Mediators urge more communication

Stop taking potshots at each other in the press. Choose a neutral third party both sides can trust. Start talking. And realize that ultimately you both may have the same goal.

That's the advice that national specialists in mediation and negotiation have for the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston and groups of angry lay people who are in a tense standoff over planned church closings, including sit-ins through which parishioners in Weymouth and Sudbury aim to prevent their churches from being shuttered and sold.

The increasingly intractable dispute has fascinated mediation specialists, who say it could be used as a textbook study of conflict resolution because of the high stakes involved and because of the deep distrust and psychological baggage that the two sides bring to the table.

But that does not mean that the differences cannot be overcome, said Robert Mnookin, a professor at Harvard Law School who is chairman of the university's Program on Negotiation.

"In the real world, you often have to negotiate with and make deals with people you don't entirely trust," said Mnookin, who is working with Israeli and Palestinian groups on the issue of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. "In the mediations I am involved in, the parties rarely trust each other."

The sit-ins by parishioners of St. Albert the Great Parish in Weymouth and St. Anselm Parish in Sudbury are the most extreme reaction to plans by the archdiocese to close 82 churches by the end of the year. Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley has said the reorganization is crucial to the long-term financial and spiritual health of the archdiocese, but protesters say they have not been allowed to make a case for their parishes to remain open.

For its part, the archdiocese suggested in a recent editorial in The Pilot, its official newspaper, that the protesters at the relatively wealthy parishes are putting their wants ahead of the poor populations served by the Catholic Church. The protesters, meanwhile, have said in news conferences and interviews that archdiocesan officials, whose credibility has been damaged by the clergy sexual abuse scandal, are disingenuously sacrificing healthy parishes to cover their mistakes.

If allowed to continue, mediation specialists said, the standoff is a lose-lose proposition.

"What's the no-agreement scenario for the church, to go in there and forcibly remove the parishioners who care deeply about their church? And what are the parishioners going to do, move in there forever?" said Ericka B. Gray, an adjunct professor at Boston College Law School who runs a website, DisputEd.com, with mediation information.

After initially taking a hands-off approach, O'Malley has met with priests at the angriest parishes over the last week and has sent emissaries to the Weymouth church to try to calm the conflict.

Jack Ryan, a leader of the St. Anselm protest in Sudbury, said this week that a true third party, such as a mediator "that both sides can agree on and trust" would be more effective.

But a church spokesman, the Rev. Christopher J. Coyne, said the church has no plans to hire an outside mediator, but is looking for "well-respected people in the community and not part of the closing process" to act as intermediaries.

Mediation specialists said one of the first things they would do is to meet with both sides separately and go beyond their stated positions, that the churches must close or must stay open, to find out what they really want. A second step would be to suggest that they agree to stop communicating through the media.

"It certainly would be a good encouragement to say keep the grenade-throwing to a minimum," said Andrew B. Barton, a Houston lawyer and top official with the American Arbitration Association.

After communication begins, coming to a solution would take creative thinking and an appreciation of the limits to which each side can go, Mnookin said.

"In this dispute, for example, the church is no doubt very worried about precedent, and that is one of the things that you have to discuss, how to create a solution that doesn't create a precedent the church can't live with," Mnookin said.

Any talks, said Thomas W. Porter, a Boston-based mediator who specializes in counseling churches in crisis, must be conducted in an atmosphere of mutual respect and understanding, because any conflict that involves religion becomes magnified.

"You are dealing with deeply held values, and they are important values on each side with a lot of history behind them," Porter said. "It is just much harder sometimes to talk about those kinds of values."

Ralph Ranalli can be reached at rranalli@globe.com.