ELEPHANTS IN THE LIVING ROOM

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1 ELEPHANTS IN THE LIVING ROOM Website: elephantsinthelivingroom.org Sr. Kate Kuenstler Canon Law and Catholic Church Closings Sacred Heart Church Detroit, MI FEBRUARY 9, 2013 INTRODUCTION FR. NORM THOMAS Good afternoon, and welcome to Sacred Heart church. Because of the significant number of church closings in Detroit and across the archdiocese, many of you here today have concerns about what s going on, and particularly for your own parish. To help us understand what s going on, we ve invited Sr. Kate Keunstler, a canon lawyer who specializes in dealings with church closings. Her talk today is entitled Canon Law and Catholic Church Closings. Today s presentation is sponsored by the Urban Parish Coalition of the Detroit Catholic Pastoral Alliance. Here are a couple of examples of church closings we re talking about. St. Donald s in Warren, the pastor said he was going to retire when he reached a certain age; and when he retired, the parish closed at no other reason except that he was retiring, and they were not going to replace him. St. Coleman s, Farmington Hills, the pastor there died. Someone else covered for him. They re closing; it s got nothing to do whether they have enough money. So, this is not only to save parishes, which may be smaller or financially weaker, it affects all of us, and, in fact, any parishes that don t seem to be threatened. I want us to hear that over and over again. We need to support each other; we ve got to support each other. And if someone is threatened, we re all threatened. If someone needs help, we need to help. So Sister has a lot to say, and she needs time to say it, until 2:30, and hour and a half. She wants to speak for maybe half that time and leave time for questions. I ll let her speak for herself, because she can do that very well. Thank you for coming. This is very, very important for us who gather here today. It s very important for the Archdiocese of Detroit. You may have heard that the Diocese of Saginaw is going to make itself after Detroit, Together in Faith, and 105 parishes; they re going to cut it down to 56. So, I guess this is the New Evangelization. (Laughter) The New Evangelization calls for less churches. Did you know that? It calls for less churches, according to some people. We believe the opposite. So please give a warm welcome to Sr. Kate Keunstler. (Applause) CANON LAW AND CATHOLIC CHURCH CLOSINGS SR. KATE KUENSTLER Good afternoon. It s really a pleasure to be here with you. I m not sure how much time it will take to say to you, to share with you, but I ll try to talk no more than an hour, or closer to 45 minutes, to allow time for you to have questions. We ve made a contract to have an hour and a half. So those who came prepared to leave after an hour and a half, please feel free to do that; and those who would like to stay and ask more questions, I ll be here to do that. And if there are those who would like to have some private conversations with me, because not all of the questions are appropriate to ask in public. Father (Norm Thomas) says he ll set up a confession over here (laughter) and I m here for you; that s what I m here for. So, I want to provide you with all the opportunities and availability of things. First, I want to say that anyone who knew me after the meeting and asked, What was that rabble rousing with that strange person who was invited to come to Detroit? you can tell them that in Canon Law, canon 1748 says that the laity have a right to seek the help of a canon lawyer. So my being here is sanctioned in the law. So, we ll kind of put that to rest. I just want to share with you that in my studies in Rome, and in the application of the law that I have done since 1993 that s when I received the licentiate in Canon Law; 1995 was the doctorate I have attempted and I do always interpret Canon Law in a strict sense. And that word strict, and its strict interpretation, is that I follow the authentic meaning of what the law intends. A strict interpretation is not conservative, because those who are conservative pick and choose how they are going to apply the law. And justice with mercy gets lost in that. You re experiencing that here in Detroit. And I have not a liberal 1

2 interpretation of the law, because those who interpret the law that way, they abandon the law in its fullness, and therefore also, the loss of justice with mercy. So, to have the most justice with the most mercy is to interpret the law the way it was intended. And we don t interpret Canon Law the way we do Civil Law in the United States. And just know that I have worked for nine bishops in my career; so I know bishops. And I have a great respect for the Church, though I have been disappointed in the last years. Being disappointed and having respect is not counter to one another necessarily. Norm (Fr. Norm Thomas) actually began my talk for me by saying that the bishop has what did you say supreme authority. I also want to say that the diocese is a territory; and the bishop has supreme authority over that territory. Our Church is not a democracy; it is a monarchy; and the bishop is a monarch. That s just the way it is! And it s difficult for those of us in the United States, who are used to democracy, and following and having laws