Greg Daly
Parishes and dioceses may not be able to divest schools without arranging for alternative forms of religious instruction, The Irish Catholic understands.
The vast majority of Irish primary schools are under religious patronage, and although the Department of Education has expressed a wish to see half of the country’s Church-run schools divested from Church control by 2030, so far just 10 schools have been handed over. Local opposition is a key factor to the slow transfer rate, according to Archbishop Diarmuid Martin.
However, as these schools are not merely Church-run but Church-owned, any transfers must be in accord with Church laws around the ‘alienation of temporal goods’, canon lawyers have said.
“Canonically it would be a parish decision to alienate an asset,” one canon lawyer told The Irish Catholic, “but a proviso to that is that parishes are subject to diocesan bishops.”
“No parish can alienate school property without permission, particularly if it might compromise the ability to teach the faith,” he continued, adding that any monies received from the divestment of Church-owned schools should be reinvested in religious instruction. “The bishops have got a responsibility to teach,” he said.
Under canon law, parishes are juridical persons and parish priests can – with the advice of their finance committees – sell, lease, or otherwise dispose without special permission of assets valued at less than a ‘minimum value’ set by the Irish Bishops’ Conference in 1984, now estimated to be about €350,000.
Control
Retaining ownership of schools while relinquishing control of them would still constitute alienation, however, and would not offer a loophole to facilitate divestment, the canon lawyer added.
“Losing control of an asset is an alienation,” he said, explaining that even renting a property could count as such.
Properties worth more than an agreed maximum amount would, furthermore, need permission from the Vatican before being transferred, another canon lawyer explained. In 1984 the Irish Bishops’ Conference agreed that “the maximum sum for alienation beyond which permission of the Holy See is required was set at £1 million sterling”, with this being increased in accordance with the Cost of Living index, he said. As of 2016 that figure was estimated as worth approximately €3.5 million.
“Plenty of schools would be valued at more than the maximum,” the canonist said.