How much do you know about Vatican Politics?

Comment: Can the Vatican really take the Sister's properties if it removes women's Canonical Status?   
If Rome's worst way prevails and canonical status is taken from the sisters' congregations, all, some, a few, will lose their properties and the threat of that the Vatican knows is more than enough to give the sisters pause.

The writer mentions Cleveland, St. Louis  and Boston.  The parishes in Cleveland and Boston were under the legal principal of Corporate Sole.  All bishops own the properties of Churches.  In Cleveland, the Vatican examined the parishes in question and told them the Bishop did not vet all of the necessary steps for closing parishes and he still "owns " the properties but according to Canon Law they do not qualify.  The other 39 did.

St. Louis was a totally different problem for the Archbishop.  In the early 1900's, this ethnic parish was set up so that the people owned the property.  This practice was eliminated as new parished arose throughout the US.  The law was on the side of the parishioners and neither the Archbishop, the Vatican or local dissident parishioners could do anything.    At St. Stan's the people are the Corporate Sole....

I have wondered if, because the sisters have their own properties, they can carry on without canonical approval but keep thier properties.  The Sisters that owned the hospital in Arizona did that-they just took the name Catholic off the hospital advertizements and went on with business as usual.  Perhaps this is the politic that Benedict will use as he claims to create a smaller, purer Catholic Church.

Diane Dougherty 4/23/2012



Excerpt From an EDITORIAL
by NATIONAL SURVIVOR ADVOCATES COALITION April 27, 2012

The Good Sisters

To say that the sisters are at a critical crossroad is an understatement.

They know, as we do, that it is their properties more likely than their policies that today are in the bulls eye of Rome. It is no coincidence that the current situation collides with the steeple grab of parishes hitting a major obstacle in Cleveland. Bishop Richard Lennon must back down and re-open the 12 parishes on which he hung closed signs with the bulldozer disregard he honed in Boston as an auxiliary of Cardinal Law's. In St. Louis the Missouri Supreme Court sided with the trusteeship organization of the parish of St. Stanislaus Parish and bluntly told the archbishop that he does not own the $9 million assets of this parish no matter how much excommunicating gets waived about or how much hold he thinks he has over the parishioners souls.

The religious sisters hold and manage valuable properties in the United States and a number of the congregations are involved in the lucrative business of health care both in hospitals and nursing homes.

If Rome's worst way prevails and canonical status is taken from the sisters' congregations, all, some, a few, will lose their properties and the threat of that the Vatican knows is more than enough to give the sisters pause.
Pause enough to heed and heel or pause to seize the moment in true freedom and heal the Church itself only time will tell us.

--- Kristine Ward, Chair, National Survivor Advocates Coalition (NSAC)

KristineWard@hotmail.com, 937-272-0308