imposed on us in certain ways, to understand how to live out, how to be attentive to, and understand how a Church would do what it does. But that s also only when it s done in the best way, in the strict interpretation. I m finding that the hierarchy are beginning to abuse Canon Law misuse Canon Law, and not use Canon Law. So, that s a whole other story! And those of you who are experiencing pain, and experiencing chaos, you re probably experiencing some of that one, or all, or a few of them. What is a parish? You know, our theology of parish is: it s the people. What is our theology of Church? It s the people. But I m not here to talk to you about theology. I m here to use legal language. And even though we use the same word, the Church, parish, I m going to use it in the legal sense, which is different than the theological sense. A parish is a sub-divided territory of the diocese. That s what a parish is in the law. It s a territory. It is a juridic person in the law. It has a right to exist! It is for the purpose to support the spiritual, the faith lives of the Roman Catholic laity. Canon Law, though, gives the bishop all the power and authority to erect that parish, to suppress that parish, or to alter that parish. When I talk about abusing the law, or misusing the law, I would give an example, that when a bishop says to you, Well, you re the one who decided to merge; you re the one who decided to end the life of your parish; and, therefore, we re going to do that, is skewed; because only the bishop, and always the bishop, who has the authority to erect a parish, suppress a parish, or alter a parish. Altering a parish, this means the merging of parishes into one new juridic person, one new parish. Or cluster parishes. All the parishes retain juridic status, but they share a priest; they share resources. Or to regulate a parish to a mission, which is attached to a parish, but has a different status. It is a bishop who does that; it is not you. And don t let him tell you it s you. Remember, it is the bishop who owns all of the buildings and all of the land within the territory of the diocese. You own nothing! You have been invited to spend your hard earned money to sustain buildings and property that the bishop owns. And don t kid yourself. He owns it; he has the divine right to do with it whatever he wants; except though, the law says that he has to follow certain procedures and he has to meet certain standards. We re going to get to that, because that s what I m finding the bishops are ignoring, that it gets difficult. Okay? It s also with great care that a bishop should alter a parish. He should use prudence! And that s a traditional term in the law of the Church and in the theology of the Church: a bishop having prudence. And what is prudence in making decisions? Prudence requires that a bishop gather all the information that is necessary, that he evaluate the information in order to figure out what is going on, and to make choices. Prudence always has choices. There is not just one thing that s offered; there has to be choices. If there are no choices, then it s not prudence it s something else. It s a mandate, or something else; but it s not prudence. And the bottom line is: it s to protect the spiritual life of the people. In my work these last 6-7 years, I have a question I keep asking: When did the bishops lose sight of their supreme role and purpose to be shepherds of the souls of the people? When did the bishops forget that the very essence and purpose of a parish is for the salvation of souls of the people within? When did the bishops begin to only look at the parishes with dollar signs, to sell in order to put money in their 2

3 hands? I don t know when that happened, but that seems to be the prime motivation of what is happening, what you re experiencing. I don t know, but that s the question I keep asking? And my role, I see, is to challenge the bishops to continue to be that which they are consecrated to be: the shepherd of souls. And I hold their feet to the fire for that. One of the sisters, she s actually from Germany, one of my general leadership, asked me a few weeks ago, Sr. Kate, are you worried that you re going to get black-balled, silenced, or whatever? And I said, I don t know, I said, think about this. I m the one who came forth and says, These are the laws. This is Canon Law. This is how it is. And I m finding bishops who are not doing what Canon Law says they should be doing. And I simply report them to the Vatican. So, why is it that I m the one who is going to be black-balled? But what I want to get into now is the distinction of words. We talk about a parish. The parish is not your church building. And when I talk about Church here, I m not talking about the theological word, Church, which is you, the people of God. I m talking about bricks and mortar. I m talking about a church being sacred space within which liturgy and devotions take place. So that s the distinction. And often, people who have the questions, the angst, and the chaos of what s going on in their diocese, they don t make that distinction; and, therefore, their arguments and rightful arguments their challenges, get muddied between the theology language of Church and the legal language of Church, the law language. So, what I m offering you here is what