Use of the fruits of a benefice

Although the beneficiary may have other property besides what is derived from his benefice, he can freely use and enjoy the fruits of his benefice which are necessary for his decent support; but he is bound by the obligation of spending what remains over on the poor or on pious causes, but a Cardinal can dispose even by will of all the fruits of his benefice (Can. 1473).

If a cleric violates this precept and disposes of what remains over in other ways, he sins against obedience but probably not against justice, so that there is no obligation to restore what has been disposed of against ecclesiastical law.

I. Question I. Does a Beneficiary who omits the divine office in the first six months sin mortally with the burden of restitution? Answer. He who omits the Canonical Hours after six months have elapsed is bound, according to all, to restore the fruits corresponding to the omissions of those days on which the office was omitted — either wholly, or in part, for a proportionate share. If Matins with Lauds are omitted, half the fruits of that day; if all the other Hours, the other half; and for each single Hour, a sixth part; and for the whole office omitted, all the fruits of that day must be restored, as St. Pius V declared. This is to be understood of culpable omission, legitimate impediment being absent.

II. Of omission within the first six months, Soto, Suárez, Medina, Grassi, and several others defend that the Beneficiary sins mortally, and is bound to restitution. On the contrary, Navarrus, Toletus, Lessius, Castropalao, the Salmanticenses, and others concede indeed that this Beneficiary sins mortally, but deny that he is bound to restitution. Because, they say, the Lateran Council and St. Pius V define that he who omits the office within the first six months indeed sins mortally, but make no mention of restitution. Formerly I openly showed myself inclined to this second opinion. Yet in the same place I observed that the restitution of fruits proceeds from commutative justice. For ecclesiastical law declares that to which divine law binds Beneficiaries, who, omitting to discharge their own duties, sin against God and against the Christian people. Although the Council and St. Pius V make no mention of restitution for the first six months, it cannot for that reason be evidently inferred that Beneficiaries omitting the office within this interval are exempt from the burden of restitution, which arises from divine law. Wherefore, since the matter is doubtful, the safer part must be chosen, and, with the former opinion, it must be said that this Beneficiary is subject to restitution. For what is to be presumed of such a Beneficiary, who profanes even the very beginnings of his benefice with shameful deeds? Just as he sins more gravely, so he must be more severely punished, and struck with the penalty of restitution.

III. Question II. A Beneficiary who, six months having elapsed, omits to recite the office without fault — is he bound to restitution? Answer. In corporal matters, the obligation of restitution arises not only from unjust acquisition, but chiefly from the thing acquired. But in restitution arising from spiritual law this title has no place. Wherefore he who omits the office without fault is free from restitution. And this is gathered from the very constitution of St. Pius V, in which the Beneficiary is obliged to restitution who, legitimate impediment being absent, has not said, etc.

IV. Some teach that a Beneficiary who should omit the office for one or another day is not bound to restitution; nay, some of them extend the omission to eight days. But this opinion is altogether without probability, since it is evidently contrary to the constitution of St. Pius V, saying: "Whoever shall have omitted all the Canonical Hours for one or several days." A Beneficiary who omits one entire Hour is bound to restitution, as is established from the cited Pian constitution. Nay, one who should neglect a notable part of an Hour, since he would sin mortally and would not have recited the Hour, would have to restore the fruits corresponding to that entire Hour.

V. Question III. A Beneficiary who should omit a light part in each Hour — would he be subject to restitution? Answer. The Salmanticenses deny it, even though such light omissions taken together would constitute a grave sin. But this opinion is false to me. As often as a Beneficiary omits such a part of the office as suffices for a mortal sin, so often is he bound to restore the part corresponding to the omission.

