§ 3. How and How Far Simony Is Absent from Stipends, Taxes, and Offerings

What is asked. There is in the Church a use of stipends, taxes, and offerings for sacred functions or performances.

Hence the question arises how these can be paid or exacted without simony.

1. Notions. Stipends are paid to him who has either promised to apply a Mass, or administered a sacrament, or discharged a sacred function. Taxes designate money which, besides compensation for the labor spent in writing a document, is exacted by a Prelate who administers law, grants a dispensation or grace. Offerings, outside those particular adjuncts, are contributed by the faithful either freely or by compulsion: freely, as in certain places at the offertory in a funeral Mass, or those which are placed in boxes for various intentions, or even are found placed upon altars; by compulsion, as first-fruits once were and, where they are still in use, tithes. Stipends are paid to the minister working in sacred things; taxes to the Superior dispensing or granting a grace or administering law; offerings are paid either to a sacred person, the pastor, or to the universal or particular Church. Stipends ¹ and offerings made to some person pertain, at least reductively, to the genus of recompense or wages, yet so that stipends are paid more for a particular service or administration, offerings more for services in general, for example of a pastor; taxes and offerings which are not owed to persons approach more to the ratio of a tribute.

2. Permitted exchanges. In the first place, compensations must be distinguished for performances which are accidental to sacred actions, or which are joined with them almost as a chalice with consecration. Such are singing, exterior pomp of Mass, the exterior apparatus of a sacred ceremony, the obligation of celebrating at a later hour, in a distant or inconvenient place, the very obligation of celebrating in a definite place or of acting as chaplain; compensation for use of sacred furnishings. For unless they are already owed from elsewhere by office, or unless the Church forbids certain things, as it forbids anything to be sought for the obligation of celebrating at a privileged altar, all these things can be exchanged for a price.

Yet the Church is accustomed, in order to remove every appearance of trafficking or cupidity of base gain, to impose upon these external adjuncts a legal price defined by custom or by competent authority. He who exacts anything beyond that just price is a violator of justice. Is he also simoniacal? Not a few think so. "The excess," say Ball.-Palm. II, 465, "is judged to be exacted for the spiritual thing and therefore involves simony." But this, at most, will be a presumption of the external forum. In the internal forum the mind of the agent must be considered. Nor do we think that he who at the same time asks what he could and what was too much is moved by an intention diverse in itself (cf. Lehmkuhl, I, 534).

3. Concerning stipends, etc., for the sacred thing itself. Setting aside every accessory extrinsic labor or expense to be compensated, it is indubitable among Catholics that stipends, taxes, offerings, according to approved usages, can be given and received without the sin of simony, since the Church cannot err in those things which, pertaining to the order of faith or morals, she herself does or approves. And in c. 730 an express declaration is read: "Simony is not had when a temporal thing is given not for a spiritual thing but on its occasion, from a just title recognized by the sacred canons or by legitimate custom." In this canon the words "not for a spiritual thing" are to be understood as if you said, not by way of exchange with a spiritual thing, or, as St. Thomas says (2, 2, q. 100, art. 1, c.), not by compensating a spiritual thing with an earthly price (cf. Ball.-Palm. II, 401). Nor can intrinsic labor itself, or labor inseparable from the sacred action, be compensated by a price, because, since the work as such has not been hired, the labor itself is estimated only from the value of the fruit or work, which is spiritual.

Now there is a question concerning the better explanation of a thing which is established as honorable. Not a few judge the same to be laborious and difficult. We rather adhere to Ballerini-Palmieri saying, II, 403: "And the question, thus proposed, namely concerning the stipend which is owed to the worker, is sufficiently plain and free from difficulty."

We think that this question must be resolved thus.

By the witness of St. Paul, in 1 Cor. 9:7-14, even in the New Testament the Lord conferred upon one exercising sacred ministries a just title of sustenance: "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 for those who announce the Gospel to live from the Gospel." Therefore, just as civil society owes congruous sustenance to those who discharge public offices, not otherwise the spiritual society or Church must feed those whom she herself deputes to the exercise of sacred ministries. But the supreme civil power defines the mode by which congruous sustenance comes to its officials: to some, for instance judges, it pays from the treasury a just annual pension; to others, for instance notaries, it grants a right of exacting stipends for acts to which they add public faith. And in a not dissimilar ratio, the ecclesiastical Legislator, who confers sacred offices pertaining to the Church, orders the mode by which provision is made for the congruous sustenance of sacred ministers. This mode has varied historically. Today it provides for that sustenance both through revenues of benefices, and through stole fees and various offerings, if there is question of pastors, and through Mass stipends and taxes and mutual performances of this kind.

