Who owns my parish?

The question of parish ownership is often asked when parishes are merged or closed. Lately it has acquired an added poignancy due to sexual abuse damage awards and bankruptcy filings by dioceses. The answer to the question is complex, since it involves issues of pastoral care, canon law, and civil law.

First, just what is a parish? The Code of Canon Law in canon 515 describes a parish as "a certain community of the Christian faithful ... whose pastoral care is entrusted to a pastor ... under the authority of the diocesan bishop." Parishes are less administrative units of a diocese than communities of members of the Body of Christ created for the support and encouragement of the members' apostolic life.

In canon law a parish possesses "juridic personality," meaning that it has certain rights and obligations. Among these is the ability to acquire assets and liabilities in support of the spiritual life and ministry of parish members. When parishes are merged, their assets and debts must follow their members. Only in the extremely rare case when a certain community of the faithful no longer exists or if no pastoral activity has taken place for 100 years do parish assets go to the diocese.

While the norms of canon law seem clear, there is still civil law to consider. Throughout the history of this country, dioceses and parishes have been organized under civil law in a variety of ways. In the 1700s and 1800s, individual parishes were often organized as separate civil corporations directed by a board of trustees. Each parish held legal title to its property. This civil parish form corresponds well with current canon law.

During the 19th century, however, local and national church councils held in Baltimore eventually decreed that all church property located in a diocese belongs to the diocese. Dioceses began to incorporate under a civil law structure known as a "corporation sole"--a legal entity that consists of a single (sole) incorporated office occupied over time by a succession of individuals, in the case of a diocese, the bishop. Legal title to all church property was held by the corporation sole.

In 1911, in response to requests for advice as to which form was better, the Vatican recommended the parish corporation model as preferable for use in the United States, with the parish's board of trustees being made up of the bishop, the vicar general, the pastor, and two lay trustees. Today some form of this parish corporation structure is used in 10 states, with the corporation sole model used in the majority of states and dioceses.

What all of this means is that while under canon law, a parish's assets and liabilities generally belong to the parish and not to the diocese, a civil court may not see things that way when a diocese organized as a corporation sole finds itself in court, despite the bishop's claim that, according to canon law, he does not "own" the parishes.

In any event, parish mergers, diocesan bankruptcy filings, and sexual abuse damages are prodding us to see how dioceses and parishes can best organize themselves under civil law in order to support the Christian witness of a parish's members, which is, after all, a parish's canonical purpose.

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DAVID LYSIK, who teaches in the religious studies department at DePaul University in Chicago.