language to use, and to keep it in that realm, because they re not the same they re not the same. And what is also a reality and you know it better than I is that church building that church building is the emotionally charged, visible image of your feelings of being Catholic. It is your worship space. It is where there are baptisms, weddings, funerals and confirmations and all of the liturgical seasons have been there. And it s where your community of faith gathers together. And your heart is ripped out of you when that church building is gone. Early in my work, right after Katrina, I had some folks call me from New Orleans. And the men had taken their pick-up trucks, and they surrounded the church building to prevent bull dozers from coming in and tearing down the building, the church. And they said, Can you help us? I said, I don t know. What happened? And they had appealed to Rome to save their parish. They had not appealed to Rome to save their church. They muddled the two words. So that s why I make that distinction for you today. Be careful what you ask for. They asked to save their parish. The bishop has the divine right to suppress the parish, or merge, or whatever. They didn t ask to save the church building. So that s why I tell you that; because people equate the church building as the parish, because you can t see a juridic person, the territory. Again, the parish I m using here is the legal word, not the parish as the people of God; the parish as the territory within which this group of people come together to worship in this sacred space called the church building whole different concept there. When a bishop wants to relegate a church building to secular use that s what Canon Law calls it you call it, close a church. Another term might be, deconsecrate a church. Remember, it s consecrated space. So, when it s relegated to secular space, it s relegated to secular use, but not unbecoming crazy language, eh? It means you cannot sell it to a brothel or to a satanic cult. That s the unbecoming use. Make sure that it is being used for something in the culture that is not insulting to the people; such as a church that was sold in another diocese that was sold to a demolition company. And it is now a place to store salvage parts from buildings that are torn down. The church building looks like a church building. They ve removed the stain glass windows; they ve taken out all the things inside the church. It s now secular; and there s a big old sign, Salvage Company blah, blah, blah, Construction Company; and piles of, you know, wood and bricks and other things are now piled inside that church building. And the parishioners are driving by on their regular day, looking at their church building as a store house. That, I do not think, meets the criteria of Canon Law. 3

4 There s a canon, Canon 1222, Paragraph 1 and paragraph 2. Paragraph 1 envisions: it says that a church would need to be damaged or condemned for the bishop to relegate it to secular use and to deconsecrate it. Technically, it should be torn down then because it s condemned; it s not safe for human use, for people to use. But Canon 1222, paragraph 2, says, the bishop is also where a grave reason suggests that a particular church building should no longer be used for divine worship, he may allow it to be used for secular, but not unbecoming purposes. And that s what your bishop is using; and that s what most bishops use. Because the building they are closing, the building they are selling, are still structurally sound. And they have this grave reason I m not sure it s a grave reason because paragraph 2 requires that whatever the grave reason is that the bishop has, it has to be equal to paragraph 1; not the same, but that level of being grave. And I don t know if money is a grave reason. There are other ways and other things that one can do with the church building to keep it going. I don t know! But I think there needs to be a question about that. And if the bishop decides that he is going to deconsecrate a church and sell it, he must consult with the council of priests, the Presbyteral Council. The intent of the law is that he not bring a fiat accompli plan that they simply rubber stamp, though that is the usual way bishops are doing it. The law intends that the Presbyteral Council be part of the ongoing process of conversation and part of the evaluation over time to come to a reasonable understanding go be able to give a legitimate decision to close a church, to relegate a church to secular use. Also, remember, Canon Law says that when there is coercion, when there is force, when there is a reverential fear imposed on those who are making a decision, the decision is illicit. So, when priests are forced to agree with a bishop, there s a problem in River City! I don t think the priests know that. I don t think they ve been told what their rights are either. Also, the bishop must obtain the consent of those who can lawfully say they have a lawful right to this church to stay open. And it s not you laity; I m sorry! In this diocese your bishop is corporate sole, right? Corporate sole means he s it; he s the corporation; he s the president, CEO, treasurer; he s it! He has no one else he needs to ask except the pastor of the parish. And if the pastor says, NO, it s NO! If the pastor is coerced