The Minneapolis Star-Tribune
Published: August 14, 1994
Section: NEWS
Page#: 01B
Religious wrong
By Martha Sawyer Allen; Staff Writer

A correspondence school calling itself a religious seminary has been kicked out of Indiana, Ohio and Colorado, and apparently has landed in Long Prairie, Minn.

Students have been told to send their money to at least three post office boxes in Long Prairie, each with a different school name.

In July, the Colorado attorney general's office told the Denver school, called Notre Dame de Lafayette University, to cease operations. The school said it is the seminary for the Mercian Orthodox Catholic Church.

The school and its president, Stephen Thomas, had signed an agreement with the state of Colorado to close and refund students' money. When they did not, the attorney general's office ordered them out of the state.

Within days, students were being told to send their money to the post office boxes in Long Prairie, said Thomas Dyl, an assistant attorney general in Colorado.

Names on the boxes are: St. Mark's Seminary, Box 225; Holy Ghost Collegiate Seminary or Holy Ghost College, Box 205, and the Occidental Orthodox Catholic Church, Box 215.

The Rev. James Judd and his small St. Paul parish of St. Ignatius of Antioch initially were associated with the Denver outfit, but broke off all ties when they realized it was a sham, he said.

"You have a flim-flam man here who has used and abused people and fleeced them," Judd said. "I was just on the phone with a priest in southern Illinois who gave them a lot of money and just got sucked in. They were literally selling degrees."

He said he thinks no one really knows how many people the group might have hurt. "Some people are too ashamed to acknowledge they've been taken," said Judd, who didn't say whether he had lost money.

People often found out about the school through advertisements in trade publications or other magazines advertising religious or healing-arts schools.

Thomas and other school officers whose names are on file in Colorado could not be reached for comment.

In Colorado, the school offered students degrees in such areas as homeotherapeutics; nutrimedicine; peace and justice; "applied degrees" in business administration, fine arts, chiropathy and nursing; wellness sciences; psycho-visual therapy; certification as exerscience director, conservation and management, imagery; degrees in hypnotherapy, iridology, homeopathy; complementary medicine and herbal medicine.

The school came to public view there when a TV reporter enrolled her dog, Samantha, in the college and the dog received a degree in Christian counseling.

Colorado officials also contend that the school incorrectly said that credits from it would transfer to all major universities and that it was applying for accreditation from the Association of Theological Schools in America, which had rejected it.

"We're just concerned that they seem to be picking up and starting all over again in Minnesota," Dyl said. "We're seeking the best way we can to prevent this from happening again."

James Barone, an assistant attorney general in Minnesota, said his office has received information from Dyl and will review the case.

Judd was trained as a Benedictine at St. John's University in Collegeville, but left the Roman Catholic Church several years ago. After he married, he and several others were intrigued by advertisements for the Denver school as a way to remain in ministry after marriage, he said.

"You're so eager to express your vocation and when an opportunity presents itself you get hooked. Even though I was married I still had a need to express my vocation," he said.

The school's leaders used a directory of Roman Catholic priests who had left the church and "aggressively mailed to everybody," Judd said. "They were impressive up front, until you saw the games. They were punitive when you tried to leave. They excommunicated you and tried to give you a bad name."

Judd said he knows of priests in Florida, Illinois and Minnesota who had the same experience with the Denver school.

Dyl said that people nationwide have called him to complain about the school taking their money and issuing apparently worthless degrees. He said that one woman in Puerto Rico reported that the school demanded $30,000 in payment for 20 students she was supervising who were working on degrees in natural medicine. The woman thought it was a legitimate school, Dyl said. "They were to get their degrees in the fall, and we revoked their license in July," he said.

The school often told students that their degree authority was from a Nigerian or Philippine university. Dyl does not think either university exists.

Judd said he began to have reservations about the school two years ago when he contacted the Rev. Ted Wojcik, dean of St. Mary's Orthodox Cathedral in Minneapolis, the local cathedral of the Orthodox Church of America.

Wojcik told Judd he had not heard of the Mercian Orthodox Church. "They have no connection to the historic Orthodox church," Wojcik said, although Judd told him he had been told it was a canonical church.

"An Orthodox church is named after a territory," Wojcik said. "I don't even know what `Mercian' means."

Judd said there has been "a lot of effort to establish Western rite Orthodox parishes and a lot of independent, fly-by-night groups have emerged." "You have to be careful what you get involved with," he said.

However, he said that Western rite Orthodox churches are a legitimate offshoot of the Orthodox tradition. They differ from Eastern Orthodox churches mainly in their worship services. Western rite churches use a service that would be more recognizable to Roman Catholics than Eastern Orthodox worshipers.

The Rev. Paul W.S. Schneirla, a professor of church history at St. Mary's Orthodox Church (Antiochian) in Brooklyn, N.Y., is quoted as the national authority on Western rite Orthodoxy. In a 1990 issue of the Russian Orthodox Journal, he said it is a legitimate offshoot of the Orthodox tradition.

The Antiochian archdiocese has about 10,000 North American members. Most churches are in Florida.