Court Sides with St. Stanislaus in Dispute with Archdiocese
By Tim Townsend
In between taking phone calls from reporters Thursday, the Rev. Marek Bozek paged through a huge Bible in the sacristy of St. Stanislaus Kostka Catholic Church, looking for the perfect readings for a Mass of Thanksgiving. The Mass was to be held later in the evening in response to a sweeping — and shocking, according to church-state scholars — legal victory over the Archdiocese of St. Louis. The ruling, by St. Louis Circuit Judge Bryan Hettenbach, affirmed St. Stanislaus' ownership of its property and its right to craft bylaws that limit the authority of the Roman Catholic Church over the small Polish congregation. Because the church's impromptu Mass would be celebrated by Bozek (whom the Roman Catholic church doesn't consider a priest) in the sanctuary of St. Stanislaus (which the archdiocese doesn't consider a Catholic parish), it would not be a Mass, at least as defined by the Catholic Church. Despite his rogue status with the Vatican, Bozek's message Thursday night would nevertheless be clear to the St. Stanislaus faithful, whom the church secretary spent all day contacting via Facebook, Twitter, text and telephone. "What happened today is in large part his doing," Bozek said. "He is a God of righteousness." In January, Bozek, 37, promised his parishioners "many bottles of champagne" if St. Stanislaus won its case. And vodka if it lost. But the corks popping at the church's Polish Heritage Center this Sunday may be popping years too early. In a brief press conference, during which he took no questions from reporters, St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson read a defiant statement, promising to appeal Hettenbach's decision "all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary." Before the case gets to the U.S. Supreme Court, the archdiocese will have to make its case to a state appeals court, or possibly go directly to the Missouri Supreme Court to ask its justices to hear the appeal. Hettenbach's decision was a long time coming, which fit perfectly into the character of the St. Stanislaus case. The current battle between the church and the archdiocese is going on its 10th year, and the wider tumult is more than half-a-century old. The case came to trial after 18 months of legal wrangling, and it took Hettenbach more than a year from the end of the trial last February to rule. The shortest piece of the St. Stanislaus saga was the trial itself, which lasted just two weeks. The archdiocese sued the St. Stanislaus Parish Corporation in 2008 to regain control of the church's assets and property from the church's lay board. On Thursday, Hettenbach found for that board in 10 of the case's 12 counts. In the 50-page decision, the judge ruled that "the Archbishop may own the souls of wayward St. Stanislaus parishioners, but the St. Stanislaus Parish Corporation owns its own property." Hettenbach's ruling comes just two months after a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision, referred to as Hosanna-Tabor, held that religious employees of a church cannot sue for employment discrimination. That unanimous ruling — one of the high court's most important church-state decisions in decades — was seen as a huge victory for religious institutions like the Catholic Church. The U.S. Supreme Court has turned down every case similar to St. Stanislaus' since 1979, when it authorized an approach to church dispute cases called "neutral principles of law," said Douglas Laycock, a law professor at the University of Virginia who successfully argued the Hosanna-Tabor case. Previously, civil courts simply deferred to the internal legal mechanism of that church's authority. The neutral principles of law approach instead allows a civil judge to decide church-dispute cases, as Hettenbach did, using secular documents like deeds, constitutions and bylaws that govern individual churches as an organizations. Since 1979, the U.S. Supreme Court "has let the state courts sort these cases out," Laycock said, "but this one may be shocking enough to get their attention." The legal battle for St. Stanislaus revolves around a 19th century agreement with then-Archbishop Peter Kenrick that allowed the parish to govern its own finances. Its bylaws stated that a lay board would control the church's property and assets while the archbishop would appoint the board and pastor. Much of Hettenbach's opinion centered on changes to the church's bylaws in 2001 and 2004 that eventually allowed the board to eliminate the authority of the archbishop over those church decisions. In nearly every count, Hettenbach found that none of the language in the changed bylaws conflicted with the board's purpose in the original articles of agreement. In his statement Thursday, Carlson said that in using the neutral principles of law approach to decide the St. Stanislaus case, Hettenbach had ignored the right of the Catholic Church to determine its own internal legal principles "and has substituted his own analysis of Church law." Robert Zabielski, a former St. Stanislaus board member who eventually switched sides and joined the archdiocese in its lawsuit, said he, like Carlson, was "disappointed" in Hettenbach's ruling. "St. Louis lost a real gem of a church there," Zabielski said. "It was a good Roman Catholic church, and now it's just another building. It's a shame." About 100 people mingled in the pews before Mass at the church Thursday night. The pianist played "Here I Am, Lord" as Bozek donned bright pink vestments. Later, during his homily, Bozek told his flock that those who followed Moses eventually found the promised land. "And now," he said, "we, too, can see the promised land." Contact: ttownsend@post-dispatch.com
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