Moreover that every stain of simony is absent from those performances is thus easily demonstrated. The dominion of God is not violated, since God Himself permits that the minister share with the altar and live from the Gospel; nothing is done against gratuity commanded by God, since the Lord Himself permits the correlative obligation of ministries and stipends or offerings, as is made manifest from the same sacred text. Therefore of the three malices which above, n. 278, we said were present in simony, the third, i.e., equation of a spiritual and temporal thing, which alone remains, is itself removed if, as Suarez says, Rel. tr. 3, L. 4, c. 46, money is given not by reason of the thing but by reason of the subject, i.e., it is not given as a price to be commensurated or commensurable with the ministry or labor of the worker, but "to the condition of the person needing a congruous sustenance proportionate to himself and to the family belonging to him, as is sufficiently clear of itself" (ibid.).

The proposed explanation squares perfectly with the conditions of c. 730. Let us recall the words of the canon. "The temporal thing is not given for a spiritual thing," insofar as no exchange of thing with thing is made, no "convention for a temporal thing under the ratio of price" (Suarez, l. c.). "By comparison of thing to thing," the Eximious Doctor thus continues, ibidem n. 10, "each gives and receives gratuitously, because he does not give one thing for another." - "But on its occasion." Insofar as the obligation undertaken by the sacred minister, for example of saying Mass, is not the juridic cause of the offering (cf. below, in the treatise on justice, the notion of juridic cause); nor is the money given to the priest the juridic cause of the priest's obligation. The juridic cause of the obligation, on the part of the priest, is an office either simply to be exercised because of an office undertaken, for example of pastor, or conditionally to be exercised when a stipend has been received, when there is question of the application of a Mass not yet owed; and the juridic cause of the offering, on the part of the faithful offerer, is the prescribed or spontaneous fulfillment of the office of feeding the one ministering to him. "Each," says Suarez, l. c., "from the debt of justice exhibits that which is of his office; for the very equity of justice demands that if one, from office or convention or by reason of stipend, is obligated from justice to minister, the other from the same debt of justice is obligated to feed the one ministering to him." - "From a just title": i.e., of congruous sustenance, which St. Thomas and all indicate. - "Recognized by the sacred canons or by legitimate custom." For just as in civil society itself, the power which confers an office at the same time defines taxatively the mode of recompense, so it pertains to ecclesiastical law to define on what occasion, within what limits, a stipend of sustenance is to be paid. Hence St. Thomas permits a stipend for the sustenance of those "who minister the sacraments of Christ" according to the ordinance of the Church and approved customs.

Thus far concerning stipends properly so called. Moreover, the explanation of offerings is the same. Concerning the taxes themselves, this alone is specially to be noted: that they are demanded under a varied ratio: by way of sustenance of the burdens of the Pontificate, by way of a fine to be applied to a pious cause, by way of commutation, just as vows are commuted into alms (St. Alphonsus, L. 3, n. 96); and, we add this, so that a rich alms may supply a cause for dispensation which otherwise could be absent.

¹ Remuneration of service performed has the generic name of stipend, which was first used of military recompense. If the cause was not the value of the grace conferred or of the service performed, but the sustenance of the agent, it is called a stipend of sustenance (Suarez, De Relig., Tr. 3, L. 4, c. 46).

Corollaries. 1. Gratuity is twofold: one which excludes only price, the other which excludes even a stipend of sustenance. The former is commended by the Lord saying (St. Matt. 10:8), "Freely you have received, freely give"; and at the same time thus instructing the disciples whom He was sending: "Remain in the same house, eating and drinking the things that are with them: for the worker is worthy of his wage" (St. Luke 10:7). These words not obscurely signify a stipend of sustenance. We are taught by canon 730 that this gratuity can suffice for excluding simony. And the people themselves, in common speech, acknowledge this gratuity, when they call Mass stipends by the name of alms. The Apostle ascribes a fuller gratuity to himself in the place cited above, 1 Cor. 9:7, and also when, 2 Cor. 11:7, he says, "I have preached the Gospel to you freely"; and the Church commands the same, when she excludes every stipend from sacred ordination, or when c. 552, §2, orders that the will of a girl be explored freely before the novitiate and before profession.

