Section — Gury-Ballerini, Compendium of Moral Theology (8th ed., 1884)
§ I. On Ecclesiastical Goods
- Things to be noted. - I. Some goods of the Church were plundered by the Government itself, others by private persons.
II. Pius VII entered into a convention on August 15, 1801, with Napoleon, First Consul, by which he freed the acquirers of ecclesiastical goods from restitution.
III. The Sacred Penitentiary, in a rescript to the Most Illustrious D. Bouvier, March 20, 1818, declared thus: The Sacred Penitentiary, by express apostolic authority, declares to the consulting petitioner that ecclesiastical goods occupied by the Government before the convention entered into in the year 1801 between the Holy See and the Gallican Government are in the full power of the acquirers.
IV. Pius VII directed a Brief to the Bishop of Poitiers on October 20, 1821, in which he declared that the concession of goods previously made by the Supreme Pontiff can be applied to all ecclesiastical goods previously usurped by the Government, whether it had already alienated them before the convention of the year 1801, or had not yet alienated them then.
- Resolves. - 1. Those who usurped ecclesiastical goods by their own authority sinned gravely, and are still held to restitution; for they are thieves, nor has any condonation been made for them.
- But those who occupied those goods with the civil law favoring them sinned, and were held to restitution before the convention of the year 1801, but not afterward, by the concession of the Supreme Pontiff.
- Those who after this pact accepted goods of the Church not yet alienated, sinned against justice, and were obligated to restitution, because by force of the convention the concession had not been made except for goods already alienated 1.
1 This resolution seems, from the premises in the preceding number, to be understood of goods which someone acquired from the government after the year 1801 and before the Brief of the year 1821.