{"id":6810,"date":"2006-07-13T07:40:30","date_gmt":"2006-07-13T07:40:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/the-great-ohio-mass-card-controversy-of-06.html"},"modified":"2006-07-13T07:40:30","modified_gmt":"2006-07-13T07:40:30","slug":"the-great-ohio-mass-card-controversy-of-06","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/the-great-ohio-mass-card-controversy-of-06.html","title":{"rendered":"The Great Ohio Mass Card Controversy of 06"},"content":{"rendered":"

"I’m having a Mass offered for your intentions – punk<\/em>!"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Michael W. Lewis, a Clevelandarea broker indicted last month on charges he conspired to bribe Terrence W. Gasper, the former chief financial officer at the Ohio Bureau of Workers\u2019 Compensation, mailed the card to Gasper on June 23 telling him about a Catholic Mass he arranged in Gasper\u2019s honor. <\/p>\n

Lewis said it was an act of kindness for a friend "going through a difficult time." But federal prosecutors say it was an attempt to chill any testimony from Gasper, who has pleaded guilty to corruption charges and is cooperating with authorities \u2014 and that sending the card may have violated conditions of Lewis\u2019 release on a $50,000 cash bond. <\/p>\n

"The card is a poorly veiled and intentionally ambiguous attempt to intimidate Gasper and, thereby, influence any testimony he may give regarding Lewis at trial," prosecutors wrote in a notice to the court. "The most innocent comment to be made about this inappropriate communication is that is was not accompanied by the typical black rose." <\/p>\n

That\u2019s nonsense, said Lewis attorney Roger M. Synenberg, who said Lewis goes to Mass every day and made a caring gesture for a friend he has known for 20 years. <\/p>\n

"That\u2019s a very, very overactive imagination by the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office," Synenberg said. "It\u2019s a Mass card, for crying out loud." <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Hat tip to Kevin for this and the previous firey link.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

"I’m having a Mass offered for your intentions – punk!" Michael W. Lewis, a Clevelandarea broker indicted last month on charges he conspired to bribe Terrence W. Gasper, the former chief financial officer at the Ohio Bureau of Workers\u2019 Compensation, mailed the card to Gasper on June 23 telling him about a Catholic Mass he…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Great Ohio Mass Card Controversy of 06 - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/the-great-ohio-mass-card-controversy-of-06.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Great Ohio Mass Card Controversy of 06 - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\""I’m having a Mass offered for your intentions – punk!" 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6810\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}