into saying YES, consider what I said about that before. It really is illicit; it s unlawful. And here is the real kicker. The bishop is to make sure that if he closes a church, it will not harm the salvation of souls of the people who used to worship there. Now in this city, and in some parishes, some churches that are being closed, the folks who come to church use public transportation. And the new merged church is far enough away that the public transportation doesn t go there. And if the folks can t get to the church because it s too far away, public transportation doesn t allow it, the salvation of souls is being harmed; and that is an argument. You have to understand that in the Vatican in Rome, I lived there a couple of years, the public transportation is just so wonderful. I mean, you can t go anywhere without a bus or tram to take you there. But I think the city of Detroit is not like that; nor is any other big city in the United States. So the bishops in Rome, they hear about public transportation. They think of Rome; they don t think of Detroit. So you need to get Google maps of the city. You go down and find the best bus maps. You show where the churches are; and you say, These folks can t get there. That s your argument. Because due diligence has not been done by this bishop if in fact he sets up a new merged parish, and the church in that parish nobody can get to who is dependent on public transportation. It s as simple as that. The law is really reasonable. The law itself is reasonable. It s the application of the law that gets unreasonable, or possibly. So, I just wanted to set that stage for you; that s the distinction! Church law also provides opportunity for those claiming to be grieved, to have a grievance, be aggrieved by a decree that the bishop writes. You have a right to take recourse against the decree. You are not disobedient if you take recourse to the Vatican. You are not a bad person! The law affords you the right to take recourse if a decree written by the bishop is harmful to you as the people of God. Has anybody told you that? But you do! That s what I came here to tell you. And that could be subversive in some people s minds, I think. But I always say, The truth will set you free. 4

5 Before you take formal recourse to Rome which I ll get to in a minute you have to write a letter to the archbishop. You have ten days to do that after the decree is issued. It s ten working days: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday; next week: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday; not the weekends. If you do not get your letter to the bishop in ten days, you re dead in the water. The Vatican will not you have no recourse. So you re going to send a letter to the bishop. This happens after the decree is issued. You begin the letter: I, Sr. Kate Kuenstler, at 724 Macon Street, Pawtucket, RI, as an individual, and in my own name, ask you to revoke the decree of February 23, It stars out that way. Since you have the decree in your hands, you will know the reasons why the bishop is closing, merging, whatever he is doing to your church or parish or both. He says what he is doing, and why. Take the whys and say, This is unreasonable to me. This is what I don t agree with. Simple letter to the bishop! Send it registered mail, signature required. Don t use the U.S. Postal Service! Please! Use UPS or FedEx. You have no idea how many bishops claim they never got the letter. They always get it, though, when it s registered, signature required. Hmmm! And it will get you into trouble. The U.S. postal Service will try once, and will only leave a note; and that s got people into trouble. UPS and FedEx will keep going back physically to deliver it. That s what you need, because this is time sensitive. You have ten working days, ten working days, to get this letter to the bishop. One person only needs to write a letter; and one person only needs to sign it. But once that one person signs that first letter, that same person must sign all other correspondence for the rest of the recourse process. If you have a different person sign the letter then on, The Vatican will throw out the case on a technicality. So those are the little things you need to know. And I ll tell you, I learned them through all the mistakes. I have made every mistake there is to know, because there is no handbook on how to do this. Now, you send this letter to the bishop. He has two choices. He can send you a letter back immediately and say, No, I m not going to do it. And we re not going to talk about it if he says he ll change. No, I m not going to change. I like the decree; and we re going to live with it. Then you have fifteen working days to get a similar letter to the Congregation for the Clergy at the Vatican. You don t have to have a full blown recourse document prepared within those fifteen days. You can almost do exactly the same letter you sent to the bishop; and at the end of the letter this little short letter you can say, In the very near future, we will send additional documentation. OK? But you really need to get it in, in fifteen days, at least that simple letter to the Congregation for the Clergy. You re going to be sending it to Cardinal Piacenza, who is the Prefect for the Congregation for the Clergy. You might think that you are