c. 1996 Religion News Service

Former Episcopal treasurer Ellen F. Cooke to appeal prison sentence

(RNS) Ellen F. Cooke, the former national treasurer of the Episcopal Church, will appeal her five year prison sentence for embezzling more than $2 million from the denomination, her attorney said Monday (July 22).

On July 10, Judge Maryanne Trump Barry of the U.S. District Court in Newark, N.J., sentenced Cooke, 52, to five years in prison on charges of tax evasion and transporting stolen money across state lines.”This defendant deliberately and meticulously, with knowledge then and now, looted the national church over a period of years for one reason and one reason only: to live the life of someone she was not,”Barry said during sentencing.

Cooke earlier had pleaded guilty to stealing $1.2 million from the denomination during the eight years she served as national treasurer. Church officials put the sum at $2.2 million. Cooke also pleaded guilty of evading taxes on $300,000.

Cooke’s lawyer, Plato Cacheris of Washington, D.C., indicated that while he will appeal the five year sentence, which is more severe than federal sentencing guidelines require, he wasn’t sure whether Cooke would begin her sentence as scheduled on Aug. 26 or ask to be released on bail pending the appeal.”We are deciding that now,”he told Episcopal News Service, the official news agency of the denomination.

Cacheris said that because the case is still under litigation, he would not comment on what arguments he will offer to support the appeal.

At the time of Cooke’s July 10 sentencing, however, he suggested that an appeal might be based on Barry’s dismissal of defense claims that Cooke suffers from a”bipolar mental disorder”that led her to forget or block out the events of embezzlement.

Barry called that claim”spurious.” Cacheris said the U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia will set a schedule for the filing of briefs and for the court hearing on the appeal. It can take between six and nine months for an appeal to be decided, depending on the court’s caseload.

Court dismisses class action lawsuit against PTL founder Jim Bakker

(RNS) A jury in Bryson City, N.C., dismissed Monday (July 22) a multimillion dollar lawsuit filed by former followers of PTL founder Jim Bakker seeking refunds for”partnerships”in the ministry sold by the television evangelist.

After deliberating less than three hours, the jury ruled in favor of Bakker, the Associated Press reported. The evangelist, who served about five years in prison for fraud and conspiracy in overselling the partnerships, did not attend the trial. He is currently living in rural North Carolina working on a book tentatively titled,”I Was Wrong,”and occasionally preaching.

During the early 1980s, when Bakker and his PTL ministry were at the height of their popularity, supporters paid as much as $7,000 each for the”partnerships,”which included promises of timeshare lodging at Heritage USA, a Christian resort in South Carolina that was part of the PTL ministry.

The class action lawsuit, filed on behalf of 160,000 former PTL supporters, sought $120 million on the grounds that after the PTL complex, including Heritage USA, was shut down in bankruptcy proceedings, donors did not receive the promised benefits.

Lawyers for the donors argued that their clients were entitled to refunds because the partnerships were securities.

Bakker’s lawyer, however, argued that federal securities law did not apply because membership cards and videotaped sales pitches made clear that the partnerships could not be transferred or inherited.

Cardinal Mahony resolves one part of cathedral dispute

(RNS) Roman Catholic Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles said Monday (July 22) the archdiocese will not build a new replacement cathedral on the site of the current St. Vibiana’s Cathedral in downtown Los Angeles.

The archdiocese has been embroiled in a sometimes bitter dispute with local historic preservationists over the fate of the earthquake-damaged St. Vibiana’s Cathedral. Mahony has wanted to demolish the 120-year-old Spanish baroque-style church and build a new $50 million cathedral complex on the site, while the preservationists have wanted the church repaired and preserved.

It is similar to disputes being played out across the country between denominations with aging, expensive-to-repair churches with declining congregations, and preservationists who fear demolishing older buildings will erase a significant part of the nation’s social and architectural history and heritage.

At Monday’s news conference, reported in Tuesday’s edition of The Los Angeles Times, Mahony said the archdiocese was abandoning the St. Vibiana’s site and would build its new cathedral at a different site in the downtown area.”It is my overwhelming preference and that of my advisors that we try to remain in the greater Civic Center area of Los Angeles,”Mahony said.”It is the traditional location for the cathedral church, and we are hopeful that we will be able to fulfill this desire.” Earlier, Mahony had threatened to move the cathedral project out of downtown.

Mahony said he still wants to demolish St. Vibiana’s quickly and that the demolition could begin as early as Friday (July 26) if a Superior Court judge lifts a temporary ban won by the Los Angeles Conservancy, a preservationist group.

Leaders of the Conservancy said they would continue to fight razing of the church in the hopes that someone will buy and repair the building and find another use for it.