VI. Question IV. One who today omits the office, and tomorrow recites a double office — is he bound to restitution? Answer. The Salmanticenses and others deny it. Because, they say, just as a Chaplain omitting Mass today satisfies if he afterwards celebrates two, so too if he afterwards recites the omitted office. The Beneficiary sinned, they say, against the precept of daily recitation, but not against the precept of restitution, since he compensates the omitted office with another office. This opinion is false to me: since the Church commands the restitution of fruits, and has declared that one who today omits the office does not make the fruits his own. If he does not make the fruits his own, he is bound to restore them. He who has acquired the gross income of a Canonry, as they call it, or certain revenues, if he omits the office, is bound to restitution, whatever the Salmanticenses say to the contrary. Because although a Canon acquires, and by right possesses, the revenues, yet this acquisition and possession is burdened with the duty of restitution, if the recitation of the office is omitted. For it makes no difference whether these fruits are received before or after the recitation. For these fruits are always burdened with the debt of reciting the office. Therefore, when the debt of the office is not paid, restitution must be made.

VII. Question V. Must the aforesaid restitution be made before the judge's sentence? Answer. The Theologians, even the more benign, commonly affirm it. The reason is evident. Those who omit the office do not make the fruits their own, as the law of the Church has defined. But no one can rightly retain what is not his own. Wherefore Alexander VII deservedly proscribed the following thesis: Restitution imposed by Pius V on Beneficiaries not reciting the office is not owed in conscience before the declaratory sentence of the judge, since it is a penalty. These Beneficiaries, then, are bound to restore the fruits unjustly received.

VIII. Question VI. A Beneficiary reciting the office without any attention — is he bound to restore? Answer. Some deny it. But the opposite opinion, and the more common, is more probable. For he who deliberately recites the Canonical Hours with a distracted mind does not fulfill the precept of recitation, just as the precept of annual confession is not fulfilled by a sacrilegious confession: therefore the precept of restitution presses, just as if the office had been omitted. But those who, stained with mortal sin, recite with an attentive mind, fulfill the precept, and are bound to restore nothing.

IX. Question VII. A Beneficiary with cure of souls who omits the Canonical Hours — is he bound to restore all the fruits of the benefice, or only the fruits corresponding to the omitted recitation? Answer. Several patrons of a more benign Ethics defend that only the part of the fruits corresponding to the omitted Hours must be restored. But the graver Theologians defend the affirming opinion, relying on the Pian constitution which says: Whoever shall have omitted all the Canonical Hours for one or several days shall forfeit all the fruits of the benefice or benefices which correspond to that day or those days. Let us suppose the hypothesis that St. Pius V wished to declare that the Beneficiary must restore all the fruits of the benefice — could he have used clearer words? Therefore these are bound to restore all the fruits of the benefice or benefices, both those corresponding to the recitation and those corresponding to other ministries. There is added that restitution would be too arbitrary, according to the authors of the opposite opinion, if it were left to the discretion of each Parish priest and Beneficiary. For if each Beneficiary had to separate out and retain those fruits that correspond to other ministries, and restore only the rest, restitution corresponding to the omitted recitation would scarcely ever occur, and would come to nothing. Wherefore, all things weighed in an equal balance, this second opinion is more probable.

X. Question VIII. One who recites one office in place of another — is he bound to restitution? Answer. He who voluntarily recites one office in place of another — for instance, of a Saint when it should be of the Feria — does not fulfill the precept, because this precept must be fulfilled according to the form prescribed by the Church. Now he who does not fulfill the precept is subject to restitution. The opposite opinion is included, in my easy judgment, in the condemned proposition which said that one office avails in place of another.

