Edward Morrissey

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Edward Morrissey, seated holding Mary Manin Morrissey's hand, is pictured with Living Enrichment Center management team circa 1997.

Edward Morrissey is the second ex-husband of Rev. Mary Manin Morrissey who pled guilty to money laundering and using funds from his wife's New Thought church, Living Enrichment Center, for personal expenses. Edward Morrissey was sentenced to federal prison for his crimes. He was released on February 2, 2007.^[1]

In a 2004 e-mail to Willamette Week, Steve Unger, Mary Manin Morrissey's attorney, wrote that Mary Manin Morrissey and Edward Morrissey had committed commingling, and that "the finances of [the] LEC, New Thought Broadcasting, Mary Morrissey and Ed Morrissey were treated not separately, but as a kind of 'financial family.'"^[2] In 2005, Edward Morrissey, a CPA and the former CFO of Living Enrichment Center, pled guilty to money laundering and using church funds for the personal expenses of himself and his wife.^[3] After a year in prison at Terminal Island, in August, 2006, Edward Morrissey was transferred to a Seattle halfway house. Edward Morrissey was released from the Seattle halfway house on February 2, 2007.^[4] Both Mary Manin Morrissey and Edward Morrissey have injunctions against them, prohibiting them from heading or being agents in non-profit organizations. Both are also prohibited from selling securities.^[5]

1 Marriage to Mary Manin
2 The Other Edward Morrissey
3 Notes
4 See also

[edit] Marriage to Mary Manin

Mary Manin Boggs was the founder (along with her then-husband Haven Boggs) and senior minister of Living Enrichment Center, a New Thought "mega-church" in Wilsonville, Oregon with a congregation estimated at 2,000 to 5,000 members. Edward Morrissey married Mary Manin Boggs (thereafter known as Mary Manin Morrissey) in the mid-1990s, and shortly after the marriage Edward Morrissey became the CFO of the church. In the October 16, 2006, Oregonian article "Forgiveness, for minister, starts with self", staff writer S. Renee Mitchell indicated that Mary Morrissey and Ed Morrissey have divorced. Mitchell wrote, "When the smoke cleared, Morrissey — who had once cozied up to the Dalai Lama and other world spiritual leaders — was divorced, houseless and in debt for more than $10 million."^[6]

In the summer of 2004, Living Enrichment Center closed amid a multi-million-dollar financial scandal. Though both Edward Morrissey and Rev. Mary Manin Morrissey were listed as defendants in many lawsuits filed by former members of the congregation, it was Edward Morrissey who eventually pled guilty to money laundering and using church funds for the personal expenses of himself and his wife. Edward Morrissey was sentenced to federal prison. To this day, Rev. Mary Manin Morrissey claims that she had no knowledge of her husband's illegal use of church funds. Edward Morrissey has claimed the same.

"In fairness to Mary Morrissey, it's not implausible that she was mislead by her husband about the church's finances – and it's worth noting that she maintains some real support among the folks who got burned.... But those details come back to suggest other possibilities: 1) that we're dealing with a true cult, one that was devoted to the enrichment and aggrandizement of Mary Morrissey until it collapsed (sub-clause on #1 includes the possibility that Ed's under her spell); 2) a more practical 'conspiracy' that assumes that Edward Morrissey took the fall because his wife's the one who can go on the speaking tours to pay off creditors." – The Intersection of Spirituality and Fleecing

[edit] The Other Edward Morrissey

This Edward Morrissey is no relation to the political writer and talk show host Edward Morrissey, whose work appears at the popular blog Captain's Quarters and who works as the political director of BlogTalkRadio.