Moreover, because a sacred minister as such has the right to live from the Gospel, even a rich man can exact stipends.

2. When an act of sacred ministry is not already owed from justice, for instance application of Mass, there is added a contract which, when there is question of Mass, or of a foundation (c. 1514, §2), takes on the form of a contract do ut facias, because first, formally or equivalently, the stipend is given before the obligation of applying the Mass is undertaken. With the just title of sustenance and the general obligation of justice of feeding the priest presupposed, that convention is lawful: an agreement is lawfully made concerning a thing owed from justice. But that agreement does not create a title of justice as to substance, but confirms it and makes it actually exigible, by more determining, within the limits permitted by the Church, the person of the celebrant, the person paying the stipend, time, mode, intention, and the very quantity of the stipend. As Suarez says, Rel. tr. 3, L. 4, c. 46, n. 10: "through the pact a new obligation is not added, but that which is present is explained and declared." Bonacina, De Simonia, Q. VI, Punct. 2, has similar things.

3. This is also the advantage of the given explanation: that, with every dissimulation or far-fetched subtlety removed, we can profess the true intentions of the one paying the stipend and of the priest receiving it, such as they are in reality, or are perceived to be at first sight. What does the faithful ask? the application of Mass. What does the priest promise? the application of Mass. What is the means of obtaining it? the given stipend. Is the stipend paid, is the application done, for money? Distinguish: as a price, I deny; as a stipend of sustenance, I concede. This distinction belongs to St. Thomas himself: "the priest does not receive money as a price of the consecration of the Eucharist... but as a stipend of his sustenance," 2, 2, q. 100, art. 2 ad 2. The same distinction is used by Bonacina, De Sacramentis, Disp. 4, Q. VIII, Punct. VIII, n. 2. And does not the sacred text itself, when it permits, l. c., that the one announcing the Gospel live from the Gospel, manifestly affirm that it is lawful that something temporal be received for the very Gospel by way of stipend of sustenance?

4. Why, although individual stipends of Masses are accustomed to be a modest sum of money, is there nevertheless a grave obligation of saying individual Masses? For us the ratio is at hand: the will of the Church, which obliges the priest under grave obligation so that, having accepted the stipend, he exercise his priestly office of offering the sacred rite.

5. Sacred ministries, which are in the dominion of God, are committed to the Church to be dispensed and administered. Therefore in ministries on whose occasion the Church does not permit a stipend, the condition divinely required is lacking so that stipends may be honestly sought. Wherefore, although even then the malice of equation of a temporal thing with a spiritual thing is absent, nevertheless the two other malices which enter into the sin of simony are not lacking: usurped dominion of God; violated gratuitous intention of Him. For this reason we judge a priest guilty of simony of divine law who accepts a stipend for a bination Mass, or for the administration of penance or of another ministry which he ought to perform altogether freely.

Therefore St. Thomas, 2, 2, q. 100, art. 3 ad 2, logically distinguishing the poor from deputed ministers, attributes to these alone a right of stipend of sustenance; but he excuses the money which the poor accept so that they may pour forth prayers only because it is judged to have been given under title of gratuitous beneficence. "Those who give alms to the poor so that they may obtain the suffrages of prayers from them, do not give under that tenor as if intending to buy prayers; but through gratuitous beneficence they provoke the minds of the poor to this, that they may pray for them freely and from charity."

Scholia. 1. Concerning other opinions. The proposed opinion we have copied almost word for word from Suarez; it also perfectly agrees with the mind and words of St. Thomas. It is also contained in these few words of Lehmkuhl, I, 534: "Simony and indeed of divine law is to say Mass for money... Yet to accept stipends for Masses... is not simony, because a just title of sustenance is present. (For if something is given as a price, an equation of the thing performed with the price given is made; and this is absent if something is bestowed under title of sustenance; then, namely, the thing performed or the labor expended gives occasion of repaying something, which must in no way be taken as an equivalent.)"

