Scholion. On Common Life

I. Notion. Common life, taken in the formal sense, seems to consist in this, that individual religious receive equally, from common goods alone held in common, with the license of the rule or of Superiors, all and only those things which they need here and now.

II. Division. Common life is distinguished as twofold, perfect and imperfect, according as it excludes or permits some peculium, as it is called. With regard to peculium note:

1. A peculium is a good capable of being valued by price which, separated from the things of the monastery, religious are permitted to possess, administer, and keep for their own uses, beyond what their present necessity morally requires.

2. A peculium is twofold, namely of perfect or imperfect right. It is of perfect right if the permission, once given from the beginning for spending goods on one's own uses, can no longer be taken away by the superior. It is of imperfect right if the faculty of disposing can always be circumscribed or taken away by the Superior.

III. Obligation of common life. The obligation of common life does not subsist by divine law, since a sufficient abdication of temporal goods can be had without it, as is clear from the example of the ancient hermits and from the nature of the thing. By present ecclesiastical law there exists an obligation of common life, and indeed of perfect common life (can. 594; cf. can. 2389).

Question 1. Does a defect of common life, at least of perfect common life, or the use of an imperfect peculium, persist from custom and by way of privilege for some religions (cf. can. 5)?

The matter seems doubtful;¹ whatever the case, however, with all agreeing, the mind of the Church is that perfectly common life be introduced where it does not exist. But Superiors who would introduce the use of a peculium, even only an imperfect one, would certainly sin gravely, both because ecclesiastical law excludes it, and because the use of a peculium gives occasion to abuses and is usually very harmful to religious discipline (St. Alphonsus IV, 15; Homo Apostolicus, tract 13, n. 6).

Question 2. Is the obligation of common life included in the vow of poverty itself?

Response. Affirmatively, at least with regard to the exclusion of a perfect peculium, as is clear from the very common doctrine which teaches that acts against common life are against the vow.

Question 3. Is moderate use, or a poor and uniform life, prescribed by the vow of poverty?

Response. With common law considered, it is disputed (cf. can. 594); therefore it is better to have recourse to the particular discipline of individual institutes.

¹ Cf. Vermeersch, Epitome, I, n. 696; Chelodi, De personis, p. 430.