Accused of disobeying its own guidelines, the Penn State chapter of the American Family Association lost both its national charter and its Penn State student organization registration.

William Swindell, the national AFA chapters coordinator, said he revoked the charter last week after he found evidence that Penn State's AFA disobeyed a rule prohibiting the condemnation of any religious denomination.

Swindell said he received phone calls from University students and letters from other AFA chapters about literature distributed by the Penn State chapter, which was supposedly anti-Catholic.

The literature -- small booklets called "gospel tracts" -- is meant to teach the gospel of Jesus Christ, former AFA President Bob Bowen said.

Bowen said the literature was not anti-Catholic. He said it was pro-God and based entirely on Bible scriptures.

But one of the booklets, titled "Are Roman Catholics Christians?" states that Roman Catholics are not Christians, but "are very religious and very lost."

Some students were offended that AFA circulated the booklets, Swindell said. Michael Cawley (graduate-environmental engineering) said he was particularly upset to see the literature at the Student Involvement Fair in the HUB Ballroom.

AFA is a "grass-roots" movement, Swindell said, that allows chapters around the country to use its name to protect traditional family values, Swindell said. AFA's guidelines mandate religious tolerance, he added.

"All kinds of people from all walks of life are attracted to this fight, " Swindell said. "We will not tolerate the denigration of any religious denomination."

By distributing the literature, the Penn State chapter may have tarnished AFA's reputation at the University, Swindell said. He warned the group last fall when it first distributed the literature and then revoked the charter when it continued to distribute the booklets, he said.

The Penn State AFA automatically lost its student organization registration when its national charter was revoked, said Steven Maletzky, USG Supreme Court chief justice.

Now having lost its registration, the chapter has lost its rights, privileges and recognition as a student group and can no longer receive University funding, Maletzky said.

But Swindell said the group still has the freedom to meet.

"I cannot tell the group that they can't meet . . . they just can't meet in the name of the American Family Association," Swindell said.

Bowen said he will continue distributing the booklets and does not want to use the AFA name because, he said, some of AFA's national leaders are hypocritical.

"We don't want to be associated with them," he said. "They say they're Christian but they stab Christians like us in the back."