Chapter V. On Favorable Law, or Privilege

141. • A privilege is a constant and permanent favor granted by a Superior to certain persons, or to certain dignities, against or beyond common law.

A privilege is distinguished:

1. Personal, local, or real, according as it is granted to a certain person, or to the inhabitants of a certain place, or to some thing, for example to a certain Church.

2. Against the law, or beyond the law, according as through it derogation is made from some law, or not.

3. Favorable, or odious, according as it profits the privileged person with the burden of others excluded; or burdens others while it favors one.

Principles. - I. A privilege against the law can be granted only by those who can validly dispense from the law, and indeed only to subjects, just as if it were a matter of dispensation, because it is a certain kind of dispensation.

II. But a privilege beyond the law, or a privilege improperly so called, can be granted even to non-subjects, because it is not an act of jurisdiction, but an act of mere faculty and as though a donation. Thus a Prince can grant to a foreigner the privilege of hunting in his territory.

III. A favorable privilege is to be interpreted broadly. On the contrary, an odious privilege ought to be of strict interpretation. This is evinced from law, and the common consensus of the Doctors is consonant. - St. Ligorius, Appendix on privileges at the end of the Treatise on Laws, no. 7.

IV. No one is held of himself to use a privilege, because each one can renounce his own right ¹; sometimes, however, by accident the privileged person is obliged to the use of the privilege, for example by reason of charity. Hence he would sin who, having the faculty of absolving from reserved cases, would refuse to hear a sinner having reserved sins and placed in grave necessity..., etc. - St. Lig., ibid., no. 3.

¹ This does not hold with regard to privileges which are granted not so much to the person as to the condition or state. Thus a cleric cannot renounce the privilege of canon or of forum, nor a religious the privilege of exemption.

END OF THE TREATISE ON LAWS

142. Questions. - QUESTION 1. How does a privilege cease?

I answer: 1. By the death of the person, or the destruction of the thing, according as it is personal or real; 2. by lapse of the prescribed time, or by revocation; 3. by cessation of the final cause; 4. by renunciation accepted by him who can accept it.

QUESTION 2. Whether travelers can enjoy the privileges of places through which they pass, even if these are against common law?

I answer: Yes. It is established from general custom. Thus Frenchmen passing through Spain can eat flesh meats on the Sabbath day. Thus also Italians existing in France are exempted from the obligation of hearing Mass on the feast of the Epiphany of the Lord and certain other feasts, which are not observed there.

But concerning privileges in particular, it will be said in its own place, and especially concerning the privileges of Clerics, Regulars, and Bishops, in the Treatise on Particular States, at the beginning of vol. II.