supposed to send it to the Prefect for the Congregation for Bishops; but that s not the case. All of these kinds of cases go to the Congregation for the Clergy. In fact, clients of mine in Australia, their papal nuncio - not the U.S. papal nuncio, the Australian papal nuncio tried to deflect the recourse, lied to us, and held the documents so that we would not get them in in fifteen days. We caught on to that and went around him through the Australian Postal Service, which is much better than the U.S. And we complained mightily to the Vatican; and, believe it or not, two months later, this papal nuncio was removed from Australia. So, you never know what you re going to get unless you ask for it. But, what if the bishop doesn t respond? What if what he says is silence? Canon Law says, Silence is NO! The answer is NO! So a bishop not responding to you is always NO. The bishop has thirty days you have to wait thirty days. These are calendar days; these include Saturdays and Sundays; calendar days, not working days. You have to wait thirty days; and then you begin your recourse to Rome. But have all your documentation ready to go. And I would suggest that on the twenty-ninth day you mail it; but date it the thirtieth day. OK? It s just stuff that can happen. And these are all kinds of ways the bishops attempt to confuse you and prevent you from doing that. 5

6 Yesterday, I got an from someone in another part of the state of Michigan whom I m working with. They got the letter back from the bishop their initial letter. He responded. He said, I m going to think about it. I ll get back to you. Yeh! Sure! He s going to think about it for fifteen days; and if they don t send the letter to Rome, they re dead in the water. People in Canada, four parishes in Canada who contacted me, that happened to them. The bishop made sure he thought about it more than fifteen days; and then he said NO. And when they sent their letter to Rome, Rome said they had passed their fifteen days. It s a manipulation of the law. So don t get caught up in that. And also this coalition of parishes, Norm, I m going to give you certain information you can disseminate to the folks on some of this, addresses and things like that, so you will have that written down. OK? So I ll give it to Norm, and he ll give it to you if you ask for it. The other thing is to send it through the papal nuncio s office and use the diplomatic pouch; it s cheaper and you re guaranteed it ll be delivered to Rome. One more thing that I think you need to know. When you send recourse, your recourse, argue everything you want to argue. Present all the yes, buts that you want to. Always be sure to have documentation. If you find out that the bishop has sent his lackey or agency to evaluate certain things in your building and they overstate the amount that it s going to cost to fix something, you can go and get your own person who can estimate what that same action might cost let s say a furnace. It s going to cost $20,000. to replace the furnace; someone else comes in and says it s going to cost $500. for one part. All it needs is a part. You can send that to the Vatican and say, This is not good stewardship by the bishop. I mean, let s call a spade a spade! He s responsible for honest evaluation, not for padding his wallet, or something; or the person he s working with, their wallet. This doesn t sound right to me; does it to you? But you also need to know that if you catch the bishop in a mistake, the Congregation for the Clergy will always write the bishop and say to him, You can fix it. And when you fix it, send it back to the Congregation for the Clergy, and then it goes away. The word is called sanate in other words: sanitation, disinfection, cleaning it up. That s what sanate is. And bishops are always allowed to senate their documents, their decrees, their procedure. Bishops who did not go to the Presbyteral Council, all they need to do is go back to the Presbyteral Council and approve it. They ve sanated the process. This whole process is set up for you to fail, and for the bishop to always win. And I never had the proof that sanation was going on until we got the decrees for Cleveland against Bishop Lennon. And right there in the decree, the Vatican was so upset that Bishop Lennon would not sanate his procedure or his decrees that they wrote it in there in the decree: September 8, 2009, we sent Bishop Lennon a letter suggesting that he, and he never did. I could not believe I was reading it! And then, recently, I ve seen decrees that sanation has been cited by the Congregation for the Clergy. Not to discourage you, but just to let you know what s going on. I just wanted to share with you so that you would know that as a whole is a picture of the procedures that should be going on by the bishop, and the rights you have in response to what the bishop is doing. There s more to say, but we don t have the time today in this forum. But I just wanted to set the stage to let you know there s something that can be done. And on the final note, I always say to my clients, I cannot promise you that we will win, but do you want the Vatican to know the truth of what is happening here? If you want the Vatican to know the truth, this is the way to present the truth to them. And if you would be willing to do that, I will work with you, and we will do that. And you know what? Every once in a while we get a surprise. Parishes are still open; churches are still open; believe it or not! In fact, I did one parish in Cleveland, where the bishop was not going to return the pastor who spoke Hungarian to this Hungarian language church a parish set up specifically for immigrants from Hungary about a hundred years ago. And so I went to bat for them; and I set up a whole argument as to why this bishop was changing this particular parish to a territorial parish. And I tell everybody, Ask for the moon; maybe you ll get something. So, I put in the name of the former pastor, 6