XI. Question IX. To whom must restitution be made — to the fabric fund, or to the poor? Answer. The answer is plain from the Pian constitution commanding that Beneficiaries must lay out these unjustly received fruits either upon the fabric of their own benefices, or upon alms for the poor. It is in the liberty of the Beneficiary omitting the office, then, to restore the unjustly received fruits either to the fabric fund or to the poor. Under the name of fabric come the house, the fields, the revenues of the benefice, or the Church itself to be repaired — but not the churches of another benefice. Of the poor the constitution decides nothing. Yet natural reason dictates that the poor of the Locality be preferred to poor strangers. The circumstances of greater poverty must nevertheless be regarded. If the Beneficiary who must restore is himself truly poor, he can, in good faith, apply some part of the fruits to himself as a poor man. In this matter, however, the Beneficiary ought to consult a pious and prudent man, because avaricious cupidity, innate in all, easily feigns poverty where it does not exist. The Beneficiary must also apply to himself only a part of the fruits, in proportion to his greater or lesser poverty, as one truly poor — not that he may become richer or more comfortable, but only that he may succor his own poverty; otherwise he deceives himself. False to me is the opinion of those who teach that this Beneficiary can apply the fruits to be restored to sisters, to brothers, to a mother, not only if they are beggars, but even if they lack what is necessary for the decency of their person or state. This doctrine being admitted, scarcely will a case be given in which either the fabric of benefices or the poor receive anything: for the decency of a mother, sisters, and brothers scarcely admits of limits. The Theologians teach, besides, that fruits of this kind can be laid out in suffrage for the dead. I say that the fruits must be laid out upon the poor on this condition: that they pour out prayers for the souls of Purgatory. By this arrangement the law is more securely observed.

XII. Some dispute whether a Beneficiary can retain fruits given to him by the poor, before he has conferred such fruits upon them. The Beneficiary has promised the fruits to be restored to this or that poor person; before the poor receive the fruits, they give them to the Beneficiary. If the gift is made before the delivery of the fruits, they do not dare to assert that the retention is licit; but if it is made after the delivery of the fruits, then some assert it is valid. These are questions unknown to the ancient Fathers. If the poor are truly such, how can they give away the subsidy which they themselves need? This question is futile.

XIII. Question X. Can the restitution of fruits be supplied by alms made by the Beneficiary before he omitted the Canonical prayers? Answer. Leander affirms it, and for this his opinion cites Suárez, Pellizzari, Pasqualigo, Laymann, and Busembaum. This opinion is contained in this thesis condemned by Alexander VII: Restitution of fruits for the omission of the Hours can be supplied by whatever alms the Beneficiary has previously made from the fruits of his benefice. Fr. Viva, in his commentaries on this proposition, number 9, strives to defend Fr. Suárez's doctrine from the condemned thesis. With what happy success he achieves this, let others judge. Fr. Viva teaches several other things there which seem lax to me, because they take out of the way the precept of the Lateran constitution and of St. Pius V. Read Tome 2 on the Decalogue, book 2, chapter 8, question 16, number 29. A Beneficiary who, with no regard to his debt of restitution, bestows alms, gives liberally. But by a liberal and gratuitous donation what is owed from justice is not paid.

XIV. Question XI. Is a pensioner bound to restore the fruits of his pension proportionately, if he omits to recite the office? Answer. All affirm it. If the Beneficiary omits to pay the pension, the pensioner must urge him to pay — not that he may retain these fruits for himself when the Beneficiary omits the office, but that he may lay them out upon the creditors, namely the poor, or upon the fabric of the benefice. Nor can the Beneficiary absolutely refuse payment of the pension to the pensioner who does not recite: since the Beneficiary is a debtor, not a judge.

I. Certain authors — I know not who, that I may use the words of Paul Comitolus, a most elegant and most learned Jesuit — have endeavoured to bring into the Christian commonwealth, after a thousand five hundred years, a new and perilous opinion, by which they attribute to those who obtain ecclesiastical benefices an absolute dominion of the fruits perceived therefrom. Which opinion assuredly is stabbed by its very novelty. The opinion which defends that ecclesiastics are bound by the bond of justice to distribute superfluous things to the poor is of its own nature perspicuous, propped by the prescription of fifteen centuries, fortified by the authority of Councils, canons, holy Fathers, and Pontiffs, and by unconquered weights of reasons.

