Last Friday, a bankruptcy judge ruled that the archdiocese of Portland owns its parishes and schools and therefore they can be liquidated to pay off legal judgments. The archdiocese had filed for bankruptcy protection and then claimed that the property of parishes and schools should not be considered the legal property of the the archdiocese, but of the individual institutions.
Now under canon law, that is true. But Portland, like too many other dioceses, did not follow the niceties of canon law when incorporating under civil law. If they had, they would have made each parish an individual corporation with the archbishop as the chief corporate officer of the each one. Thus a legal judgment against any one or against the archdiocese or the archbishop himself would not affect the others. But with the archdiocese as a corporation sole, that option is not available. In the eyes of the court, all those parishes and schools are all part of one big corporation in the name of the archbishop, canon law notwithstanding.
[This is all explained in detail in this Catholic World Report article by Tom Szyszkiewicz from October 2005.]
Technorati Tags: bankruptcy, bishops, Catholic, lawsuits, parish closings, sex abuse
The liquidation continues.
Another show of bad leadership on the part of some of America’s bishops. 🙁
The Portland ruling also throws into question the RCAB’s reported asseertion that it has only a pool of $7.5M to satisfy the pending claims of alleged victims of sexual abuse. If the RCAB owns, under the doctrine of corporation sole, all of the assets of its constituent parishes, there are obviously tens, even hundreds of millions in cash an property available to these plaintiffs. This may also explain in part why the RCAB is trying to segregate the claims being made by those who allege they were abused by diocesean priests from those whose alleged abuse was at the hands of othe functionaries who, arguably. were not staff members of the archdiocese. The Portland ruling may also shed light on the Vatican’s decision to overturn the RCAB’s use of suppression in the closing of several churches under parish reconfiguration as contrary to canon law. Perhaps, when all is said and done and these cases have made their way to the US Supreme Court with its 4 and possibly 5 Catholic justices, the RCAB will be far less displeased with the parishioners of St. Albert the Great, St. Anselm et. al who contested their suppression either within the Church or the civil courts
Dom, to answer your question, one of the reasons to be a “Corporation Sole” as opposed to a “Corporation” is to avoid the filings and the need to have bylaws, a board of directors, annual meeting, and filings.
Also in some places, such as New York, boards of directors for non-profit corporations are not allowed to have a single member.
Is it surprising that a diocese ignored canon law and set up according to civil law? Thereby endangering the Church in that geographic area?
About as surprising that a Diocese would recruit, ordain and transfer around rapist homosexuals.
The liquidation continues.
Thomas,
The diocese must be organized in one way or another. It should not sit out there totally unorganized with respect to the state. So, the Archdiocese of Portland incorporated in Oregon similar to a corporation sole, which is quite common, but does lead to a joint liabiliry for issues that clearly do not have joint responsibility.
JBP
Clearly, following canon law is a good idea, whether it is organizing the parishes or dealing with sexual deviants.
Tony,
One correction: The Vatican didn’t overturn the use of suppression, but said that suppressions must follow canon law. The archbishop may suppress parishes, but must really suppress them. Instead, the Vatican said the archbishop merged a parish with another one (the so-called “welcoming” parishes), but called them suppressions.
They tried to make a semantic distinction that doesn’t exist in canon law.
However, the Vatican did not say that the archbishop did not have the right to suppress or merge parishes as he sees fit.
[Edited: I just changed the first sentence to say “The Vatican didn’t…”]
They tried to make a semantic distinction that doesn’t exist in canon law.
To put it less nicely, they tried to weasel their way around the law. They wanted the financial effects of a suppression, which would benefit the archdiocese, when in practice they were enacting a merger.
I guess they forgot the part about “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods.”
Thanks for the correction, Dom. I apoligize for giving the impression that I construed an ordinary could not suppress a parish, but RC has reinforced the saient point which I take to be that, under canon law, a bishop is constrained to act with the best interests of each parish and its parishioners in mind and thus cannot merge or suppress a parish simply to plunder its assets to pay for the sins of the archdiocese.
Actually that’s not true either. A bishop is sovereign in his own diocese and as long as he follows the letter of canon law, he is free to suppress or merge parishes in whatever way he thinks serves the diocese. If that means suppressing all parishes but one and using the assets of those closed parishes to pay off legal debts, he can do so.
What he can’t do is try to have it both ways, which is what the archdiocese tried to do. They wanted the public relations effect of merging parishes, but the financial effect of suppressing.
I would modify my last comment to say that it’s not as simple as all that. There’s a requirement that he must consult the priests’ council (but is under no obligation to do what they recommend) and he must, as you say, be working for the good of the Church, but that’s an open-ended requirement subject to interpretation.
According to this article by canonist Duane Galles, the bishop’s prerogative is not by rights absolute. Once a parish is established as a juridical person, it has the presumed right to continue to exist, if being a ‘person’ means anything. Dr. Galles quotes from a 1994 essay in the journal The Jurist:
“Once a stable community of faithful people has taken shape, it has the right to canonical recognition (e.g., first as a mission or quasi-parish, then as a parish; c. 516). Once established as a parish, the community possesses juridic personality and is, nature sue perpetual (cc. 515, #3; 120, #1). In other words, the parish should remain in existence until overwhelming reasons for its alteration or suppression are clearly demonstrated.”
In practice, bishops get away with suppressing parishes for reasons less than demonstrably overwhelming, and Rome has not shown herself inclined to overrule them, as long as the procedures of the law are minimally followed. Charles Wilson wrote about this for his December newsletter, which I blogged over at Catholic Light the other day.
A “stable” community is the key phrase here. I think an appeal to Rome of a suppression of a parish that has shown consistent growth would be successful. But how many parishes can boast of being “stable” in today’s environment when many parishes are seeing their pews empty by the malfeasance of so many bishops?
There is the law and then there is the reality. In practice, a bishop who desires to suppress a parish for what he deems a legitimate reason—by this I mean a bishop who is not doing so for immoral reasons—will be able to.