7 and asked for his return as pastor, knowing full well that the Vatican cannot make a bishop assign any priest anywhere. But, guess what? They forced Bishop Lennon to reassign that pastor. I mean, ask for the moon; you never know. So the whole parish was reinstated in total, with their original pastor and as a particular parish that brought in people from seven counties all Hungarian speaking and Hungarian background. It was amazing! Ask for the moon! Don t be afraid to ask. Whether they say NO; OK, they say NO; but if you don t ask, the answer is NO anyway. So, you have a chance. Questions and Answers Question. Is there a place where the procedures to be followed are written down? Response. Archbishop Chaput from Philadelphia did what a bishop is supposed to do; i.e., he published on the website the full process for the people to follow when he began to merge parishes and close churches. That s what a bishop is supposed to do. This website can be found by going googling bishop chaput philadelphia church closings. You will find the letter he wrote on the website with everything in order. Question. Is the ten days to respond to the bishop from the date the parish is to close, or is it the date that the decree is issued? Response. It s the date that the decree is promulgated (published). And if the bishop has hidden it from you it s the date you have discovered it. Question. You mentioned fifteen days the bishop has to answer back. Now he has no incentive to use UPS or FedEx. He could use the U.S. Postal Service and the letter gets lost. And when the 30 days comes around, he says, I sent you the letter. Response. He has to prove that he sent it; and he has to give you the letter. Actually, what it is, if you send him the letter, the ten day letter, and you have not received anything from him, no matter the reason, you have to wait thirty days. You ve got him either way. He sends you a letter and you start fifteen days after that; or he messes with stuff, or whatever; thirty days, then you send it in. Question. The first decree they send, let s say it s the first of the month; and they decide to send it to you by snail mail; and it gets to your place thirty days later. Response. Here s how it should happen. In the diocese the bishop appoints clergy on a regular basis; and he promulgates those changes somewhere, always the same place. It should be, as per Canon Law understanding, the newspaper of the diocese. That s where the clergy assignments are recorded. Is that true here? That s where the decrees should be promulgated. But we know paper and whatever. The Diocese of Peoria, Illinois, last fall, October, issued hundreds of decrees on the same day. These decrees affected every parish in the diocese. And they published every decree in total, full, on their website. That s what the bishop is supposed to do according to the law. You are to see the decree, because you have a right to appeal the decree; and you have a right to know the reasons why he is decreeing the merger, or whatever, because the reasons in the decree are what you argue against in the decree. And it cannot be a private, secret thing between the bishop and the pastor. It must be available to those people and it s you who can be aggrieved, to have harm as you receive harm to your spiritual life. In whatever is in that decree, you have a right to take recourse against that decree. You have a right to see the decree; and that decree is to be published publicly, in a public forum. Because, you know, the bishop is forgetting Canon 8, which is the process of promulgating and making law into practice. And that goes with a decree, because it s a change. And, therefore, it has to be promulgated publicly to be an authoritative, valid decree. You have a right to take recourse; therefore, you have a right to see the decree in total so that you can take recourse against it. If that s not happening, there s a problem. Question. How can we get the minimum support if a bishop decides to sell a building? Follow the money is the rule with the bishop and administration. What happens to the monies that go to the bishop, forwarded to whom, to be used for what purposes? (Where does the money go when things are sold?) 7

