Article III. Supplements to the Doctrine

540. What is called the capacity of a group by which it is permitted to possess, etc., is in reality only the capacity

of the persons of whom the group is composed. To deny it is to circumscribe the rights and faculties of physical persons. But it has happened, because of that false appearance of a moral person, that laws which ought to have been unpopular have been regarded as popular, and common possession, although often honored by a most noble end, has seemed less sacred and almost odious. Much more wisely, the ancients did not grant every faculty for forming colleges, but did not deny common goods to honorable colleges. Nevertheless, by these words we by no means deny that the faculty of possessing in common, in order to a definite end, can sometimes opportunely be circumscribed, lest this genus of possessions exceed due measure.

541. Charity toward a community. Since the State is only a collective name of physical persons, whatever virtue can be terminated at men can also be exercised for the sake of the State. Nothing, therefore, prevents us from exhibiting charity toward the State as well as justice.

542. Concerning the very name moral person. The ancients distinguished proper or particular dominion and common dominion or possession in common much better than the moderns distinguish physical and moral persons. For since physical persons are in reality designated by the name moral person, the division is already proved to limp. Moreover, the name moral person seems little apt and inelegant. For the word moral signifies a certain broader use of the word to which it is added, yet one of such a kind that in morals it is not judged to depart from the truth. Thus moral impossibility is a great difficulty which, given the customs of men, will not be overcome; moral necessity, besides the proper obligation of the will, also designates a most urgent cause which does not press equally with strict necessity; moral identity indicates a difference which is not attended to; moral certainty is, in a broader usage, such a probability as performs the function of certainty in human use. Hence moral person would properly be said of something which, although it were not properly a person, nevertheless morally approached the rationale of a person sufficiently that it was to be regarded as a person.

I say morally, that is, not by a fiction of the mind, but truly on account of an objective analogy. But there is nothing of this kind, since in a group there are truly only physical persons.

Nevertheless, on account of the consent which is contained in every society, the wills of the members are morally joined; hence the members, as such, could be said to be morally one person. But then the word morally affects not some genus of persons but the number. Therefore, because several persons morally come together into a certain unity, they are by no means to be called a moral person.

543. So that we may now declare the matter, leaving aside the name, the same consent of wills from which a certain unity is effected is conceived as the form by which the parts, that is, the members, are perfected. Yet this form is not one by which, from an alteration of the parts, a physically new entity is constituted, concerning which it can be asked whether it subsists in a rational nature or not. Therefore, when a society is conceived after the manner of a physical person—something which can also happen concerning rivers, forests, and so forth—there is merely had an entity of reason, almost as a privation conceived as a positive entity. This entity of reason is called a moral person only improperly. For the latter, as we were just saying, would be some true entity which could morally be regarded as rational and as a subject of right.

Besides the consent of wills, the government which certain groups employ also suggests to our mind the image of a person. For it is altogether consonant with the nature of certain groups that most members abstain from administering the common thing; that goods possessed in common be continually distinguished from the possessions of individuals; and that the group not be dissolved by the departure of members, but be preserved by the continual accession of new members. On account of these and other similar things, these groups present the image of a person.

But, as must be carefully observed, this image is generated by the government itself, while the fiction itself generates no effect; that is, a fictitious or moral person is by nature posterior to the effects which the adversaries themselves ascribe to it.

And if you should ask concerning the groups which require such government, they are those which consist of many members or have a lasting and ample end. Hence they will especially be those groups which, as Most Illustrious D. Waffelaert observes, are founded upon the common necessity of men, that is, the Church and States.

544. Several persons in one. When some right—for example, dominion—which can be referred to one person belongs to several in common, the several then sustain, as it were, one person. And likewise, when rights which are customarily divided among several are exercised by one man, he can be said to sustain several persons. Thus Cicero:¹ “I alone sustain three persons with the greatest equity of mind: my own, that of the adversary, and that of the judge.” Yet you should not think from this that there are several subjects in this case, since merely several rationales inhere in one subject.

¹ De oratore, bk. 2, chap. 24.

