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  Quick Settlement Would Be Merciful
Logic Suggests the Archdiocese of Portland Owns Parish Assets

The Oregonian [Oregon]
December 11, 2005

I t's now up to U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Elizabeth Perris to decide whether the Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon owns the 124 parishes it encompasses. Many Oregonians, no doubt including some of the archdiocese's 400,000 parishioners, have been surprised to learn the archdiocese's ownership is in question.

Parish priests, after all, answer to the archbishop and, in most cases, either he or the archdiocese is listed on real estate deeds. And yet each parish does its own fundraising and has its own unique history. For generations of devoted parishioners, certainly, each parish is irreplaceable.

Under church law, the archdiocese argues that each parish holds its property independently. One way or the other, we don't envy Judge Perris this painful decision, which treats churches merely as real estate. Yet in filing for bankruptcy last year, that's exactly what the archdiocese sought, of course: a businesslike treatment and sorting of its assets. The judge's ruling will determine whether an estimated half-billion dollars in parish properties and investments are available if needed to pay damage suits filed by sex-abuse victims.

Even as Perris ponders her ruling (she could also order a trial on the ownership issue), settlement talks between the archdiocese and victims are continuing. For everyone involved, except perhaps attorneys, a quick settlement would be the most merciful outcome.

Primary victims in the abuse scandal rightfully have first claim on our sympathy because they have suffered depression, despair, alcoholism and loss of faith -- some have even committed suicide -- thanks to the betrayal of priests. By one estimate, prepared by the John Jay College of Criminal Law at the request of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 4,392 members of the clergy, or about 4 percent of all who served between 1950 and 2002, have been accused of abuse.

Bad as that sounds, victims' representatives argue that it's a dramatic undercount of what actually took place. And the priests' betrayal has also hurt an admittedly distant secondary class of victims, the church's devout parishioners. A third group has been badly hurt, as well: the poor, hungry and homeless served by the church.

In Spokane, some parishioners have stopped making donations because they're so disillusioned with escalating legal fees in their diocese's filing for bankruptcy, triggered by sexual abuse claims. Parishioners feel they are "locked in lawyer hell," as one recently told Spokane's Spokesman-Review. Last summer, a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge ruled that parish churches, schools and cemeteries belong to the Spokane diocese.

That ruling doesn't affect Portland. Yet other examples around the nation, and in Newfoundland, where the church hierarchy has treated parish property as its to sell, have sparked complaints that the hierarchy is trying to have it both ways.

No one wants to see parishes sold off, and we hope it will never come to that here. This legal case is a complicated mosaic that could splinter off in different directions. But, at least in terms of common sense, the logic of archdiocese ownership is painfully clear.