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Dear PAR35,

"Until the diocese files for bankruptcy, and then the Catholic Bishop holds forth that the property has always belonged to the local parish."

The property does belong to the local parish, at least in Catholic Canon Law. However, the parish doesn't belong to the congregants. The parish is a constituent part of the Church. The only real "owner" of the Church is God.

Neither, therefore, does the parish belong to the bishop (at least, it's not supposed to). The parish is its own juridical "person" in Church law. The bishop has ultimate control over the disposition of the parish and its assets, but doesn't own those assets. Neither, really, does the diocese.

Rather, the diocese and the bishop are ultimately responsible for the care of the parish and the proper administration of the parish, but do not have a completely free hand in what they may do with it.

Even if the diocese takes the civil legal form of a corporation, and even though it has some attributes of a business, ultimately, it isn't a business. Whether separately incorporated or not, individual parishes do not exist to provide profit and income streams to "headquarters." Parishes are normally established for the benefit of Catholic people in a given territory, to provide for Catholic life for the Catholic people therein.

My reading of what the courts have done is that they've said that if a diocese sets up its civil legal arrangements to parallel the effect it desires in Church law, the courts may respect that. Thus, by incorporating each individual parish, with the bishop having ultimate, but not immediate control of each parish, a diocese may be able to shield the assets of parishes from judgments against the diocese.

But where the Church doesn't try to use civil legal arrangements to parallel the intended Church legal arrangements, all bets are off.

I'm not sure that that doesn't violate the protections of the First Amendment, at least a little bit, but there it is.

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