Why don’t they just buy it from the Archdioces?
The Archdiocese won’t sell it to them. Besides— they’ve already bought it once. This kind of battle rages all over the country.
“We paid for this church,” said Maryellen Rogers, a parishioner at St. Francis X. Cabrini in Scituate. “We built it. The archdiocese took out a mortgage in the 1970s we paid off. And we believe we are the rightful owners of this church.”
In our archdiocese, the Archbishop has personal title to all the land. He owns it outright. If he decides to sell it to a third party, it is no longer a church. There was no mention in the article about the population of the parish. If its a thriving parish, supporting their own obligations and paying the regular tithe to the diocese, then they would probably be left alone or only some of the land sold off. Why do they need 30 acres? There’s more to this story. But basically, to answer your question, they cannot buy it.