§ 3. On the Ownership of Moral Persons

871. Things to be noted beforehand. A moral person, as it is taken here, is a juridic being, or civil body, to which laws have conceded the privilege of perpetual succession. - It consists either of several coexisting persons, as a college; or of one person who never dies, as the Bishop, who always lives in his successors. - It differs, of itself, from a conventional society: for this is entered by contract among private persons, who have co-ownership, and therefore retain a strict right to common goods. Cf. n. 1157. A conventional society (for example industrial) can receive legal existence, but it does not become a juridic being and moral body in the strict sense.

Colleges are held, generally, after the manner of private persons: hence they can enter contracts, act in judgment, etc.

We said generally: for in the ownerships of stable colleges, members have only the right of administering them and perceiving fruits from them, and that according to the norm of the foundation; yet with the substance of the ownership preserved. For this reason, communities are ruled in many things by the law of minors. Thus, for example, immovables and precious movables of churches, monasteries, municipalities, etc., cannot be alienated without the command of the supreme power (D'Annibale, Summ. I, n. 43 seq.; Ferraris, v. Collegium).

These things having been noted beforehand, let there be discussion of moral persons: 1. in the civil order; 2. in the religious order.

872. Moral persons, in the civil order, are States or republics and communities, whether regional (of provinces or districts) or municipal.

The state and municipalities have the right of possessing temporal goods and administering them. - The reason is that such a right is required for the end of civil society, i.e. for the common good of citizens.

Scope of ownership. I. The ownership of the state, or State, embraces things of a twofold kind: 1. Things generally unfruitful, but devoted to common necessities, for example the more principal roads, navigable rivers, seashores and lands emerging by the recession of the sea, ports, warships, fortified citadels and military garrisons, houses destined for supreme rulers and their ministers, public libraries and museums, etc. - 2. Fruitful things, movable and immovable, acquired by any legitimate title, for sustaining the expenses of the universal government.

II. The ownership of regional and municipal communities consists of common buildings, schools, lay hospitals, prisons, public roads, fields, forests, etc. - To these are numbered, in certain regions, palaces of Bishops, seminaries, canonically erected hospitals, cemeteries, churches, indeed also sacred vessels; which certainly is repugnant to Canon Law, unless some concession has been made by concordats (Carriere, o.c., n. 67; Craisson, Man. Juris can., 936, 5315).

873. Principles. I. The Church can legitimately acquire and possess temporal things. It is of faith, as is certain from the condemnation of the tenth proposition of Wycliffe: "It is against Scripture that ecclesiastical men have possessions" (likewise, from proposition 32 and 33). To this also pertains the twenty-sixth proposition condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus: "The Church does not have a native and legitimate right of acquiring and possessing."¹³

874. II. The right of acquiring and possessing, which the Church enjoys, cannot be limited to movable goods. For immovables are necessary for churches, episcopal houses, presbyteral houses, for monasteries, hospitals, seminaries, etc.; and therefore the faculty of possessing goods of this kind inheres in the Church, by natural and divine law, namely by the same law by which it was given to her to exist and to spread herself into the whole world, independently of every secular power (cf. Aichner, Comp. Juris eccl., § 222).

Hence it is inferred: 1. The civil State that does not admit the aforesaid right violates divine law, just as it would violate natural law if it did not permit a singular person at will to become the subject of right (De Angelis, l. 3, tit. 5, n. 4).

2. Ownership of ecclesiastical goods does not pertain to the state; indeed, not even high ownership belongs to it. For the Church is a society altogether diverse from the state, and superior to it. - Therefore if the state needs some ecclesiastical good, for example to construct a road, it is necessary that it obtain the consent of the Church (cf. n. 149). See the Spanish Concordat of the year 1851, art. 40; Spanish Civil Code, n. 38, 746.

3. Ecclesiastical goods are regularly immune from taxes and civil burdens; otherwise the right of the Church in temporal goods would not be independent (St. Alphonsus, de Privil., n. 20). Yet these goods can, from privilege, be burdened with taxes, as in fact sometimes happened in certain places, from concession of the Holy See (Aichner, § 227).

4. Violators of ecclesiastical ownership are always guilty of injustice, indeed often of sacrilege (cf. n. 583), and deservedly are punished with penalties and censures (cf. n. 1325 seqq.).

875. Questions. QUAER. 1. Who has ownership of the goods of the Church?

Resp. 1. Direct Ownership of those goods pertains immediately to particular churches, but mediately to the Catholic society itself, i.e. to the universal Church.

Hence: if some pious institute, parish, monastery, etc., is suppressed, the goods of the suppressed institute continue to belong to the universal Church, by which they are to be destined to another end. Nor does the Supreme Pontiff himself bear himself in this matter as proprietor, but as supreme administrator (Aichner, l.c., § 223).

2. Usufruct respectively pertains to those special associations or institutes to which the same goods have been left by the faithful.

Whence it happens that the rights of each institute are separate, and cannot be taken away thence by the mere will of prelates, or transferred to other places. This, however, the Supreme Pontiff can do as supreme administrator of all ecclesiastical goods.¹⁴

QUAER. 2. To whom does the administration of ecclesiastical goods pertain?

Resp. 1. The right or power of administering the goods of the Church belongs to those ecclesiastical persons to whom ownership, at least useful ownership, belongs: for the accessory follows its principal.

Therefore by law the administrators are: a) the Roman Pontiff for the whole world; - b) the Bishop for his diocese; - c) Chapters and Superiors of Orders for the goods of the Order, province, convent: all these, however, inferior to the Pope, according to the judgment of the Holy See and according to the laws of the universal Church, in whose possession is the principal ownership and government.

2. The administration itself pertains, in fact, to those to whom it was legitimately committed by the one having power, and therefore remains necessarily subject to the one committing it.¹⁵

In this administration indeed, laymen are sometimes permitted to have their part; but from this they acquire no right, just as curators acquire none from administration of goods that pertain to minors (Bargilliat, Prael. Juris can., n. 970; Craisson, n. 5303; Aichner, § 225).

876. Note. 1. If the aforesaid rights of the Church are restricted by secular power, for example if by law (which they call amortization) the quantity of goods to be acquired is determined; or if the consent of the civil government is required beforehand: laws of this kind, although contrary to sacred canons, can be observed, insofar as namely the Church does not contradict. Indeed, they often must be observed, lest acts of administration become civilly invalid, and from this a greater detriment come to the Church.

2. If the right of the Church is entirely denied, recourse should be made to common Law, i.e. to the law that the laws concede to all citizens. Religious communities and pious institutes can acquire and preserve goods especially in three ways; and indeed: a) by obtaining the right of a college or civil corporation, or recognition of public utility; - b) by entering some contract of society, for example that by which goods are possessed in common for attaining a certain end approved by law; - c) by taking care that a simple contract of purchase be entered in a private name. In which case, one must watch that those possessing goods of the community in their own name immediately make a valid testament, which is diligently preserved in the community's archive (Konings, n. 623). Cf. Pelt, o.c., p. 61, as regards religious Congregations.