8 Response. When any assets, such as a building remember, it belongs to the bishop but when the bishop sells the building, the cash in hand follows the parishioners to their new parish, not to the bishop. But here s the kicker! You look at all of the merges that are happening. Look at them carefully. I m betting that in almost all instances, the smaller building, the parish that has the smallest building, the most debt, is the building that is going to be used; and that parish will be used as the welcoming parish. And what of the other two parishes? You have money in the bank; you have buildings that are on prime land for sale that can get the highest amount of cash, they re the ones that are going to be shut down, so that the most money is brought into from the sale; and it follows to the little, tiny parish, who has debt up the ying-yang, and who is in debt to the bishop. And so this little parish can pay off its debt to the bishop; therefore, the bishop gets the money. Does that sound familiar? That s what s happening. That s what s happening. I suspect that the Archdiocese of Detroit is a hair s breath away from bankruptcy. Am I right? The reason is say that is almost every diocese in the United States is exactly in the same position, which is why the bishops have shifted, in my humble opinion, from the shepherd of souls to be sellers of buildings. Question. I want to follow up on this transfer of money. When the parish is closed, some of the parishioners go o parish X and others go to parish Y. Somehow, the bishop decides to send all the money to parish Y, and parish X, who accepted a significant number of parishioners, gets nothing. Response. Is the parish suppressed or merged? It has to be one or the other, because there are two different answers. If the parish is merged, it doesn t matter where the people go; the money follows the parish they are merged with, even if only two people show up. If the parish is suppressed, and the people are dispersed, and they are told, Go find a parish, each parish is to register these new people and submit the number of people coming into their specific parish. It s prorated: 50% of the assets go to this parish, because 50% of the folks registered there; 10% of the folks registered at parish B, you get 10% of the assets. It s prorated. Question. You mentioned that all correspondence must be handled by one person. Whoever did the initial letter must follow through. How does a parish decide who is going to do this; and what if that person died and another one takes over? Response. I think if someone dies, it s over. So, therefore, you want to have two names. You can have ten, but if you have ten, you must remember to have all ten sign the letter. I would suggest two or three, because that s manageable. You can have a committee of twenty, but only two or three of you sign. And they don t have to write the letter. The letter can be developed by some clever person on the committee who is good at writing, who has collaborated with somebody who is very good at collecting information, and a third group are the ones who sign it. Question. When you re talking about the decree; with Together in Faith literature we received in my parish, I m confused. There are suggestions. Did we receive a decree already? How do we know? Response. A decree is to be on the letterhead of the archdiocese. It is to have the word DECREE at the top. It usually has some pious statement of faith by the bishop. Then it follows with what the bishop is changing, what he is doing, specifically; followed by I consulted with the Presbyteral Council, on such and such a day; followed by, This decree takes effect on., (such and such a day), usually three months later, or four months later, or six months later, sometimes a year later. Then below that is the date that the decree was issued. It has the bishop s signature; and it has the chancellor s signature to make it a legal document. The bishop s signature alone does not make it legal. It must have the chancellor s signature on that document. That is what you re supposed to be allowed to get so that you can have recourse against that decree. And the pastor can stand up and make all kind of announcements at mass; but that s not the decree. And there have been dioceses where that have been done; and a decree was never issued. Question. You said that the bishop must have the consent of the pastor to convert the church to secular use. Could you talk more about that? Is it as simple as that? 8

9 Response. The answer is YES! If the pastor says NO, it doesn t happen. The pastor can stop the bishop from relegating your church building to secular use. Question. What if it s an administrator over the parish? Response. An administrator doesn t have the authority. You don t have a pastor; so the bishop is your pastor. The bishop is the priest, prophet and king of the diocese, the munera of Christ. The priest: spiritual, religious service, liturgy; prophet is the teacher he s the primary teacher; and he is the ruler. That is the bishop. He is the shepherd. The pastors, he delegates that to them. Administrators do not have the same authority. And when there is no priest, no clergy person as head of your parish, there always is the bishop. Therefore the bishop has made the decision to do what he decides to do. Question. If the pastor approves the sale of the church building for secular use, and the associate pastor, if there is one, can he object to the sale? Response. The answer is NO. The pastor! The pastor! The pastor! Question. What happens to art work in a church when the church building is sold? Can they be sold? Response. The art work, really, should go to another church. The candles should go to another church missionary church, poor church, somewhere in Appalachia, or wherever. It