CHAPTER V: ON RELIGIOUS DISPERSED BY FORCE

1204. Principles. - I. They remain bound by all the obligations which they contracted from their profession, except those which are not compatible with the state of dispersion. Hence 1° as regards the vow of poverty, each one by that very fact is deputed, as it were, steward of himself as to necessary or useful things (but not as to things pleasurable or not befitting his state) for all cases in which recourse to the Superior cannot be had. 2° By force of the vow of obedience they remain subject to their legitimate Superiors, unless the Supreme Pontiff has assigned the Ordinary of the diocese in which they are staying for the time as their regular Superior, who in defect of the Prelate may rule and govern them. But the legitimate Superiors of the dispersed, as long as they have not been recalled to their own Province or convent, from the Decree of the S. Congregation on the discipline of regulars, Aug. 5, 1872, are both the Provincial of the territory in which they are staying, and the local Superior of the monastery in which they live.¹

II. By the fact of violent expulsion and dispersion, religious do not lose their rights and privileges. For from Rule of law 64 in 6°: "Those things which are done contrary to law must certainly be held as not done."

Hence religious can return without permission of the Ordinary to their old convents, in the case in which they are restored to them, and in towns and villages in which before dispersion they had convents, they can acquire for themselves new buildings, if the old ones have been destroyed or are unjustly detained, or even have been alienated by authority of the Apostolic See, without loss of their ancient rights and privileges. And all these things indeed hold, although only one religious of the Institute remained. See Bouix.²

Yet these principles concerning the obligation and right of dispersed regulars can be modified as to application by Declarations, Decrees, or Indults of the Holy See.