Who owns parish property?

God owns parish property, and parishes property exists so that there is a place from which God's work can be carried out. When I donate to the Church, I expect the money to be used to do God's work, not to make the institution more powerful by making it wealthier. There should be a limit on how much money is directed toward opulence, and excess money should be directed toward needier parishes in poorer communities that typically have greater social needs and fewer resources.

The “moral owners” of the parish are the parish members. This follows John Carver’s Policy Governance theory for nonprofits. Regardless of who the trustees are or how they are chosen, their trust, i.e. their moral obligation is to act on behalf of the “moral owners” of the parish. This is the same as when in local government a public park commission board is appointed by some political entity. Their trust obligation is to the citizens of the geographic area who are the moral owners of the parks not to their appointing authority.

Cf. http://www.carvergovernance.com/pg-np.htm
For more information.

Jack Rakosky
Votfcleveland.org

John E.McGovern

The more important question ought to be: "Who should own parish property." In our diocese where it was recently discovered that two priests (with some degree of undercover lay worker knowledge and collusion) absconded, across a period of nearly 20 years, with several million dollars of church funds. The diocese initially was not going to prosecute until laity kept asking the bishop "Are you going to help us get our money back? Notice the use of OUR money. They should also be able to say "our property." The trustees of any parish along with the Bishop should be the owners of the property - not the "corporation sole" as it is currently the law.

Who holds the deed to all parish property? Who is on every parish council and board of directors ?

I believe that the question was not a well worded question. But it can serve as the beginning of a discussion. My understanding is that for Church's purposes of accomodating to US law, all dioceses are corporations and maybe most as "Corporation Sole, Diocese Of" This means that everything is technically owned by whoever is the Bishop. Then all titles are changed when another bishop is appointed. Canon Law, however, speaks differently about parishes. But Canon Law has no standing in the United States(as the bishops of Portland and Seattle found out).

This whole issue comes about because of the bankrupcy cases and bishops trying to salvage the financial difficulties in which they find themselves (created mostly because of their own ineptitude).

For that reason, this question needs to be addressed apart from the threat of bankrupcy and church closings, but also with a clear understanding of the difficulties which came about under many Protestant situations with trustees.
Somewhere in all this, the question of justice needs to be included.

It is my understanding that property is owned by the "Episcopal Corporation", whatever that is. The essential question would be, who has the authority to dispose of property. Legal ownership and de facto ownership might therefore be the same or different. Can the Bishop unilateraly sign off as the "Episcopal Corporation"?

In other words, if the "Church" decided to do as Christ demanded of his followers to go sell what they have (and follow Him), who and how would it be done?

In most diocese, if not all, the property is vested in the bishop. This is because of the various 19th century problems where the trustees actually thought that the people owned it because they built the church. Even if one had no historical background, recent news events would make this clear since bishops all over the nation are continuously closing parishes. They could not do this so easily if the property was not vested in them. I say more power to the parishioners!

A more appropriate question would be: Who should own the property?