Far otherwise, not a few, after Laymann, Theol. mor., L. IV, tr. X, c. ult., n. 13, who nevertheless, we wish this to be noted, does not impose that explanation as necessary but adds it to the opinion of Suarez by the words "Nevertheless it can be explained otherwise," thought that to excuse stipends they had subtly to seek in the very agreement with the priest or sacred minister something which can be bought by a price properly so called. That this was sought by them in vain seems to us to have been well demonstrated by R. P. de la Taille in Gregorianum, 1923, Les offrandes de messe^†, p. 358 ff. And even omitting this, an explanation of this kind cannot be approved by us: a) because it falsely supposes that money can be given only either gratuitously or as a price, and thus removes from the middle the title of sustenance, which, appealed to by the princes of theology, is not unknown even in civil society, as the distinction itself commonly used in vernacular languages between the words honorarium and salary proves; b) because in the case no exchange is present. For in exchange two things are compared with one another, whereas here the estimation is made from the common necessity of food (cf. Ball.-Palm., II, 461, end); c) because that fictitious commutative contract limps ¹, since the grave obligation of one application of Mass is not fitted to the light matter of one stipend. Wherefore not a few supporters of the opinion which we disapprove denied the very gravity of the obligation. Palmieri, in the note to IV, 1012, admits the difficulty; and, no otherwise than Bucceroni, Theol. mor., III, 621, finally and at last has recourse to the precept of the Church, so that in some way they come near to our opinion; d) because it is with difficulty composed with c. 730. The canon requires a title approved by the Church. But if in reality in the promise of the priest there is present an element which, according to itself, is exchangeable for a price, the positive recognition of the title by the Church becomes superfluous, which recognition nevertheless the canon requires. And it would have to be said in like manner in every sacred performance, whether it is promised by a deputed minister or by a private person. But this would lead us to conclusions practically impossible.

The things which we have said above suffice so that the stain of simony is absent from every stipend. Yet our explanation by no means excludes a special explanation concerning some performance of a sacred thing, for instance concerning the application of Mass. R. P. de la Taille, calling upon the historical view of sacrifices, thought a special and not inelegant explanation concerning Mass stipends should be proposed both in the recent and already celebrated work Mysterium Fidei, and in Gregorianum, 1923: that modern stipends perform the role of the offerings which formerly the faithful brought to the altar, and which, since at least in part they were converted into the Body and Blood of Christ and sustained the priest, no otherwise than the victims of the Old Testament, were judged to be offered to God by the priest as the mandatary of the offerer, and by God were given to the priests. This solution of the question was received with great applause by R. P. Beauduin, O.S.B., in Les Questions liturgiques et paroissiales, 1922, pp. 178-195; and indeed, far from every simony, it best preserves the ratio of the title of sustenance. We abstain here from a historical examination of the matter, since it is not necessary for our end. We observe only that this explanation cannot be proposed as universal, since through it the ratio cannot be given of a stipend which a non-Catholic offers to obtain the application of Mass, since not even through a priest can an infidel offer the sacrifice of the Mass; or of stole fees, which today nevertheless do not seem capable of being denied to be owed from justice, with attention to c. 463, §1, and c. 1410, by which they can also constitute the dowry of a benefice.

3. Through the faithful who pay a stipend, the ecclesiastical Legislator fulfills, at least in part, the obligation of justice of sustaining sacred ministers. Therefore under this respect those faithful can be said to be as it were mandataries of the Church in paying stipends. Things stand thus as if the Church receives stipends or other offerings, and then gives them to priests or sacred ministers. Therefore just as formerly she divided the common mass of goods through the hands of bishops among priests or sacred ministers, the poor, and churches, so now, even by means of stipends, she permits sacred ministers the direct reception of a congruous part of sustenance. And just as habitual reception of revenues is often connected with the obligation of saying several Masses, so accidental reception of money is connected with the accidental office of feeding, through the celebration of Mass, him or those for whom the Mass is to be offered. "Therefore the priest accepting a separate stipend represents the Church, which assigns to him the office of applying from justice, just as she permits Ordinaries, by accepting perpetual foundations, to constitute in the name of the Church a more stable office of applying Masses."

¹ In his learned and very useful historical-juridical study whose title is Stipendia Missarum, Prof. Vincentius Del Giudice, in c. 5, n. 5 ff., nevertheless weighing the matter more juridically than morally, demonstrates that every contract of exchange is impossible. He himself, however, n. 10, has recourse to mandate.

