Article III: On Clerics

Various Goods of Clerics. Various goods fall to clerics:

1. By a profane title: whether by inheritance, or by donation or legacy, or by profane labor or industry. Those goods are called patrimonial, and they are subject to no peculiar rule.

2. By title of a permanent sacred office, and this in two ways: a) either they are the revenues of a stable benefice. Concerning these c. 1473 has this: "Although a beneficiary should have other goods that are not beneficial, he can freely use and enjoy the beneficial fruits which are necessary for his honorable support; but he is held by the obligation of expending the superfluous for the poor or pious causes, with the prescription of c. 239, § 1, n. 19 preserved." By this prescription, Cardinals obtain, from privilege, the free disposition of those fruits, with sacred furnishings excepted, which they must give to a pious place or to a religious or ecclesiastical person, unless they prefer (those who have domicile in the City) that they yield in fact to the pontifical sacristy. Cf. c. 1298.

Nevertheless, it is not established that the obligation is of justice. Wherefore the cleric indeed sins gravely against religion who badly expends a quantity much greater than is required for grave theft; but neither is he himself bound to restitution; and those who, without deceit or unjust means, receive those goods from one distributing badly, are easily also immune from mortal sin. You will find the question set forth at length in Carrière, De iustitia et iure, I, 153-176.

b) Or they are oblations which are called curial rights or rights of stole. These are owed, for example, to the pastor as pastor, for baptism, marriage, funerals, although he did not intervene in them (c. 463, § 3). Concerning these, below.

3. By title of an exercised sacred function: they are stipends. Although the Church has the right of obliging a cleric that superfluous goods be destined to pious uses, it has not instituted this obligation. And choral distributions are equated to stipends.

4. By reason of parsimony. Goods thus obtained, as fruits of personal industry, are assimilated to patrimonial goods.

Goods obtained by oblations and stipends are called casual goods (although there is not one use of the word).

To which genus of goods, therefore, must the rights of stole be ascribed? The opinion more received today assimilates them to quasi-patrimonial goods (Carrière, I, n. 182).

Now, however, it must be observed that by force of c. 1410, through the rights of stole, and also, if all revenues of the benefice consist in choral distributions, through two parts of the distributions, the dowry of the benefice can be constituted. But if this is done, they are then shown to put on the character of ecclesiastical goods. Hence the question arises whether or not the superfluous goods of the dowry so constituted must be applied to the poor or pious causes, no otherwise than the beneficial revenues of goods whose ownership is in the juridical entity itself. If you consider the general words of c. 1473, commanding, without another distinction, that beneficial fruits superfluous to support be expended for the poor or pious causes, you will affirm the obligation; but if, on the other hand, you consider that up to this point, before the erection of the benefice, those same goods were acquired fully by the rectors without this burden, and that elsewhere, e.g. in Belgium and in France, from the very responses of the S. Penitentiary of 19 Jan. 1819 and 9 Aug. 1821, these things pass into the free dominion of pastors, you will conclude that that question cannot be well solved without the authority of the Holy See. (For the responses cf. Carrière, De iustitia et iure, I, 194.) - Much more will this intervention be necessary if the diocesan Prelate wishes that those superfluous goods be assigned by pastors to an end which he has defined. Thus, in more than one Apostolic Vicariate, rights of stole have been accustomed to be computed into the annual sum which the Apostolic Vicar must allot to missionaries for their support.

In Belgium (and formerly in France) and in the parts of Holland which in the year 1801 (of the Concordat) pertained to France, the annual salaries which are paid by the Government to bishops, canons, and pastors (even those who are called succursalistae) represent the fruits of a benefice and are ruled by their law (cf. resp. Paenit. 19 Jan. 1819; 9 Aug. 1821). But by that law there are not ruled the annual sums which are paid to vice-pastors, since these do not have a benefice - (thus De Brabandere against Marres) - nor supplements which are sometimes added by municipalities or parishes to the annual pension; nor pensions which are assigned to sacred ministers after they have discharged their office: for they do not regard sacred functions. (Cf. Génicot-Salsmans, I, 475 note 1; Aertnijs-Damen, I, 663 Q. 5, who thinks differently about supplements.)

Counsel. Of itself it is fitting that clerics destine to pious works whatever remains to them of emoluments which they have obtained from sacred functions or on their occasion. Cf. Lehmk., I, 1072 note, p. 607, who is lengthy in handling the whole question, n. 1072-1075.

On Oblations. Monies collected for a certain end or handed into boxes must be applied to that end. Oblations freely made by the faithful in the territory of a pastor and in the place subject to him (therefore not in the churches of regulars, seminaries, etc.) are presumed to have been conceded to pastors. Today, however, the intention of the faithful, from sufficiently common practice, seems rather to be that only oblations made during Mass at the altar, or for certain ministries, should fall to the pastor. Cf. De Meester, Juris can. Comp. II, n. 836, 837.

The taxes prevailing from legitimate custom are owed by the faithful on the occasion of the administration of the sacraments. The pastor has the right of demanding them, even if he himself did not perform the office by himself, yet in such a way that he does not deny gratuitous ministry to those who are not solvent (c. 463). "Those refusing are to be punished by the prudent judgment of the Ordinary until they have satisfied" (c. 2349).