The plan to sell off the churches in the diocese of St. John’s in Newfoundland, Canada is going ahead. They’re going to sell 130 properties and try to raise money to buy the churches back. Good luck on that.
If they could raise the money, why don’t they just raise it directly to pay off the settlement? Because the money isn’t there. Instead, the individual parishioners will be forced to pony up to buy their churches and take out new mortgages. It’s essentially a form of extortion.
And what happens when the next round of lawsuits come (and you know they are out there)? Will they sell them off again?
Perhaps, the parishes should rent the buildings they are in now. In the current legal environment, dioceses should not own assets.
I think they should lose them. I wouldn’t donate to save them because they shouldn’t have gotten themselves sued in the first place.
They owe the parishoners, not the other way around.
Not to quibble, but it’s the Diocese of St. George (encompasses western NFLD) that is being sued, one of the three dioceses in Newfoundland. The Diocese of St. John’s already went through the ugliness with all the child abuse suits in the 90s—- lots of orphanages, lots of poor families, lots of abused boys over a long period of time. Really bad stories.
What’s sad is that of the many relatives I have in Newfoundland (St. John’s diocese), the two that still went to Mass just passed away last year. The scandals really jaded a very small community (compared to ours) where someone that you knew or might even be related to was abused, and the people I’ve met from there (not just relatives) have mostly turned their back on the Church in disgust. Coupled with the fact that the school system used to be mostly Catholic and now it’s all public except for a few Catholic schools, who knows what will happen.
The fact that this scandal is “universal” is the only thing “catholic” about it…I can live with a “smaller” church…