Parishioners at St. Stanislaus Kostka Church have voted before, most dramatically five years ago, in early January, when 98 percent of them rejected a measure ceding control of the church's property and finances to the Archdiocese of St. Louis.

"It shows the people are together," parishioner Judy Jeglijewski said at the time.

Another vote for the church, just north of downtown, is coming Aug. 8, and it's unlikely the people will be quite as together as they were in 2005.

This vote — termed a 'survey" by parish leaders — will dictate to the St. Stanislaus board whether to settle a lawsuit with the archdiocese and accept Archbishop Robert Carlson's latest proposal to end a seven-year battle for control of the Polish church.

The issue will generally be the same as it was in 2005: Is this group of Catholics ready to return authority over the parish to their archbishop?

Since the 2005 vote, there have been multiple excommunications of lay board members, the parish itself has been banished from the Catholic Church and its renegade pastor was returned to the status of a layman by Pope Benedict XVI.

All of which plays into the Aug. 8 vote. But below the fireworks of excommunications, supressions and laicizations, the heart of any deal offered by Carlson will be a change to the church's legal structure.

In June 2003, Archbishop Justin Rigali, now a cardinal and the archbishop of Philadelphia, announced a massive legal restructuring of the archdiocese that would transform each parish from an unincorporated association to a nonprofit corporation.

Chuck Zech, director of the Center for the Study of Church Management at Villanova University, said many dioceses around the country began changing their legal structures in the wake of the clergy sexual abuse scandal that erupted across the country in 2002.

The traditional "corporation sole" legal structure put all diocesan and parish assets in the bishop's name, said Zech. That, according to civil courts, made all of a diocese's funds liable in legal settlements.

In the corporation sole structure, parishes are considered unincorporated associations without identities separate from the diocese. But incorporating individual parishes protected their property and assets from lawsuits naming the bishop.

Rigali hoped St. Stanislaus, like every other parish, would go along with the changes, but parishioners were unwilling to give up their unique place in St. Louis church history.

In 1891, Archbishop Peter Kenrick agreed to allow the laity of the St. Louis Polish Catholic community to form a corporation that would govern the church's finances. Kenrick's move was not unusual in the 19th century, when immigrants often formed their own Catholic communities to buy land and build a church.

By the 20th century, bishops had assumed control of most of those parishes around the country. St. Stanislaus was a holdout.

In the archdiocesan-wide restructuring, Rigali saw a chance to rein in the Polish church, but he was transferred to Philadelphia soon after announcing the legal changes. It fell to his successor, Archbishop Raymond Burke, to complete the change.

In the church's original bylaws, its lay board controlled the property and assets while the archbishop appointed its board members and a pastor. But in 2001, and again in 2004, the church's board rewrote its bylaws, eventually eliminating the archbishop's authority. The church set up the St. Stanislaus Corp. as its legal entity.

In 2004, Burke — a canon lawyer — told the Post-Dispatch that the St. Stanislaus corporation was set up by Kenrick to operate "as a Roman Catholic parish within the disciplines of the church."

In a declaration of excommunication of two board members, Burke wrote that since the church was suppressed in 2005, "the St. Stanislaus Kostka Corporation has never been and is not now a part of the Roman Catholic Church but instead is a sect ..."

In 2008, the archdiocese and some former parishioners sued St. Stanislaus, asking a judge to restore the church to the structure that existed before the bylaw changes.

Benedict transferred Burke to a position at the Vatican the same year, and a thid archbishop took up the St. Stanislaus battle. On Thursday, the archdiocese posted a letter from Carlson on its website explaining his proposal.

"One of the concerns expressed again and again was that, even if an archbishop made a commitment to keep the parish operating so long as Roman Catholics of Polish heritage wanted to have a parish and were willing to support it, he could not bind his successors," Carlson wrote.

That concern led to a proposed solution involving two cooperating corporations — one looking out for the interests of the parish, the other representing the archdiocese. Though, in reality, because of the way the parish board will be elected and approved, the archbishop would control both corporations.

Parishioners discussed that offer in the church last Sunday with their attorneys, and will do so again on Sunday. The church's legal structure was key to those discussions.

According to a summary of the proposal presented by Armstrong Teasdale attorney Richard Scherrer, and outlined in a document called "A Possible Resolution to the Litigation" handed out to parishioners, the two corporations would work like this:

• The first would be a "St. Stanislaus Corporation," made up of a lay board elected by church members and approved by the archbishop.

• The second would be a "Parish Corporation" run by a priest selected by the archbishop and who "would be in charge of day-to-day 'church-related' activities."

The Parish Corp. would lease the church and rectory from the St. Stanislaus Corp. for 99 years; St. Stanislaus would adopt "new, up-to-date bylaws and articles of incorporation."

Final sticking points, according to sources close to the negotiations, are the parish's legal fees and a severance agreement for the St. Stanislaus pastor, the Rev. Marek Bozek.

The pope laicized Bozek in 2009, so he is no longer a Catholic priest. He has said in the past that he would someday like to be a bishop in an "underground Roman Catholic church."

At their meeting this week, Scherrer told parishioners that both sides were still working on the details of Bozek's severance.

"He would leave here with the gratitude and dignity he deserves," Scherrer said.

Michele Munz of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.