anaheim at the American Academy of Religion annual meeting.

The Rev. Marie Fortune, author of “Is Nothing Sacred? When Sex Invades the Pastoral Relationship,” has been invited by the School of Theology at Claremont to discuss how abuses in clergy-parishioner relations can arise and be handled. Her public lecture on Friday, “Breaking the Silence,” is scheduled to start at 8:30 a.m. with open discussion ending before noon at the United Methodist seminary’s Mudd Theater. Fortune, a United Church of Christ minister, is director of the Center for the Prevention of Sexual and Domestic Violence in Seattle.