Church-State relations in Massachusetts

Yesterday, May 25, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts issued its decision in the case of Catherine R. Maffei, individually and as trustee, and others vs. the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Boston. [Download Maffei.mht ] (I see that Rick has just posted a short discussion on this case, too.) The civil courts in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts were asked to consider a number of important legal questions concerning fiduciary and other relationships between parishioners and the Archdiocese of Boston stemming from a parish closing. To say that the Boston Archdiocese is in the vortex of numerous legal issues would be an understatement. However, confronted with declining numbers of worshippers in certain regions of the Archdiocese, Church authorities have had to address difficult questions about the number of parishes needed in particular geographic regions of the Archdiocese necessary to serve the faithful. The Maffei family had donated land and money to the Archdiocese over fifty years ago for the establishment of St. James the Great parish in Wellesley. But with the announced closing of the parish to which they contributed, the Maffeis brought a lawsuit arguing that the spiritual authority of a member of the clergy over members of his faith, without more, gives rise to a cognizable fiduciary relationship, or alternatively a legal relationship of “trust and confidence.” The courts involved in this litigation prudently declined to become involved with a case essentially dealing with the internal affairs of a religious organization and its members. A telling portion of the unanimous opinion of the Supreme Judicial Court states:

A ruling that a Roman Catholic priest, or a member of the clergy of any (or indeed every) religion, owes a fiduciary-confidential relationship to a parishioner that inheres in their shared faith and nothing more is impossible as a matter of law… Such a conclusion would require a civil court to affirm questions of purely spiritual and doctrinal obligation. The ecclesiastical authority of the (Archdiocese and the pastor of the parish) over the parishioners, the ecclesiastical authority of the (Archdiocese and the pastor of the parish), the state of canon law at the date of the property transfer, the knowledge of the canon law that might reasonably be attributed to the (Archdiocese and the pastor of the parish) in 1946, the canonical obligation of (the pastor), if any, to inform parishioners of canonical law—all of these inquiries bearing on resolution of the Maffeis, fiduciary claims would take us far afield of “neutral principles of law.”

In support of the opinion, the court relied on the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and on the failure of the plaintiffs to allege claims cognizable by the civil authority. Some commentators may argue that the court left open a door for further litigation when it addressed the standing issue and stated that only the Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has standing to prosecute claims to enforce a trust’s provisions. Whether the gift of the Maffeis is a trust prosecutable by the Attorney General may be a lingering question for some. It will be interesting to see if Attorney General Martha Coakley pursues the matter. I have previously commented on one aspect of General Coakley’s understanding of constitutional laws and duties [HERE]. However, based on what the court said in the remainder of its opinion regarding the nonexistence of a trust, I think it doubtful that the Attorney General could argue that she would have standing to prosecute the enforcement of a trust since the court essentially concluded that none exists.    RJA sj