§ IV. On Trading

105. • Trading is prohibited to all clerics, especially to those who have been initiated in sacred Orders. This is established from innumerable texts of Canon Law, chiefly from Trent, sess. 22, ch. 1, De Reformat.

Nor is it licit for clerics to devote themselves to trading even because of the necessity of supporting a family, without the permission either of the Apostolic See within Italy, or of the Ordinary outside Italy. From the Decree of Clement XIII, constitution Cum priorum, 17 September 1759. - See St. Alphonsus, On Contracts, nn. 832, 833. But the following are not contained in that prohibition: 1º Clerics who sell the fruits which they gather from their own fields. 2º Those who exercise an art consonant with their own condition and state, and sell the works. 3º Those who buy things at a small price when there is abundance, so that, when scarcity of provisions comes on, they may sell them at the same price to friends, relatives, and the poor. 4º Those who buy animals so that, fattened on their own farms, they may sell them; but otherwise, if they are fattened in another's stalls. 5º Probably from the common opinion, also those who buy the fruits of the fields of others for fattening animals, and selling them when fattened. 6º Those who buy for their own use, but afterward sell if the price rises, so that a similar thing may be bought more cheaply. 7º Those who buy many things so that they may provide for themselves more safely, and then sell what remains, even at a higher price.