Ordained Duck

Aware that their city breeds odd cults, even Los Angeles' orthodox ministers were goggle-eyed last week as they pondered the magnitude of a religious racket which had been uncovered for them. Citizens were being swindled out of at least $1,500,000 a year by "ministers" who had obtained their credentials by mail. Apparently anyone could purchase documents which, so far as the letter of the law was concerned, empowered him to set up a church, perform marriages, officiate at funerals, collect fees from his followers.

To investigate this practice, the Ministerial Association of Los Angeles, representing 400 pastors and 485,000 church members, hired Fictionist Henry James O'Brien Bedford-Jones and Dr. U. L. Di Ghilini, onetime Florida drugless practitioner and professional student of "psychic phenomena." The investigators had little difficulty piling up evidence for the ministers, so amiable and obliging were the investigated. The office of one "mother church" was not downed by a request for an ordination certificate for "Rev. Drake Googoo," a "Persian clairvoyant with some stage experience." The certificate was procured for $10, and the Ministerial Association made front pages by revealing that ''Rev. Drake Googoo" was Funnyman Joe Penner's duck.

With plenty of evidence of "moral swindles" at hand last week, the Ministerial Association was undecided what to do. An obstacle pointed out by the Los Angeles Better Business Bureau: It is difficult to prove that a "religious" organization, no matter how eccentric, is not religious in fact.

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