Now that would be very bad financial planning. Those are the properties anybody would keep.
I don't think the shoes in Boston are through dropping. Unfortunately, the benchmark has been established that people can come forward and make allegations 30-40 years after the fact, when the offender and witnesses are all dead and memories have faded - doesn't seem to be any statute of limitations on this at all.
Now, the Boston archdiocese has nobody to blame but itself for being in this fix, given its long history of heterodox, pro-homosexual, enabling behavior. At the same time, though, they have put themselves in a fix where almost anyone can make an allegation and get a settlement. So they may see still more financial obligations coming down the road.
I would not be in Cardinal O'Malley's shoes for quids.
O'Malley doesn't wear shoes, he wear $125 sandals.
I have to disagree. Sure, from a secular mindset, selling-off income property isn't so shrewd. But we're supposed to go beyond the secular mindset here, and allow the workings of the Holy Spirit to appear a bit counter-intuitive.
Which is worse: to sell off income property and pay off the abuse scandal from the proceeds, keeping parishes intact for the day when the Restoration we're always hearing about comes to pass; or selling the church buildings now, compounding immeasurably the feelings of ill-will palpably present here (you have no idea!) and guaranteeing that any thoughts of Restoration will be merely a pipe dream locally?
In the former case, the income property sell off can help garner some good will among the 6 of 7 Catholics who have abandoned the day-to-day practice of the Faith due to many factors, the abuse scandal merely being the splashiest and most recent. In the latter case, selling off churches will not only harden the hearts of many people who will, wrongly, but understandably on the merely human level, see the mammon-based rationale of the AoB as an excuse never to return, but likely will thereby thoroughly endanger many thousands of souls with respect to salvation. Is that not the Church's primary concern?
For forty years, the Catholic Church in Boston has undergone a self-inflicted period of gradual decline. Virtually all of the factors for Catholic flight can be remedied with a healthy helping of orthodox teaching of both children and (retroactively) adults, orthodox liturgical practice, palpable consistency of application of Catholic moral principles to the apostate "Catholic" politicos hereabouts, and sincerity from the archdiocese in its *frequent* and *public* apologies for the abuse scandal and unambiguous remedies for the same. Let them do *these* things before they close a single parish!
IF they do these things, and IF the hoped-for results are not forthcoming, THEN they can start closing parishes, for then, we will have become as relevant a Christian voice as the ECUSA parish you yourself left. But no parish should close until such things are tried! The churches are quasi-empty around here due to misfeasance and malfeasance of the archdiocese for decades. Let THEM shoulder the burden for once, instead of shifting the burden to the long-suffering in the pews who have done nothing to deserve the self-immolation of the Catholic Church in Boston!