Eds: ADDS Duda's faith in 20th graf

On the website for its Culinaria store downtown, Schnucks proclaims its manager's mission:

"For Tom, grocery is not just a career," it says, "it's a calling."

Tom Collora has incorporated that calling with another — his Roman Catholic faith — in the form of a crucifix on a wall behind the customer service counter, opposite the new store's checkout registers. And in doing so, he's provoked questions about faith and business in the public square.

Collora has worked for the grocery chain for 40 years and said he has displayed a crucifix at two other Schnucks stores he has managed — one on the Hill in south St. Louis and another in St. Charles — and has never had a complaint.

But some customers are reacting angrily to the new display. Lori Weinstock, 40, a health care professional from University City, was shopping a few weeks ago when, after paying, she looked up to see the crucifix.

"It startled me. It seemed so out of place," Weinstock, who is Jewish, said. She was startled enough to write a letter that was published last week in the newspaper the Jewish Light.

"It would have been equally startling if it had been a Star of David or an emblem of another religion," Weinstock said. "It's grocery shopping, and it should be welcoming to all and exclude none."

Collora says exclusion is not what he had in mind. The crucifix, he said, "is not meant to promote one faith over another. It's just an opportunity to share a part of myself and my life with people I work hard to serve every day."

Lori Willis, Schnucks communications director, said Collora was the only manager in the chain's 106 stores to have requested to display an article of personal faith.

"Company leaders made a decision to honor that request out of respect for Tom and his faith," Willis said. "In fact, that's part of the reason they put him in charge of Culinaria. He's a man of such strong faith — who better to put in a store where so many faiths come together?"

D.J. Grothe, 36, is a vice president of the New York-based Center for Inquiry, which promotes "science, reason, freedom of inquiry and humanist values," according to its website. Grothe is an atheist who also happens to live in the building next to Culinaria.

"It's just another example of the disrespect that those without religion or those with minority religions get in our society," he said. "It's bad taste and bad business. Who wants to (shop) where someone else's faith is being pushed down your throat?"

That the display is a crucifix — an image of Jesus Christ nailed to the cross — and not just a plain cross, is of particular concern to some of Schnucks' Jewish customers. The cross bearing Christ's body has become a symbol of the Catholic Church, according to Ronald Modras, a theology professor at St. Louis University, while a cross without it has become a Protestant symbol.

"The cross is an ambiguous symbol which can mean one thing to one group and another to a different group," Modras said. "And for Jewish people (a crucifix) can mean, 'You are a Christ killer.'"

Karen Aroesty of the Anti-Defamation League of St. Louis said that despite a number of calls complaining about the display, her organization will not lodge an official complaint with Schnucks.

"After some significant discussion within the Jewish and interfaith communities, we felt this was not a battle that should be pressed right now," Aroesty said.

Lawrence Welch, director of the office of ecumenical and interreligious affairs for the Archdiocese of St. Louis, said Collora — a Eucharistic minister at the Old Cathedral downtown — should be praised, not criticized, for displaying the crucifix at his store.

"In a pluralistic society, we have no problem with anyone displaying religious symbols," said Welch. "We would have no issue with another faith displaying their symbols. A crucifix's public display is not a threat to anyone's religious freedom."

Some critics have said that because more than half of Culinaria's funding came from government sources such as tax credits and the Missouri Development Finance Board (which owns the building in which the store is situated), the store should be held to church-state limitations.

City resident Thomas Duda, who is Catholic, has made the crucifix an issue on his blog, notmymayor.com. He says a company that received public funding to build a store should not blatantly express a specific religious belief that could be offensive or uncomfortable to some who shop there. In an interview, Duda added that he would like Schnucks to prohibit individual managers from endorsing a specific religion.

But church-state legal experts said the establishment clause of the First Amendment was meant to prohibit the government's endorsement of religion, and that it would be a stretch to claim that a private business utilizing tax benefits would be comparable.

Aroesty said she had "great empathy" for Collora's desire "to share an important piece of his religious inheritance." But at the same time, she placed the responsibility for the crucifix display squarely on Schnucks' shoulders.

"If Schnucks wants to stand behind a valued staff member ... I guess that's admirable," she said. "But they risk sacrificing the loyalty of customers who will go elsewhere because they are so bothered" by the crucifix.

Willis said Schnucks was monitoring the many calls it has received about the crucifix in the past few days. "Insensitivity is not what has kept us in business for 70 years," Willis said.

Doug Moore of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.