II. Although, that at the outset I may unteach beneficiaries, the opinion of the younger authors avails them little, nay nothing. For it is agreed among all, both theologians and canonists, that the precept of charity urges ecclesiastics under the interdict of eternal damnation to the almsgiving of superfluous things. But that they descend into eternal fire on account of a precept violated, whether of justice or of charity — what, I ask, does it profit them, as Dominic Soto, Bellarmine, and the other theologians advert? Hence it is that I shall despatch this controversy in few words. I should fill a volume if I wished to transcribe hither all the testimonies of the Fathers and Councils which call those beneficiaries thieves, robbers, savage plunderers, who squander the patrimonies of Jesus Christ and of his poor in fostering luxury, ambition, and display, in enriching blood-relations, in making gifts to little matrons, in frequenting theatres, comedies, and games, in feeding dogs. These things are obvious and well known.

III. The most learned Pontiff Benedict XIV in his Diocesan Synod, page 154, no. 5, writes these things: It is likewise certain that, before the said division of ecclesiastical goods, a bishop, to whom the administration of the same belonged, ought to have bestowed faithfully the part assigned to individuals, and could not without a violation of commutative justice defraud the poor of that fourth part of the proceeds which according to the discipline of that age was destined for the relieving of the needs of the poor; which burden indeed, flowing from that virtue of justice, still even now lies in those places in which the aforesaid division has not yet been made, upon bishops, abbots, and other beneficiaries, with whose ecclesiastical revenues those are mingled which were attributed to the poor, or to the fabric of the Church, according to the ancient institution. Wherefore if they have usurped anything from these for themselves, they are unjust detainers of another's property, and are bound to restitution.

IV. At present the goods of beneficiaries here are undivided. Therefore beneficiaries are bound by the bond of justice to distribute superfluous things to the poor. And in the first place, from the very beginning of the division carried out, the administration of the portion of the poor always remained with bishops and beneficiaries. Never was a portion of the ecclesiastical revenues assigned to the body of the poor. Never did the poor obtain the administration and dominion of their own portion. But bishops and beneficiaries, either by themselves or by the work of ministers, distributed this portion, which was now greater, now less, according to the greater or lesser abundance of revenues. This is evident from the decrees of very many Councils, which I have reported in Vol. I, dissertation 6, chapter 18. In several places the poor were described in the tables or registers of the Churches, and were called matricularii.

V. Hence it is clearly established how chimerical is the comment which the patrons of the opposite doctrine feign for themselves. These reckon that the ecclesiastical revenues are a certain living, stable, and permanent tribute, divided into four parts, and consisting down to the present time, obnoxious to no vicissitude. They reckon that the portion of the poor, drawn from the living stock and separated in fact, has come into the dominion of the poor. How vain that comment is, no one does not see. The ecclesiastical revenues at the beginning were committed to the trust of the bishops and possessed in common, and were divided by the bishops through the work of ministers to individuals as need was. Charity growing cold and the avarice of ecclesiastics prevailing, some bishops, the poor being neglected and the worship of the Churches and the clergy, converting the sacred proceeds to their own and their blood-relations' profane uses, swallowed all things down their own throats. Then by the decrees of Councils a partition of the sacred revenues was commanded. To the clergy and to the worship of the Church portions were separately consigned; but the portion of the poor, mingled with the goods of the beneficiaries, was taxed each year by the beneficiaries themselves and bestowed upon the poor. The sacred revenues were subject to those changes to which all temporal things are subject. In the course of time, according to the increase or decrease of the revenues which were daily conferred by the faithful of Christ, the portion of the poor grew or was diminished. From the first time of the division down to this our age innumerable benefices have been instituted — bishoprics, chaplaincies, and so forth. Most ample estates, farms, rent-charges, and vast goods have been given to the Churches. When was the portion of the poor deducted from these? What steward or dispenser, besides bishops and beneficiaries, was to be appointed? It is evident therefore that the portion of the poor has always and always again remained mingled with the goods of the beneficiaries.

