The Boston Archdiocese has to make good on its $85 million settlement deal soon, so it had to line up some quick loans to provide the cash as a short-term measure. Eventually, they'll be collecting from insurers, selling property, and doing Heaven knows what else to generate the funds.
The plan involves mortgaging the Seminary property and mortgaging the Cathedral property -- which, since the Cathedral is a parish, seems to break the promise not to use parish properties in the settlement.
My attention was caught by the fact that they're borrowing a few million from the priests' retirement fund and the cemetery endowment. That does look a little improper, doesn't it? Those funds belong, as a matter of justice, to their respective beneficiaries, and if the loans don't get repaid in a timely manner and with a just recompense for the risk (e.g.: a market-based interest rate), we can imagine lawsuits by retired priests or by the estates of the deceased.
A friend points out that, per canon 1295, the deal requires the consent of "those concerned", so one hopes that the retired priests and the cemetery's plotowners were represented by somebody independent. I won't be surprised, however, if that wasn't the case.
Normally, if you use pension funds for anything other than the beneficiaries, you go to jail. I wonder how the archdiocese got around that.
I just dont like these financial lawsuits. I don't have catechism cites or anything, but my gut feeling is they're not right. They do not punish the guilty. They harm the faithful priests and laity. The Church may have some unreasonably extravagant items in its portfolio (I don't know what they are in Boston--except the bishop's residence, I understand), but it should not give up property with spiritual meaning to the diocese and its faithful. yeah, that probably leaves little available for sale or high-risk mortgaging--to be borne by the faithful as wel.