Mahony said his decision to abandon plans to build the new cathedral at the St. Vibiana’s site was prompted by the continuing legal fight with the conservationists and the high price of other land on the same block as St. Vibiana’s the archdiocese wanted to purchase for the new complex.

AME Zion Church delegates gather for quadrennial General Conference

(RNS) More than 2,000 delegates and visitors began gathering in Washington Tuesday (July 23) for the quadrennial General Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Delegates face an agenda ranging from welfare reform and black-on-black crime to the current assault on affirmative action programs and the recent rash of church burnings.

The conference may also elect the first woman bishop in the predominantly black Methodist church. Two new bishops will be elected during the conference.

Two hundred years after the 1.7 million-member denomination’s founding, African-Americans continue to face an array of social ills, said Bishop Joseph Johnson, president of the Board of Bishops. The denomination, he added, has a responsibility to continue to be”the freedom church.” The church is expected to issue statements urging the government to pursue speedy justice in the numerous recent burnings of southern churches, and to call on Congress to end the Whitewater investigation of President Clinton.”Cease and desist _ use that money to help some poor people,”Johnson told a news conference on the eve of the 10-day meeting.

Johnson said the denomination is also expected to speak out in favor of affirmative action programs, discuss voter registration plans and issue statements on how to mobilize churches to combat black-on-black violent crime. The conference falls in the denomination’s bicentennial year.”As a church body, we are excited and very proud that this denomination has been in existence for 200 years,”Johnson said.

The denomination began in New York City in 1796, when a group of blacks petitioned the bishop of the predominantly white Methodist Episcopal Church to allow them to establish an”unbiased, unrestrictive, and impartial church,”Johnson said.

Leon Shenandoah, spiritual head of the Six Nations of the Iroquois, dies

(RNS) Leon Shenandoah, the leader of the Onondaga Indians and spiritual head of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, died Monday (July 22) at Syracuse University Hospital after a long illness. He was 81.”Leon was a man who symbolized peace and unity,”said Oneida Indian Nation leader Ray Halbritter, a sometime opponent of Shenandoah on political and policy issues told the Associated Press.”He was respected by everyone. We will miss him greatly.” Shenandoah lived most of his life on the Onondaga Nation reservation south of Syracuse, N.Y. He was the longtime leader of the Onondaga and in 1969 was chosen as Tadadaho, or spiritual leader, of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, a position which members of the six tribes believe can be traced back to the time of Hiawatha, hundreds of years before the arrival of whites in North America.

The six tribes of the Iroquois confederacy include the Onondaga, Cayuga, Oneida, Mohawk, Seneca and Tuscarora.

As Tadadaho, Shenandoah officiated at weddings, funerals and other sacred ceremonies. He believed that Native American culture would rise again out of the ruins of a white Western society sickened by pollution and greed.

Many of his beliefs, however, resembled the tenets of Christianity, according to The New York Times. He believed in a supreme being that he called”The Creator,”judgment day, and eternal life.

But he also took pains to emphasize the sharply different ways of life between the Native Americans and whites.

In 1987, for example, he and other chiefs decreed that Fourth of July fireworks would no longer be sold from roadside stands in the reservation as they had been in the past.”We decided that it’s not really our way,”he said at the time.”It’s not really independence for us.” Even earlier, in 1983, he defied the federal government by providing sanctuary for Dennis Banks, one of the founders of the militant American Indian Movement, who was at the time a fugitive after being convicted in South Dakota in 1975 on charges of rioting.”We are a separate nation and intend to govern our affairs without outside interference,”he said in declaring he would not recognize the validity of a warrant for Banks’ arrest on the reservation.

He also opposed his people taking any assistance from government and Indian involvement in casino gambling.

Quote of the Day: The Rev. Daniel Berrigan on the biblical prophets.

(RNS) The Rev. Daniel Berrigan, Jesuit priest, poet, and anti-Vietnam War protester, recently celebrated his 75th birthday. He has also recently published a book,”Minor Prophets, Major Themes,”and in September will publish”Isaiah: Spirit of Courage, Gifts of Tears.”In an interview in the August 1996 issue of U.S. Catholic, Berrigan reflected on the audiences addressed by prophets _ biblical and contemporary:”They’re speaking to every segment of any culture. They’re giving hope to those that are under the heel. They’re making those, like ourselves _ who are somewhat in possession _ uneasy. And then, to authority, they’re absolutely ruthless about the kind of power that crushes people and wages war. So the prophets’ message touches on every aspect of human existence. That’s why it is a natural ground for the so-called base communities in the Third World, for us in the peace movement, and for everyone fighting injustice.”

MJP END RNS