Question Third. On the Obligation of Expending Superfluous Goods

779. On the obligation itself. A grave obligation of religion is incumbent on clerics of expending on pious causes the benefice goods which remain over after honorable support.¹

1. That clerics are held under grave obligation to expend superfluous goods for pious uses is established from the will of the Church explicitly prohibiting that any beneficed persons whatsoever increase their relatives or household members from the revenues of the Church, unless they are poor, to whom for this reason they may distribute ecclesiastical things, which are God's, as to the poor.²

The very nature of the goods demands that the Church impose this obligation on beneficed clerics: for goods are offered by the faithful to God in order that they may be spent for his worship; but they are accepted by the Church in the name of God and must be administered as goods of God; therefore the Church accepts those goods with the obligation of administering them as goods of God for the end on account of which they have been given by the faithful.

2. That smallness of matter is given in this precept is manifest; but what matter expended for profane uses is grave must be determined by the judgment of prudent persons, with account taken of the revenues of the benefice and of the person of the beneficed cleric. Yet that is certain, that a much greater quantity is required here for grave sin than in theft, since clerics do not take what belongs to another, but badly spend what is their own.

¹ Cf. Benedict XIV, De synodo, l. 7, c. 2; Hollweck, Das Testament des Geistlichen (Mainz: Kirchheim, 1901), p. 27 ff.

² Council of Trent, sess. 25, c. 1, De reform.

780. On honorable support. 1. To determine honorable support, attention must be paid to the quality of the person; wherefore honorable support is not equal in all: for a bishop requires more than a canon, a canon more than a pastor, a weak and unhealthy man more than a robust and healthy man, a noble cleric more than a cleric of lower condition.

In order that a cleric proceed with a safe conscience in this matter, let him attend to the practice of others who stand in the same grade and are of timorous conscience.

2. To suitable support belong not only food, clothing, and habitation, but all those things which are customarily expended under the title of moderate support. Therefore from benefice goods a cleric can:

a. Exercise fitting hospitality, not only toward poor travelers, but also toward friends and visitors.

b. Pay both his own debts and the debts of his relatives, even though contracted for a profane end, if neither he himself nor his relatives can pay them from elsewhere.

c. Aid his relatives and household members who are poor, so that they can live decently according to their state.

d. Supply to a relative the means for learning letters or other arts.

e. Endow poor sisters, so that they can honorably marry according to their state.

f. Support his offspring, both legitimate offspring whom perhaps he had begotten before entrance into the clerical state, and spurious offspring whom he begot afterward.¹

¹ Laymann, l. 4, tr. 2, c. 3, n. 3 ss.; Ballerini-Palmieri IV, n. 432 ss.

781. From the virtue of religion. 1. This obligation arises from the precept of the Church; and since this precept is imposed on clerics from the motive of religion, they commit the sin of sacrilege against religion if they spend superfluous goods for profane uses.

a. The benefice goods themselves indeed lose their proper holiness when they pass from the ownership of the Church into the ownership of clerics, and they become profane goods; but the Church transfers the action which it commands to that virtue from whose motive it commands it. But, account being taken of the origin of these goods and of the intention of pious faithful persons desiring that their donations be spent for the worship of God and for pious causes, the Church from the motive of religion enjoins on clerics the precept that they not spend them except for pious uses.

b. There are those who say that clerics are held to expend superfluous goods from justice.¹ But this obligation would arise either from this, that clerics do not acquire ownership in benefice goods, or from this, that the Church obliges clerics from justice to expend them; but from neither source does an obligation of justice arise: for clerics acquire true ownership in superfluous goods; and that the Church has added an obligation of justice cannot be demonstrated by a sufficient argument.²

2. If it is established that a cleric has badly spent superfluous goods, these things must be noted concerning the obligation of the cleric and of those who illicitly accepted the goods:

a. The cleric is not held to restitution of those things which he badly spent, because in spending he did not injure justice.

