Defiant St. Louis Church Wins Archdiocese Suit

By Malcolm Gay
New York Times
March 17, 2012

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/us/defiant-st-louis-church-wins-archdiocese-suit.html?_r=1

ST. LOUIS — A decadelong dispute between the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Louis and a local Polish parish has taken a big step forward with a state judge's ruling that the parish has rightful control of its assets and property.

In a 50-page decision, the judge, Bryan Hettenbach of St. Louis Circuit Court, sided with St. Stanislaus Kostka Church, finding that the archdiocese had no legitimate ownership claim on the parish.

"The archbishop may own the souls of wayward St. Stanislaus parishioners, but the St. Stanislaus Parish Corporation owns its own property," Judge Hettenbach wrote in a decision he delivered last week that sided with the parish on all but two of the case's 12 questions.

The ruling came after nearly four years of litigation in which the archdiocese sued the St. Stanislaus Parish Corporation for control.

"We got really the best," said the Rev. Marek Bozek, 37, who took to Facebook and Twitter upon hearing the news. "The archdiocese was asking for a drastic change to the status quo. But we were asking that the status quo be upheld and be made legal for perpetuity. There is not one change in our status quo as a result of the ruling. The change is that it's been vindicated and validated."

Within hours of the ruling, Archbishop Robert J. Carlson issued a statement, saying Judge Hettenbach had disregarded "ecclesiastical determinations" and promising to appeal the decision "all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary."

Archbishop Carlson declined an interview request.

Richard Scherrer, a lawyer for St. Stanislaus, said in an e-mail: "David has beaten Goliath. With this ruling behind us, we hope the archdiocese will work to build a respectful relationship rather than force the parties to continue the litigation."

The dispute lies over a rare 19th-century agreement that allowed the archdiocese to appoint the church's lay board and priests, but gave the congregation ownership of its property and assets. That relationship, which held for more than a century, began to come apart in 2003, when the archdiocese moved to integrate the congregation's assets (then estimated at $8 million) into an archdiocese-managed trust.

St. Stanislaus refused, and Raymond L. Burke, then the archbishop, removed the congregation's archdiocesan priests, effectively forcing parishioners to take communion at another parish or go without.

The parish continued to function, however, and as archdiocesan priests led surreptitious Masses, St. Stanislaus defied the archbishop by hiring Mr. Bozek, who led his first Mass during a Christmas Eve service in 2005. The move prompted Archbishop Burke, who is now a cardinal and the prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the church's highest court, to declare that the church was in "schism," a designation that led to the excommunication of Mr. Bozek and the church's lay board.

"We're walking on clouds right now," said Mr. Bozek, who led a celebratory service on Thursday evening that featured readings from Exodus, which gives an account of Jews leaving Egypt for the Promised Land. "The divine finger was in all of this, so it's a natural reaction to say: 'Let's pray. Let's give thanks to God for all of this.' "