VI. What we have said is confirmed by a most clear reason repeated from an evident fact. The Pontiffs, Councils, and Fathers of every century exalted their voices against bishops and beneficiaries, because they neglected to succour the poor. They always reproved them as dilapidators of the patrimony of Christ and of the poor. Consult all the Councils and Fathers from antiquity down to this time: nowhere will you find even a slight vestige that any steward or dispenser of the portion of the poor, distinct from the beneficiaries, was rebuked as guilty of infidelity in his administration and dispensation. But they always reproached bishops and beneficiaries with an unfaithful administration of the portion of the poor: these alone they accuse and disapprove; to these alone they commit the care of the poor as to fathers, and command; to these alone they forbid that they grow rich from the patrimony of the poor, or make their blood-relations rich, or convert the revenues of Christ into luxury and display. This same thing teach the Fathers and Doctors of a later age — Peter Damian, Gratian, Bernard, Raymond, Thomas, Bonaventure, Albert the Great, Alensis, Antoninus, Bernardine, Paludanus, and the rest commonly. What of this, that adversaries have never been able to indicate an administrator of the portion of the poor distinct from beneficiaries, or that a portion of the poor separated from the goods of the beneficiaries exists or has existed? That some have babbled that the portion of the poor came to the hospices is a manifest chimera. What Father, what Council ever reproved or rebuked the hospices, because they do not distribute the revenues of beneficiaries and bishops to the poor? Let us run through all the benefices, whether episcopal, or parochial, or capitular, for more than six centuries. I challenge adversaries to produce documents of the boasted division of even one benefice. Let beneficiaries exhibit the division of the ecclesiastical revenues which they now perceive, and we forthwith absolve them from the debt not only of justice but even of charity of distributing alms. For if the division be just, they have nothing superfluous to lay out. But they ought to bring forward authentic documents. What? Could a brother exclude a brother from the portion of the common patrimony owed to him, unless he evinced by documents, and indeed clear ones, that a division had been made, and that he had long had his own portion? Exceedingly ridiculous would they render themselves, if they obtruded a division carried out in the fourth or fifth century, when the benefices of today were not yet instituted. No otherwise than if a brother should exclude the rest of the brethren from the division of the common patrimony, because by the law of nations a division of all goods was introduced so many ages ago.

VII. It remains therefore evident and explored that the portion of the poor is mingled with the revenues of bishops and beneficiaries, and that beneficiaries alone are bound with the burden of administering the same. This being posited, I frame this argumentation. Adversaries themselves with one mouth confess that, the division of the goods of the Church being taken away, beneficiaries are bound by the bond of justice to lay out superfluous things upon the poor. The boasted division is chimerical. Therefore they are necessarily compelled to concede that today beneficiaries are bound out of the debt of justice to dispense superfluous things to pious uses and to the succour of the poor.

VIII. The argumentations are inevitable, the weights of reasons unconquered. But avarice, ambition, and pride so madden the mind that they do not suffer it even to see the noonday light. There is added the authority of certain casuists, who commonly oblige beneficiaries out of the debt of charity to lay out superfluous things, and pronounce them guilty of eternal damnation for the violation of that precept; nevertheless there have not been wanting probabilists who free beneficiaries even from the precept of charity. Lessius, Baunius, and others have so relaxed the common doctrine that they teach that beneficiaries are held by ecclesiastical precept alone to dispense superfluous things. Diana himself, Vol. IV, tract 7, resolution 10, says: I do not favour this opinion; and since it is against the common one, I think it altogether to be repudiated. Even lay Christians themselves are bound by the natural precept of charity to dispense superfluous things to the poor. And do Lessius and Baunius free beneficiaries themselves from this precept? If you desire more, consult Vol. II, dissertation 6, chapter 26 and following.