b. The donee is not held to expend on the poor those things which he illicitly received from the cleric, even if he himself (although in bad faith) induced the cleric to make the donation, because neither he nor the cleric violated justice, unless by unjust means he induced the cleric to make the donation.

c. The heir or legatee who received ecclesiastical goods from a cleric is likewise not held to expend them on pious causes, unless he prevented the cleric from making a will or by unjust means induced him to make a will in his favor, because the obligation of expending superfluous goods is not real but personal, which does not pass to heirs.³

Note. The things just noted hold concerning goods which are certainly ecclesiastical. But for the most part it will be difficult to demonstrate whether the goods of clerics, especially those left by inheritance, are truly ecclesiastical. What must be presumed in doubt was said above (n. 381 c).

¹ Navarrus, Roncaglia, Laymann, etc.

² Cf. Lehmkuhl I, n. 900.

³ In Austria the civil code, sec. 761, establishes that the goods of a cleric dying without a will are divided into three equal parts, of which one yields to the Church, another to the poor, and the third to relatives.

782. As to the mode of expending, a. it is not required that a cleric immediately spend those goods on pious uses, because this is prescribed by no law; but he can spend them in that way which he judges more apt and more useful for the end. For sometimes it will be more useful to preserve the goods for accomplishing some notable work which redounds to the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

Nevertheless when necessity urges, namely if the poor are present who are placed in extreme or grave necessity, it is not lawful to preserve the goods, but aid must be brought to those in need. In like manner they must be spent during life when there is danger lest after death they be carried off by the fisc or by friends and relatives.

b. Nor is a cleric held to spend them on the poor or for the utility of that place where the benefice is situated, unless poor persons are there placed in extreme or grave necessity, because no reason appears why, outside the case of necessity, they must be distributed to the poor of that place.

783. On pious causes.¹ 1. Pious causes are called all those works which either by their nature or by the disposition of the faithful serve a supernatural end.

Any end is called supernatural which intends religion or the worship of God and of the saints, or Christian charity or the spiritual or temporal utility of the neighbor, according as suits the character of the Christian religion.

2. Works of three kinds can be distinguished with the end (of the work) considered:

a. Some which by their nature have a supernatural end, such as the sacrifice of the Mass, prayers, churches, religious houses, confraternities, etc.

b. Others which by their nature have a merely natural and profane end, such as a theater, a society instituted for performing gymnastic exercises, etc.

c. Others which by their nature are indifferent to a supernatural and temporal end, such as the support of the poor, both of those who lack the necessities of life and of those who lack the necessities of their state, schools, hospitals, orphanages, etc.

Works which by their nature are indifferent are converted into pious causes by the pious intention of donors or founders; but works which by their nature are profane cannot be converted into pious causes by the intention of donors or founders.

3. In order that some disposition (donation, legacy, testament) be judged to have been made for pious causes, both things are required: that the end of the one operating (donating, etc.) be supernatural, and that the work at least from the end of the one operating become supernatural.

a. If the work in whose favor the disposition is made is pious by its nature, the disposition is judged to have been made from a supernatural motive.

b. If the work by its nature is ambiguous and the intention of the one operating is not established from elsewhere, attention must be paid to these things:

a. If the whole work has been committed to the administration of the Church or at least subjected to her governance, it must certainly be reckoned among pious causes.

b. From the fact that some work, for example a hospital, is administered by laypersons alone with every intervention of the Church excluded, it does not yet follow that there is question of a profane cause, unless it is established that it was erected from a merely philanthropic motive.

c. In doubt whether there is question of a pious or profane cause, favor must be given to the pious cause.

Note. Ecclesiastical penalties are treated in the separately issued fascicle.

¹ Since mention of pious causes occurs rather often, as when restitution is said to be made to pious causes, or when there is discussion of the value of a testament and legacy to pious causes or of expending superfluous goods on pious causes, it is helpful to define the notion of a pious cause.