330
Opinion of the Court
502 U. S. 410, 417 (1992), and are rights protected from modification by § 1322(b)(2).
This is not to say, of course, that the contractual rights of a home mortgage lender are unaffected by the mortgagor's Chapter 13 bankruptcy. The lender's power to enforce its rights—and, in particular, its right to foreclose on the property in the event of default—is checked by the Bankruptcy Code's automatic stay provision. 11 U. S. C. § 362. See United Savings Assn. of Texas v. Timbers of Inwood Forest Associates, Ltd., 484 U. S. 365, 369-370 (1988). In addition, § 1322(b)(5) permits the debtor to cure prepetition defaults on a home mortgage by paying off arrearages over the life of the plan "notwithstanding" the exception in § 1322(b)(2).4 These statutory limitations on the lender's rights, however, are independent of the debtor's plan or otherwise outside § 1322(b)(2)'s prohibition.
Petitioners urge us to apply the so-called "rule of the last antecedent," which has been relied upon by some Courts of Appeals to interpret § 1322(b)(2) the way petitioners favor. E. g., In re Bellamy, 962 F. 2d 176, 180 (CA2 1992); In re Hougland, 886 F. 2d 1182, 1184 (CA9 1989). According to this argument, the operative clause "other than a claim secured only by a security interest in . . . the debtor's principal residence" must be read to refer to and modify its immediate antecedent, "secured claims." Thus, § 1322(b)(2)'s protection would then apply only to that subset of allowed "secured claims," determined by application of § 506(a), that are secured by a lien on the debtor's home—including, with respect to the mortgage involved here, the bank's secured claim for $23,500. We acknowledge that this reading of the clause is quite sensible as a matter of grammar. But it is not com-4 Under § 1322(b)(5), the plan may, "notwithstanding paragraph (2) of this subsection, provide for the curing of any default within a reasonable time and maintenance of payments while the case is pending on any . . . secured claim on which the last payment is due after the date on which the final payment under the plan is due."
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