Question First. On the Precept of Supporting Pastors

715. On the precept itself. 1. By natural and divine right the faithful are held to furnish pastors with what is necessary for sustenance. The Church determines this law as to mode and quantity by the precept of paying tithes.

a. The law of nature requires that those who spend their work for the spiritual utility of the faithful receive from the faithful what is necessary for sustenance, just as those who procure the temporal happiness of citizens, such as princes and soldiers, must be sustained by citizens:² For who ever serves as a soldier at his own charges?³

b. The divine law is contained in these words of the Lord, who says concerning those who work for the salvation of souls: the laborer is worthy of his food;⁴ and the Apostle writes in the same sense: Do you not know that those who work in the sanctuary eat the things that are of the sanctuary; and those who serve the altar share with the altar? So also the Lord ordained that those who announce the Gospel live from the Gospel.⁵

c. In the first centuries of the Church clerics devoted to the care of souls were fed by the spontaneous offerings of the faithful; but afterwards, especially from the ninth century, tithes had to be paid from the precept of the Church.⁶

2. The law of tithes having been abrogated almost everywhere, in most places provision has been made for the support of pastors from elsewhere, either by the revenues of benefices or by a pension paid by the government; but where provision has not been made from elsewhere, as in North America, the obligation is incumbent on the faithful of contributing the things necessary for the support of pastors.

a. The Fathers of the Third Council of Baltimore decreed that this obligation also urges from ecclesiastical right; and they took care that in their catechism, to be published by their command, there be inserted as the fifth precept of the Church: To contribute some subsidy for the suitable support of pastors.

b. In our regions the faithful contribute something to the support of the ministers of the Church by paying stole fees. Although the faithful are bound to pay these according to the custom of the place, nevertheless a priest would act against the mind of the Church if he denied sacraments or sacramentals to those not paying.

3. Since the ecclesiastical precept does not determine more exactly the mode and quantity of the subsidy to be contributed, it must be said that generally there is incumbent on the individual faithful the obligation of contributing something according to their means for the support of pastors.

Although this precept is certain and of itself obliges under grave obligation, nevertheless the faithful are not easily to be accused of grave sin because of this subsidy omitted, unless by refusing the subsidy without just reason they are the cause that priests are in need or the rest of the faithful are too much burdened.⁷

Note. In collecting the subsidies of the faithful, priests must carefully avoid those things which cast them into suspicion of avarice, render the Catholic religion hateful to the faithful, and contemptible to non-Catholics.⁸

¹ Gury-Sabetti, Compendium theol. moralis (Ratisbon: Pustet, 1897), n. 343 s.; Genicot, l.c., I, n. 431.

² Cf. St. Thomas, II-II, q. 87, a. 1.

³ 1 Cor. 9:7.

⁴ Matt. 10:10; cf. Luke 10:7.

⁵ 1 Cor. 9:13, 14.

⁶ C. Pervenit 5; Nuncios 6; Quoniam 13; Ad apostolicae 20, etc., De decimis (III, 30). Cf. concerning the precept of paying tithes Ballerini-Palmieri II, n. 1157; Kirchenlexikon, 2nd ed., "Zehnt."

⁷ Kenrick, Theologia moralis, 3rd ed. (Mechlin: Dessain, 1860), whose opinion in this matter others commonly approve.

⁸ Cf. Third Council of Baltimore, n. 292, 293.