ABSTRACT
While lay influence in the administration of church temporalities was not unknown to the Roman Catholic Church, the trustee movement in the United States allowed for the more significant practice of lay ownership and control over church property. Lay trustees fully understood the powers they possessed under the law of incorporation—for instance, legal title to parish property. At Holy Trinity the trustees threatened the dismissed Peter Helbron with a lawsuit if he did not return certain items taken from the church. John Carroll understood all too well the influence which the Protestant tradition of lay control exerted upon Catholic lay trustees. Political conditions in the United States were also responsible for the independence which the trustees showed toward their ecclesiastical superiors. The trustees of Holy Trinity complained to Rome that the papal brief establishing the diocese of Baltimore granted such full powers to Carroll that he could act as sole and independent judge over the Catholics in the United States.
