Title XXV: Of Ecclesiastical Benefices

An ecclesiastical benefice is a juridic entity constituted or erected in perpetuity by competent ecclesiastical authority, consisting of a sacred office and the right of receiving revenues from the endowment attached to the office.

The endowment of a benefice is constituted either by goods whose ownership is in the hands of the juridic entity itself, or by certain and due payments of some family or moral person, or by certain and voluntary offerings of the faithful which pertain to the rector of the benefice, or by rights, as they are called, of the stole within the limits of diocesan taxation or legitimate custom, or by choral distributions, a third part of the same being excluded, if all the revenues of the benefice consist in choral distributions.

Ecclesiastical benefices are called:

1° Consistorial, those which are accustomed to be conferred in Consistory; the rest non-consistorial.

2° Secular or religious, according as they pertain to secular clerics alone or religious clerics alone; moreover, all benefices erected outside churches or houses of religious are presumed, in doubt, to be secular.

3° Double or residential, or simple or non-residential, according as, besides the beneficial office, they have, or do not have, attached the obligation of residing.

4° Manual, temporary or removable, or perpetual or irremovable, according as they are conferred revocably or in perpetuity.

5° Curate or non-curate, according as they have care of souls attached or not.

Although they bear some likeness with benefices, nevertheless in law the following do not come under the name of benefice:

1° Parochial vicarages not erected in perpetuity.

2° Lay chaplaincies, namely those which have not been erected by competent ecclesiastical authority.

3° Coadjutorships with or without future succession.

4° Personal pensions.

5° Temporary commenda, that is, the concession of revenues of some church or monastery made to someone in such a way that, when he is lacking, the revenues themselves return to the church or monastery.

§ 1. Unless another thing appears, the canons which follow must be understood concerning only non-consistorial benefices properly so called.

§ 2. Canons 147-195 are also applied to beneficial offices or benefices.