UNITED KINGDOM
Catholic Herald
By Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith on Friday, 13 July 2012
The decision of the Court of Appeal in the case concerning the Diocese of Portsmouth, which has been reported in the Catholic Herald but not received any attention that I have noticed elsewhere, is extremely interesting.
The court has upheld the ruling that the diocese is liable for the action of one of its priests, on the grounds that the relationship between priest and bishop is close enough to employer/employee for this to be the case.
Now this seems to be a case mainly about compensation for the victims of child abuse, and so it is. I would like to leave that part of it aside, and consider something that may be overlooked, but may be of great importance both for the Church and for all other voluntary organisations.
Until now, as far as I understand it, priests volunteer to serve in various offices at the invitation of the bishop or religious superior. If the bishop and the priest are now to be considered in an employer/employee relationship, then this represents an innovation. Employees can sue their employers, and vice versa; the relationship between employees and employers is governed by a vast corpus of case and statute law. At present the relationship between bishop and priest is governed by canon law, the only force of which is in the will of those who adhere to it. A priest can, but rarely does, initiate a canonical process against his bishop, and vice versa; but if we are employees, then this opens up a whole new range of possibilities, and potentially, a considerable new territory for litigation.
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