In Salado v. Roman Catholic Diocese of El Paso, (TX App, Aug. 2, 2023), a Texas state appellate court held that the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine prevents the court from deciding whether funds raised by parishioners to build a new church building had been wrongfully misappropriated by the diocese. Parishioners had raised some $1.4 million, but the bishop decided that a new church should not be built and instead merged the parish with another one and transferred the funds to the new merged parish. The court said in part:
To resolve the dispute of whether the funds raised by the Parishioners on behalf of Sant Jose Parish were misappropriated when they transferred to the new Saint John Paul II Parish would require this Court to interpret Cannon Law and policies of the Roman Catholic Church regarding the rights and authority of bishops regarding the patrimony of a parish. Churches have a fundamental right “to decide for themselves, free from state interference, matters of church government[.]”
