Some thoughts about the Loretto Suit

The Bishop of Sacramento and several prominent donors to Loretto High School have instituted a suit against the order that ran Loretto High School in Sacramento (Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary).

Loretto high school has been a Catholic girl's high school in Sacramento for several decades. About 10 years ago the school did a significant fund raising campaign to expand the campus. The Campaign for Loretto, according to the high school's site, raised $8.5 million to double the size of the campus. The money to develop the school came from the Sacramento community or at least the community that once was in Sacramento (undoubtedly some of it came from alums who no longer live in the city). But in recent years enrollment has been falling off.

The IBVM, like many other religious orders has some long term problems. Many orders have a shortage of women who want to take the vows. So their population is aging, in the case of the IBVM relatively rapidly. As the community ages they need additional resources to care for the sisters who are retired. The order maintains a mother house in Wheaton, Illinois.

As the school declined in enrollment and the order needed more support, the order made the decision to close the school and to transfer the funds from selling the campus to the support of these aging sisters. The IBVM example is not a singlular one. The tension between serving the public needs of an order and the private ones of the religious congregation that have offered their lives to the purpose of the religious community is increasing.

But today we find out that the Bishop of Sacramento and a group of prominent donors to the school have sued the order to prevent the order from taking all of the proceeds from the sale of the campus and converting the resources to another purpose (caring for the aging nuns)- regardless of whether the purpose is legitimate.

I happen to agree with the suit. But I hope the Bishop and the supporters consider the dimensions of the arguments they are raising. The Plaintiffs argue that by transferring the funds raised in Sacramento to another legitimate charitable purpose that the order is a) violating the intent of the donors (by not continuing the funds in education) and b) moving them from the local source from which they were donated to a different venue.

If you carry the logic established in their complaint, then the efforts by the mainline protestant denominations to take back resources from dissident congregations would also be brought into question. The mainline protestant denominations have made expansive claims about the relationships between local congregations and the central denominational office. Those should fall by the wayside if the Loretto suit is successful. I expect that any reasonable judge would allocate some portion of the proceeds to the IBVM and another to the plaintiffs based on a standard calculation about contributions to equity.