So Whose Church Is It Anyway?
Posted by: tony on 12/06/2005 09:24 PM
Updated by: tony on 12/07/2005 01:34 PM
Expires: 01/06/2006 12:00 AM
For quite a while I've been following the antics of St. Stanislaus Kostka church in St. Louis, MO. This is an ethnic Polish parish which in 1983 was asked, as per Canon Law to turn over its assets to the Diocese.
Unlike any other Catholic parish, St. Stanislaus Kostka Parish controls its own assets valued at more than $9 million through a lay board of directors. The arrangement was made in the late 19th century.
However, the church law was changed in 1983, and as a result the diocese was supposed to take possession of church properties.
In St. Louis, Burke has demanded Saint Stanislaus, a traditionally Polish parish, conform to the law, but the parish has refused to do so, even though the Vatican has taken Burke's side.
The lay board of directors does not want to do it. So in response, Archbishop Burke removed their priest, and then placed the board members under interdict until such time as they repent their viewpoint. They wouldn't have to do it publicly, but it's all the same. If they repented, they could not dissent. Their actions as faithful Catholics would speak to their change of heart.
So it looks like these folks would rather keep their wordly goods than have Jesus and the Sacraments. This is sad, in my opinion. They might think that civilly owning the assets might give them leverage over what is done with them, but what they effectively have is a warehouse. It is no longer a Catholic church, Archbishop Burke has seen to that.
I really hope they turn around, repent and accept correction.
This attitude of the congregation that it is our church is very prevalent. I have seen it personally. But the reality speaks otherwise.
Update (well, sort of): Domenico Bettinelli at BettNet has linked to an article that distills the St. Louis situation well. I couldn't get to the original, so I need to point you to the copy.
In St. Louis, the question of parish ownership doesn’t revolve around sexual abuse cases. Rather, it harkens back to the days of trusteeism.
St. Stanislaus Kostka is the Polish national parish in the city with a lay board of trustees who, by civil law, own the parish property. The parish began during the heyday of trusteeism when the Polish National Catholic Church separated from the Roman Catholic Church over the issue of the care of Polish immigrants.
According to some experts, Archbishop Peter Kenrick allowed St. Stanislaus the liberty of trustees in 1891 in order to keep it in the fold and not follow the way of the PNCC, although the various councils of Baltimore had barred the use of trustees.
In the decades since, the relationship with the archdiocese has been rocky, including a lawsuit against the board by an anti-trustee parishioner in the early 20th century. Recently, however, the situation went from bad to worse. In the late summer of 2003, then-Archbishop Justin Rigali met with the current board asking them to come into full compliance with Church law by dissolving the board and allowing the archbishop to have complete control over the parish. They refused. But Archbishop Rigali was transferred to Philadelphia before any further action could be taken, leaving the issue with his successor, Archbishop Raymond Burke, "one of the most formidable canon lawyers in America," according to Peters.
The archbishop met with the board, then with the whole parish. Both meetings went badly, with the parish meeting descending into shouts and name-calling by the parishioners.
After numerous attempts to communicate and warnings from the archbishop, including the removal of the pastor and the transference of the Polish ministry to another parish, he finally imposed the canonical penalty of interdict on the board. While rumors of excommunication have circulated, there have been no apparent actions taken toward that drastic penalty yet.
The issue for Archbishop Burke is the pastoral submission every parish should have to the local bishop. The issue according to the St. Stanislaus board is that the archbishop supposedly wants to take control of the parish, sell it, and transfer the money it has in reserve ($1.25 million, according to the board) to archdiocesan coffers in order to pay for sexual abuse cases.
That allegation is categorically denied by the archdiocese. In fact, the archbishop has assured the board in writing that it would not be sold so long as there is a viable parish there.
This case is not necessarily about who owns the parish, as the board of St. Stanislaus contends. It is, rather, over who controls it. In fact, the board rewrote its charter and removed from it all references to being under the authority of the pastor or the archbishop.
When the board members appealed to the Congregation for the Clergy for the return of their pastor, they were rebuffed completely. "Through careful and premeditated revisions of the By-Laws of the civil corporation," the secretary for the Congregation wrote in a cover letter to its decision, "you have attempted to make the role of the pastor impotent, attempted to wrest control from the local Ordinary, and attempted to transform St. Stanislaus Parish into an entity which has no resemblance to a parish as envisioned by either the tradition or current law of the Roman Catholic Church."
