This NY Times article reports on the recent chapter 11 bankruptcy filing of the Archdiocese of Portland, which is the first archdiocese in the nation to file for bankruptcy protection because of the large sums that it owes as a result of sexual-abuse claims.
The bankruptcy filing raises an interesting legal issue: For purposes of federal bankruptcy law, are the assets of a Roman Catholic parish assets of the diocese or of the individual parishes? If all parish assets are counted as assets of the diocese, then the diocese’s assets would be valued at about half a billion, more than enough to pay the $25 million or so in pending sexual abuse claims. On the other hand, if the diocese’s assets do not include those of the individual parishes, then the diocese’s bankrupcy estate would be valued at a much more modest $50 million, which would make full payment of sexual abuse claims more problematic. The argument that the assets belong to parishes is based on church law that is much older than United States law. However, the only actual corporate entity is the diocese, which the bishop manages and represents.
University of San Diego Law Professor Thomas Smith — who runs a very good blawg called The Right Coast — observes that the diocese’s bankruptcy filing is the result of the “political economy of child abuse:”

This all relates to what you might call the political economy of child abuse. A principal reason why the Catholic Church is singled out as a hotbed of child abuse, when there is no good reason to think priests abuse children any more frequently than Protestant pastors, Mormon bishops or Communist summer camp commisars, is that the organization of the Church makes it a much more desirable target for plaintiffs’ lawyers. If each parish were a separate corporation, the course of this scandal would have run very differently. Mysteriously, shallow pockets are must less prone to the evils policed by lawyers.

My sense is that the bankruptcy courts will look for guidance from prior non-bankruptcy liquidations of parishes in addressing the legal issue that Professor Smith raises.