Are you on the outside looking in? Or the inside looking out?

This question, important in many spheres of life, took center stage in federal court this past week in Roman Catholic Bishop of Springfield v. City of Northampton. Let’s back up for a second.

In 2010, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield shuttered St. Mary of the Assumption Church, the magnificent 1881 edifice with imposing spirals, on the corner of Elm and State Streets in Northampton, across from the main entrance to Smith College. The diocese has been trying to dispose of the property ever since.

It hasn’t been an easy sell. The church building is huge – 19,720 square feet with a 9,175 square foot basement. The property also includes a 7,288 square foot rectory and 50 parking spaces. The construction costs for repurposing it would be huge. The asking price: $2.9 million.

Another wrinkle. The diocese made any sale contingent on a permanent restriction that no future owner ever could use the building in any way that, in the sole discretion of the Roman Catholic Bishop of Springfield, was inconsistent with the teachings of the church. That provision may have reduced the number of potential buyers.

At times over the many years the building has been vacant, while driving or walking past it, I have imagined what Northampton would look like if this deconsecrated church were razed. I conjured the possibility of a petition to the Elm Street Historical District, in which St. Mary is located, to knock it down. I feared an underlying claim that the building could not be reused or repurposed, that the market had spoken.

In December 2022, the diocese entered into a purchase and sale agreement with Sunwood Builders of Amherst, which builds luxury homes. The sale price: $1.1 million. Since then, negotiations obviously have continued. There have been seven amendments to the sales agreement, one in late November 2023.

In December 2023, the Church, having given no notice and without filing for a permit, began removing the stained-glass windows. When the City found out, it issued a stop-work order because the Church didn’t have the customary permit. By that time, some windows had already been removed. The Church sued to quash the stop-work order.

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Which brings us to the outside-looking-in or inside-looking-out question posed by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s 1990 decision in Society of Jesus of New England v. Boston Landmarks Commission.

In that case, where a magnificent historical church in Boston wanted to do interior renovations, the Court ruled that designating the interior of the church an historic landmark violated the Massachusetts constitution’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion. The reasoning? A church interior “is so freighted with religious meaning that it must be considered part and parcel of . . . religious worship.”

The analysis obviously doesn’t apply to the exterior of religious institutions, an issue the Court left for another day. And so one question facing federal judge Mark Mastroianni at the hearing last week became, are windows on the inside or outside?

Is the glass half empty or half full? Not so simple. Indeed, the SJC commented in a later case, “The stained-glass window is illustrative of the fragility of the interior-exterior distinction, and of the extent to which historic preservation of the building is interwoven with religious doctrine. Although it is an ‘exterior’ feature, in that it is open to public view… ,” its inclusion in a church building is as much a religious choice as an aesthetic one – especially where, as here, the windows have an expressly religious message.” So interior versus exterior is important, but not the whole story.

It seems to me that the diocese could easily have applied for the permit. In response, the Historic Commission, would have been obligated to grant that permission because a Church is entitled to determine what happens to its religious items. None of those things happened.

The judge criticized the parties for not having resolved the matter without a lawsuit. After all, the diocese could and should have informed the city of its plans.

On Thursday the parties advised the Court that, as the judge had urged, they had reached an agreement. Although the settlement terms have not been finalized, the bones of the agreement have been made public. The Church has filed for the permit. It can remove the windows but will repair damage caused to the exterior. The storm windows outside the stained-glass ones will remain. Presumably if the builder wants to change those, he’ll have to petition the Historical Commission.

After the settlement was announced, a spokesperson for the diocese said that ” (it) looks forward to working cooperatively with the City of Northampton to finalize work needed in advance of the sale of the property and its planned redevelopment.” Better late than never. A good lesson for the diocese.

We all want to see downtown Northampton thrive. A reasonably preserved, renovated and on-the-tax-rolls St. Mary property is a big improvement over the present situation. The property now presumably will be converted to housing, hopefully not all high-end. Fourteen years of vacancy is enough. Please God, let the real estate closing for St. Mary happen soon.

Bill Newman, a Northampton-based lawyer and co-host of Talk the Talk on WHMP, writes a monthly column.