BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe
By Michael Paulson, Globe Staff | June 11, 2005
Catholics trying to prevent Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley from claiming the assets of closing parishes believe they have found an unwitting ally in an unexpectedly high place: the president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, who is arguing in a bankruptcy court filing that he does not control the assets of parishes in his diocese.
A lawyer who is a parishioner at a closed Brookline church, Infant Jesus-St. Lawrence, has cited a deposition from Bishop William S. Skylstad of Spokane, Wash., in asking the Vatican to bar O'Malley from seizing the parish's assets, which include an architecturally distinctive building on 2 acres along Route 9 and a $4 million bank account. Now advocates for three other closed parishes, St. Frances Xavier Cabrini in Scituate, St. Anselm in Sudbury, and St. James the Great in Wellesley, are making similar arguments to the Vatican.
The parishes are attempting to call attention to what they believe is a contradiction between the position put forward by three Western state bishops and O'Malley. The Western bishops have argued in bankruptcy filings that they do not control parish assets; O'Malley has asserted the right to claim the property of closing parishes.
''It seems to me that there's an enormous conflict in these two positions, and you can come up with an explanation, but not one that passes a straight-face test," said David A. Skeel, a professor of corporate law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School who studies bankruptcy law and has been following the church cases closing. ''It seems offensive to the idea that somebody owns property, and when you own it, you face the upsides and the downsides of that property."
Posted by kshaw at June 11, 2005 07:16 AM