JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

I’m sure Michael Ryan, who joined The Kansas city Star’s editorial board in June, had only good intentions when he wrote an Op-Ed column titled “This JoCo church proves the power of community,” which ran in Sunday’s paper.

But nobody must have told Ryan, a Kansas City area native who is now back, about the lingering smell emanating from the church he wrote about — St. Ann Catholic Church, 73rd and Mission Road, Prairie Village. And Ryan certainly didn’t do any homework regarding the church he and his family belonged to when he was growing up.

His column was nominally about the clergy sexual-abuse scandal that has enveloped and diminished the Catholic Church the last couple of decades. Ryan wrote that he was watching the “still-roiling” scandal with a mixture of despair and gratitude — despair being his feeling about the pain the victims have endured and gratitude “for having been kept safe by whim or fate” when he was young.

He talked nostalgically about going back to St. Ann for the wake of a classmate’s father, and he waxed poetic about his trip down memory lane…

“So many years and so many roads later, I felt a renewed sense of belonging walking into my childhood church to comfort an elementary school classmate. I didn’t recognize anyone else there. Remarkably, I didn’t need to. I felt right at home.”

…I wonder if he noticed the new $8.5 million chapel facing Mission Road?

Surely, somebody on The Star’s editorial page remembers that chapel was built partly with significant funding from a group of parishioners who made millions on the backs of poor people who either borrowed from, or were fleeced by, payday loan operations run by those particular parishioners.

The chapel built partly with payday-loan revenue

It’s worth repeating part of this story, which I’ve written about before…Worth repeating because it’s not fair or honest to let Ryan’s idealized portrayal stand.

When then-pastor Rev. Keith Lunsford launched the capital campaign to finance the chapel several years ago, the group of early “lead givers” included at least five parishioners who were in the payday lending business: Tim Coppinger, Vince Hodes, Frampton T. (Ted) Rowland III and Stephen and Julie Zanone.

The Federal Trade Commission eventually shot down those payday lending operations and froze the assets of one or more of the individuals. Although none was ever charged with a crime, their reputations and personal finances were badly damaged. Coppinger and his wife, for example, sold their house in Mission Hills. (I think they moved to Leawood, so they obviously didn’t end up on skid row.)

The worst outcome was for Ted Rowland, who committed suicide in October 2016 at age 52.

In addition, when the story was making headlines, Lunsford took a medical leave of absence and, to the best of my knowledge, never resumed his duties as St. Ann’s pastor.

To the chagrin of many people, including some parishioners, Lunsford did not return any of the dirty money the payday lenders had contributed.

(In a Facebook post, a woman named Anne Pritchett wrote: “I went to St. Ann and my parents were members for 50 years. When I was a student there in the ’60s, we were known for our outreach to the poor. We collected food, we held school-wide fundraisers for the poor and we worked at the food kitchen in WyCo. To see this church now benefit from modern-day loan sharks is both disappointing and shameful.”)

Unlike St. Ann’s, another Catholic institution, St. Teresa’s Academy, took the high road when it came to a payday-loan windfall.

St. Teresa’s had conducted a capital campaign to build an athletic field and track, and Tim Coppinger was a major contributor. But after the payday-loan scandal broke, Nan Bone, then president of St. Teresa’s, summoned members of the Coppinger family and returned the money they had given for “The Coppinger Family Track.”

…So, when The Star and Michael Ryan say that St. Ann’s “proves the power of community,” I see it much differently. When I pass 73rd and Mission Road, I see a church that refused to stand up to greed and failed to return ill-gotten gains. For the integrity of the congregation, I hope Tim Coppinger, Vince Hodes and the Zanones are at least no longer in the pews.