Answer:
There are churches in Canada that currently own property. We could start by asking them to allow local churches the ability to apply for access to that property. It could be a church building or something that is not even directly associated with the church itself.
If a church doesn’t want to sell the property to us, then at a later date the property could become the responsibility of the diocese.
In a way, we should be grateful that this isn’t already the case. When the diocese sold land, it sold the right to use the land. If a congregation chooses to use the land, the diocese still owns the land. This was the general understanding of church property under canon law until the conciliar reforms of the 20th century.
It would be a major change for us to take ownership of church property. There are already precedents of people taking advantage of the current situation and having churches sold to them, like the case of the church in Mississauga. Some of our congregations and dioceses don’t have the resources to buy a church, so the diocese has turned around and sold the property to others.
