Part Six: Of the Temporal Goods of the Church

§ 1. The Catholic Church and the Apostolic See have the native right, freely and independently of civil power, of acquiring, retaining, and administering temporal goods for pursuing their own proper ends.

§ 2. Individual churches also and other moral persons which have been erected as juridic persons by ecclesiastical authority have the right, according to the norm of the sacred canons, of acquiring, retaining, and administering temporal goods.

The Church also has the right, independent of civil power, of requiring from the faithful those things which are necessary for divine worship, for the decent support of clerics and other ministers, and for the remaining ends proper to her.

§ 1. Temporal goods, whether corporeal, both immovable and movable, or incorporeal, which belong either to the universal Church and to the Apostolic See or to another moral person in the Church, are ecclesiastical goods.

§ 2. They are called sacred which by consecration or blessing are destined for divine worship; precious, those which have notable value by reason of art or history or material.

In the canons which follow, by the name of Church is signified not only the universal Church or the Apostolic See, but also any moral person in the Church, unless from the context of the speech or from the nature of the matter another thing appears.