545. The possession in common of members must be distinguished especially from the undivided possession of several who are joined by no bond of society. The latter have no other community than that which arises from undivided possession; this possession is demanded by no common end, and hence is had merely per accidens and tends toward no common good, but only toward the singular good of several persons. In a society, on the contrary, undivided possession is constituted per se on account of the good intended.

546. Concerning the perpetuity of societies. There must be distinguished: a) The perpetuity of the specific essence and of the numerical essence. The former perpetuity belongs to groups which are founded upon a perpetual inclination of human nature. Thus there will always be States and families, although nothing demands that this family or this State remain perpetually. The latter perpetuity can only be moral, since some members succeed others. And from the divine promise it belongs to the Church alone, whose moral identity will not be destroyed. b) Perpetuity from a positive intention and from a continued or renewed intention. It is one thing to will that a group be perpetual, another not positively to assign a term. Thus, from the intention of their founders, States and religious Orders are perpetual.

547. Concerning the guilt and punishment of groups. Because certain States are shown by historical documents or by the sacred utterances themselves to have been affected by rewards or penalties, they are not for that reason to be regarded as distinct subjects which, as such, can have good or evil merits. For the same is affirmed of families and houses, which nevertheless the adversaries deny to be moral persons. But these things are sufficiently explained: a) By the fact that the penalties of this life can be useful trials for the innocent, if any share losses from another's guilt; b) By the fact that, by their very intention, good men desire their acts to profit persons joined to them and consequently their fellow citizens; and divine Providence has made men so conjoined that some experience many goods and evils on account of others, yet in such a way that no one except the guilty undergoes the irreparable penalties of eternal misery; c) By the fact that through civil union itself it happens that many, either positively or negatively through a neglected duty, are participants in offenses, so that morally they seem to have been committed in the name of all.

548. In Roman law certain corporate bodies of things—for example, a lying inheritance—sustained the function of a person. It is evident that these goods in reality belonged to the heirs, whose designation was perhaps uncertain. But on account of these or similar doubts, the goods of the inheritance were subject to a special government.

549. Concerning foundations. He who establishes a “burse” for assisting the studies of the poor, or a hospice for the elderly, or makes another foundation, is in reality the author of some society. For he hands over some good to be possessed in common, under certain added conditions, by all whose present or future necessity he plans to provide for. Hence, if you ask who possesses a hospice which lies open to all citizens of a certain municipality, they are the present citizens of the municipality themselves, in such a way that they will have its use if they labor under poverty or illness, and by the law of the foundation must preserve the hospice so that future citizens can possess the same. By the same law of the foundation, as many as leave the municipality lose every right.

550. That diminished right which the citizens of a municipality have in the said hospice on account of the laws of the foundation supposes another person in whose possession there exists the remaining part of the rights contained in the rationale of dominion, almost as a real servitude implies an owner of the servitude. For it cannot happen that some thing is now in the perfect possession of no one. To use other words, the rights of dominion, which posit the faculty of using, enjoying, and disposing, can indeed be divided among several, so that one enjoys and another retains the dominion which is called naked, but not so that a part of the rights is extinguished. Who, then, in the example adduced, has the remaining possession of the hospice? Per se, according to our opinion, the heir of the founder has it, unless, on account of the common good, the Church or the State, according to the character of the foundation, has claimed such a right for itself as its own. For while the founder lived, no one would certainly have doubted that this remaining right belonged to him, so that he could have dispensed the municipality obligated by the law of the foundation from that law. But it is established that the heir succeeds to rights which have not been donated to others by legacy. Yet because this right has slight utility and the end concerns the common good, the governors of a perfect society can bring this matter under their patronage, so that public power alone can permit the municipality to depart from the law of the foundation.

551. Whence so great a fortune of the moral person. Perhaps the excessive inclination by which men in the nineteenth century inclined toward “individualism” and “materialism” contributed not a little to the marvelous fortune of the moral person. From the former inclination, those things alone which had a private use were now regarded as goods of men, and the rationale of common possession was obscured. But materialists scarcely perceive how men can make their own a cause superior to the economic order, and by associated work pursue it under a rationale similar to monetary gain. Hence merchants were said to seek money for themselves; but those who endeavored to promote letters, the education of youth, or religion seemed not to acquire for themselves the goods assigned to this noble end, but to acquire them for some abstract rationale or moral person.