Applications. 1. In our opinion, simony of divine law is committed by exacting some temporal price for a sacred ministry if the title has not been recognized by the Church, even if the cause of sustenance is alleged.

2. Admission into religion is a spiritual performance, which therefore excludes a temporal price. Yet the Church in a universal mode permits that in Congregations of religious women a dowry of sustenance be exacted; indeed, in Monasteries of Nuns, the dowry must be exacted (c. 547). That the expenses of postulancy and novitiate can be compensated is clear of itself, since postulants or novices have acquired no right to the goods of the religion. A needy religion can also exact that from which a new professed can be fed. But if it has been opulent, the religious themselves have a right to be fed, so that by exacting compensation for food at least simony of ecclesiastical law would be committed; indeed, according to St. Thomas (4 S. d. 25, q. 3, art. 2, quaestiuncula 2 ad 7), simony of divine law. Yet this is controverted.

3. Mass legacies and foundations themselves cannot, contrary to what Wernz thought, Ius Decret. VI, 344, be made honest through a donation under a mode or condition. For that mode, considered in itself, as Del Giudice, Stipendia Missarum, c. 5, n. 9, very well observes, does not differ at all from the ordinary obligation. Therefore when it is constituted in favor of the giver or of another person and by the one burdened himself, the necessary gratuity for avoiding simony would be lacking, unless the explanation by the title of sustenance of sacred ministers, permitted by God and recognized by the Church, could be appealed to here also.

He is not simoniacal who is moved by a stipend to celebrate; - who redeems relics lest they perish or be profaned; - who removes by money an unjust vexation contrary to his own election, unless at the same time he wishes to obtain the positive help of the same person; - who by money entices another to exercise acts of piety or religion or of another virtue.

Yet, unless there is danger in delay, the Ordinary must be admonished concerning relics which stand for sale, so that he himself may provide. Cf. decree of Dec. 21, 1878, apud Ball.-Palm., Op. theol. II, n. 475, and c. 1289.

4. What must be said about poor persons who pour forth certain prayers for a fixed price, perform novena devotions for the intention of those paying?

Although neither here is there a properly so called equation of spiritual and temporal thing, nevertheless, because the poor exercise no spiritual ministry which confers upon them a title of sustenance, that usage, as is said in the place already alleged, 2, 2, q. 100, art. 3 ad 2, must be made honest by attributing to the donors the intention of gratuitous beneficence, under hope of the spiritual assistance of prayers. The promise of the poor person then can oblige only his fidelity.

But those who judge that the burden of an undertaken obligation can be compensated by money will not be alien from admitting a true agreement.

You ask to whom it pertains to define stipends and taxes.

1. a) The stipend of Masses is defined by the local Ordinary or, in the absence of his decree, by the custom of the diocese (c. 831). No priest, even an exempt religious, can exact more; yet more spontaneously offered can be accepted, and, unless the Ordinary has prohibited it, even less (c. 832).

b) Bishops, not Capitular Vicars nor, without mandate, Vicars General, define, even for exempt religious, the stipend which a poor church can exact from priests celebrating in it for their own advantage because of utensils and the other things necessary for Mass. The definition must be made in synod, or the chapter must be heard (cf. c. 1303).

2. a) Local Ordinaries compose for their territory, by counsel of the cathedral chapter, a list of funeral taxes or alms; nor can anything be exacted beyond it (cc. 1234, 1235).

b) For various acts of voluntary jurisdiction, or for the execution of rescripts of the Apostolic See, or on the occasion of the ministration of sacraments or sacramentals, the taxes to be paid in the whole ecclesiastical province are defined by the provincial Council or meeting of the bishops of the province; but these predefinitions are not valid unless they have first been approved by the Apostolic See (c. 1507).

Yet the tax for execution of a rescript which the Holy See itself is accustomed to establish in rescripts given in commissory form can always be exacted. But can this tax be accumulated with the tax of the provincial Council? Of itself, negatively; but the more useful can be chosen. Yet this must be gathered from the very tenor of the approved provincial taxation.

c) The taxation for judicial acts is defined by the provincial Council or meeting of the bishops of the province (c. 1909).