should go to another Catholic church. This really should not be sold. These are sacred objects; and there are some serious moral issues, seriously. In fact, there s a whole book of Canon Law on temporal goods, about the selling of church artistry, pieces of church art. It should go with the parishioners to the new church. Question. What if the archbishop decides to suppress a parish? That considered alienation of property. Doesn t he have to follow something under the Canon Law of extraordinary administration, which would mean that he has to get more approval than just the Presbyteral Council? He has to go to the Finance Council and to the College of Consulters, which means he is not making the decision on his own. He s getting the consent of those two areas. He s probably assigning people to those jobs. So he has to get some additional consent, not just consultation. Response. Of course, that s what the law says. But there s a disconnect, which you are experiencing. The United States Council of Catholic Bishops and the Vatican have set some minimal standards how much a bishop can alienate without permission from the Vatican. It s interesting that in a diocese far, far away, the bishop only estimates things within three dollars of the maximum amount. So he never has to go to the Vatican to get permission to alienate property, or whatever he is alienating. The law is what it is; the rest of the story maybe something else! The maximum is $5 million or $10 million. They raised it recently, so that the bishops didn t have to go to the Vatican so often. Money talks and money walks. Question. What about auxiliary bishops? What authority do they have? Response. Only the archbishop (bishop) has complete authority, no matter how many auxiliary bishops there are. Question. You mentioned that many diocese in the United States are on the verge of bankruptcy. Are there any studies going on applying to bankruptcy, entering into chapter 7, might be at least a partial resolution to what you re presenting? There seems to be an eternal conflict going on here; and there doesn t seem to be much hope for resolution. Response. You know more about bankruptcy than I do. Isn t it true that when an entity files for bankruptcy, the financials are made public to certain professional folks, who then manage them? Can you imagine a monarch letting that happen? That s why it doesn t work. And that s why the bishops fight tooth and nail, because they do not want to reveal their finances to anyone. There s no transparency; and as a monarch separation of church and state, they hold to that. So, bankruptcy is not the answer. I read today that Milwaukee is really up the creek with their bankruptcy thing right now. And God knows what s going to happen, because they are defaulting on what the bankruptcy court people told them to do. I mean, it s 9

10 just a mess! But no bishop. in fact, the Vatican does not want bankruptcy; and the bishops do not want the financials to be made public. They don t want anybody else to control the rightful role of the bishop to manage his own money. That s the bottom line. It s not a solution to a monarchy. Question. What actions can a parish have if they cannot find the decree of closure? Response. Then you write a white paper, which I did last summer, for the diocese where the bishop refused to write a decree. And I laid it out. Is the bishop in question here a canon lawyer? Because the bishop I dealt with in this diocese was a canon lawyer. So, in the letter to Archbishop (Carlo Maria) Vigano, the papal nuncio in Washington D.C., and the letter to Cardinal Piacenza at the Vatican, Congregation for the Clergy, I threatened the Canon Law bishop with reporting him to the standing ethics committee of the Canon Law Society of America for his misuse of Canon Law as a canon lawyer. Seven days later that decree was sent to the people. Archbishop Vigano got on the phone, and that decree was in our possession. So, if it s been written, you do the same thing. You send it to Vigano complaining that the decree has not been issued; therefore, our rights are not being upheld; and, therefore, we are not able to take recourse against the decree. Simple as that! And complain that the decrees are not being made public so recourse can be made, because you have a right to take recourse. Question. There is some speculation that Archbishop Vigneron may be getting a promotion to Rome and we would have a new archbishop. What happens in the interim when one bishop is leaving and another bishop is installed? Response. Normally, the consulters take over the administration of the diocese, and nothing new takes place, except there s one exception the marriage tribunal can issue valid annulments. The consulters cannot issue decrees; they cannot buy or sell anything. That s what the law says. I only say what the law says. Question. If in a given territorial parish there are very few Catholics living in that territory, but others from outside the territory come in to worship, if we are closed, what recourse do we have? Response. Those coming from outside the territory have no say. They belong to the territory where they live. If the numbers are large, that may be part of the problem. But that s the answer. I don t always give answers that are nice, that are expected. Transcribed by Tom Kyle