Oregon archbishop says no one has authority to seize parishes

[otm]

Ortho:

Courts have no rquirement to pick between canon law and state law. They referenced canon law to determine the internal workings of the organization. There was no civil law to reveal that. They used civil law to determine property ownership since property has titles.

that is in part where you are wrong. If they used Canon law to, as you put it, determine the inner workings of the organization(which is what the Archbishop ws trying to get them to do), then they should be bound by the findings, which were that the Church treated the property of the parishes as held in trust. What they did not do was what you said they did - that is, they did not determine the innder workings of the organization.

 

[Rand_Al_Thor]

estesbob:

He can assert all he wants-when it goes to court he will lose. its well settled law

Peace be with you!

Ok, I live in Portland, I work at a law firm, and I know Archbishop Vlazny. At the firm I work at we have trust accounts for some of the clients. We hold their money in our bank accounts but it still belongs to them. Understand? The money that they give us (just the other day I entered a check for $10,000 into the account books that a client had written one of the attorneys to put into a trust account) does not belong to the firm. This is not “well settled law”. I also have a friend who works for one of the diocesan schools. He told me that he got a chance to look over some of the papers that their administrators were taking to court and it was BLATENTLY obvious that the archdiocese does not own the parishes.

In Christ,
Rand

 

[Walt_Oliver]

Please do not post any more responses to Ortho’s posts. I am leaving them in the thread for continuity but think we should move on to a more charitable discussion of the topic at hand. Any new post in response to his will be deleted. Thank you for your cooperation.

Walt

 

[estesbob]

rlg94086:

What I recall from when I lived in Oregon is that the parishes take a loan from the Archdiocese in order to build their church. It is paid back with interest.
I think the Archbishop is right that the assets should not be seized.

Having been involved in buiding Church’s in 4 different dioceses (not Oregin howver) the usal procedure is you do one of two thngs:

1. You borrow money from the Dioceses.
2. You arrange a loan with a bank and the Dioces takes the loan and you make the payment. in most Dioceses the Pastor is required to co-sign the note but it is symbolic at best.

 

[bellesjoy]

Thanks to otm and Rand Al’Thor for very helpful and informative posts. You have elquently expressed what I could not.

I have emailed Archbishop Vlazny to let him know that we on the eastern side of the state are praying for him and for all those injured by these scandals. He is a good man.

 

[JOHNYJ]

Catholics have worked long and hard to be regarded as good Americans. I remember when JFK was running for President the garbage we were accused of.I do not intend to go backwards . This is the United States of America and Catholics,bishops included are under its laws!
The archbishop surrendered authority to the bankruptcy court and they will decide what the archdiocese owns,under American Law !

 

[otm]

JOHNYJ:

Catholics have worked long and hard to be regarded as good Americans. I remember when JFK was running for President the garbage we were accused of.I do not intend to go backwards . This is the United States of America and Catholics,bishops included are under its laws!
The archbishop surrendered authority to the bankruptcy court and they will decide what the archdiocese owns,under American Law !

I do not agree that anyone surrendered to the bankruptcy court; they were essentially forced to file bankruptcy in order to establish some sense of order to the chaos that the lawsuits were creating.

Had they not done so, they would potentially have been faced with the very real prospect of losing two very large lawsuits back to back before dozens of other claimants could have been heard.

There is no question that Ameican law will decide the ownership of the Archdiocesan property. That was going to happen anyway; the bankruptcy simply allowed all calimants to bring their case at one time and place against a limited amount of assets.

You can bet your last dollar that the issue would have been decided anyway, but in a fashion that would have denied any form of justice to the other claimants, and would most likely have resulted in a number of decisions with differing determinations of what assets could be seized; and seized they would have been.

 

[Rand_Al_Thor]

JOHNYJ:

Catholics have worked long and hard to be regarded as good Americans. I remember when JFK was running for President the garbage we were accused of.I do not intend to go backwards . This is the United States of America and Catholics,bishops included are under its laws!
The archbishop surrendered authority to the bankruptcy court and they will decide what the archdiocese owns,under American Law !

Peace be with you!

That’s the thing, though–the law is being unfairly twisted in this case. The law states, quite clearly in fact, that money or property held in trust for someone else cannot be liquidated to pay out claims in a lawsuit. See my earlier post for the info on trust accounts. I deal with these types of accounts at work, which is at a law firm.

I wonder, if Planned Parenthood held property in trust for someone else and filed for bankrupcy, would they be forced to sell of those properties? I think not. The court would rule in their favor and if it didn’t, the ACLU would jump on board and scream that it was illegal to make them do it. But it’s a different story when we’re dealing with the Catholic Church…

In Christ,
Rand

 

[bellesjoy]

by JohnnyJ: Catholics have worked long and hard to be regarded as good Americans. I remember when JFK was running for President the garbage we were accused of.I do not intend to go backwards . This is the United States of America and Catholics,bishops included are under its laws!
The archbishop surrendered authority to the bankruptcy court and they will decide what the archdiocese owns,under American Law !

You need to read Bishop Vlazny’s statement again. He said no one in the Archdiocese has the authority to hand over the parish churches or schools. He better than any of us knows what the courts can do. He also knows what his obligations are.

I remember very well the atmosphere at the time of JFK’s election. To infer that standing for fairness in dealing with the parishes in the Portland Archdiocese might make us look bad is foolish.

Bishop Vlazny has acted as any good Catholic should. He acted to protect those who have not yet had their day in court from being stripped of an award due to the magnitude of the first two claims and he is defending the rights the innocent in his diocese.

Because this is the United States of America, Catholics, including Bishops, are allowed to defend themselves and their diocese in court. This matter will be in the courts for some time to come. Pray for a fair outcome for all involved.