Thinking Out Loud

December 1, 2011

Vatican Approves Crystal Cathedral Purchase

This is the Roman Catholic Church in Garden Grove which would effectively be swapping properties with the Crystal Cathedral over the next three years. More details, interior picture — click here.

The Pope has rubber-stamped the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange County’s purchase of the bankrupt Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California.  Again, the OC Register leads the way with coverage of this story:

GARDEN GROVE – The Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange received the necessary approval this week from the Vatican to proceed with its purchase of the Crystal Cathedral at $57.5 million, officials said Wednesday.

The Pope’s approval, which came on Monday, is the last hurdle the diocese had to clear before sealing the deal, said Monsignor Douglas Cook, the diocese’s Canon Law expert and rector of Holy Family Cathedral in Orange.

The Vatican’s order giving its blessing to the diocese is known as a “nihil obstat” in Latin, which means “nothing stands in the way.”…

Monsignor Cook said the process to get the Vatican’s approval was long and complex. The cathedral’s purchase had to be voted on by two advisory committees under the Bishop of Orange.

“They voted on it several times because the price kept changing,” he said.

The diocese then sent over a thick dossier detailing its financial plan to purchase the Crystal Cathedral among other things, Cook said.

“The Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy Office then came back to us with some questions they had,” he said. “We sent the answers and shortly thereafter, received the approval.”

Cook said these procedures are in place to make sure there are checks and balances at all levels.

“The Vatican’s role is basically to make sure that we have thought of everything – the rationale and the financial plan – before we undertake something of this magnitude,” he said…

Continue reading at OC Register



1 Comment »

  1. Too bad the Vatican wouldn’t spend more time ending the abuse of young boys cover-up and turfing Benedict for his part in this travesty. Purchasing the Glass Castle (sic) should have been way down on the priority list.

    Oops, I can’t believe I wrote that but I had to get it off my chest. Maybe my good friend Paul will edit my comment. That’s OK.

    Keep up the great work on the blog, Paul. I can’t wait to read it…every day.

    Comment by David Fisher — December 1, 2011 @ 5:00 pm

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Your Response (Value-Added Comments Only)


You are commenting using your account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Google+ photo


Connecting to %s

Blog at

%d bloggers like this: