{"id":6891,"date":"2006-06-28T23:51:17","date_gmt":"2006-06-28T23:51:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/well-sue.html"},"modified":"2006-06-28T23:51:17","modified_gmt":"2006-06-28T23:51:17","slug":"well-sue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/well-sue.html","title":{"rendered":"We’ll sue"},"content":{"rendered":"

Parishioners of closing parish sue..<\/a><\/p>\n

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Members of the closed St. James Catholic Church, whose 10-month, around-the-clock prayer vigil was unceremoniously halted by the Toledo diocese in March, have filed a lawsuit against the diocese and Bishop Leonard Blair seeking control of their former parish\u2019s property and assets.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur first goal in the suit is to have everything reopened and returned to the previous status,\u201d parishioner Steve Johnson said yesterday. \u201cBarring that, we want to get the building and the property that we and our ancestors have put our time, effort, and money into.\u201d<\/p>\n

The suit, filed in Seneca County Common Pleas Court, claims the diocese has \u201cunlawfully deprived the plaintiffs of the right to access and worship in the church facility.\u201d<\/p>\n

It asks the court to declare that Bishop Blair was acting as a trustee of the church property and its parish account and that parishioners were the true owners.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are only looking at civil law, not church law,\u201d Mr. Johnson said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Who knows how things were handled and how the process was felt on the closing end, but when you read, as you do at the end of this piece, that a group of parishioners have continued to meet in a Methodist church for weekly prayers services, and have a priest of the Polish National Church come say Mass for them once a month…you wonder. Some parish closings are inevitable. A few might be unjust. But this kind of sad obsession bespeaks shaky catechesis and unintentionally explains a lot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Parishioners of closing parish sue.. Members of the closed St. James Catholic Church, whose 10-month, around-the-clock prayer vigil was unceremoniously halted by the Toledo diocese in March, have filed a lawsuit against the diocese and Bishop Leonard Blair seeking control of their former parish\u2019s property and assets. \u201cOur first goal in the suit is to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nWe'll sue - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/well-sue.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"We'll sue - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Parishioners of closing parish sue.. Members of the closed St. James Catholic Church, whose 10-month, around-the-clock prayer vigil was unceremoniously halted by the Toledo diocese in March, have filed a lawsuit against the diocese and Bishop Leonard Blair seeking control of their former parish\u2019s property and assets. \u201cOur first goal in the suit is to…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/well-sue.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-06-28T23:51:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"We'll sue - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/well-sue.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"We'll sue - Via Media","og_description":"Parishioners of closing parish sue.. Members of the closed St. James Catholic Church, whose 10-month, around-the-clock prayer vigil was unceremoniously halted by the Toledo diocese in March, have filed a lawsuit against the diocese and Bishop Leonard Blair seeking control of their former parish\u2019s property and assets. \u201cOur first goal in the suit is to…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/well-sue.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-06-28T23:51:17+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/well-sue.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/well-sue.html","name":"We'll sue - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-06-28T23:51:17+00:00","dateModified":"2006-06-28T23:51:17+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/well-sue.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/well-sue.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/well-sue.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"We’ll sue"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6891\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}