Usurping the goods of the Roman Church (Can. 2345)

Violentas—One who inflicts an injury which amounts to a grievous sin on the body, liberty, or dignity of any of the Prelates mentioned incurs this censure. The injury must be personal and by deed, not by word. Canon 2345 IX. Usurpantes vel detinentes per se vel per alios bona aut jura ad Ecclesiam Romanam pertinentia, subjaceant excommunicationi latae sententiae speciali modo Sedi Apostolicae reservatae. (Those who usurp or withhold, by themselves or through others, goods or rights belonging to the Roman Church, are subject to an excommunication latae sententiae reserved to the Apostolic See in a special manner.)

Usurpantes.—Seizing and holding as one’s own what belongs to another.

Detinentes Keeping what belongs to the Roman Church though it might have been bought from another who seized it.

Jura.—Rights of all sorts, but here the rights of the Temporal Power of the Pope are specially intended. Canon 2360 X. Omnes fabricatores vel falsarii litterarum decretorum vel rescriptorum Sedis Apostolicae vel iisdem litteris, decretis vel rescriptis scienter utentes incurrunt ipso facto in excommunicationem speciali modo Sedi Apostolicae reservatam. (All forgers or falsifiers of letters, decrees or rescripts of the Apostolic See, and those who knowingly make use of such letters, decrees or rescripts, incur ipso facto an excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See in a special manner.)

1179. IX. "Those usurping or detaining by themselves or through others goods or rights pertaining to the Roman Church."³

³ Code, c. 2345.

512. 9. "Those usurping or detaining, personally or through others, goods or rights pertaining to the Roman Church" (can. 2345).

There were five excommunications imposed against those who violated ecclesiastical goods, namely, two reserved in a special manner to the Holy See, two reserved simply to the Holy See, and one reserved to no one. Now, however, there exist only two excommunications latae sententiae, namely, this one and another simply reserved, concerning which below in n. 518. This excommunication, imposed for protecting the goods and rights of the Roman Church, strikes those usurping and detaining them. Those are called usurpers who take them away by authority, namely, rulers who have secularized the goods and rights of the Roman Church; therefore ordinary thieves and robbers are not punished by this censure. Those are detainers who purchased or leased such goods for themselves; but not officials of the state who administer those goods or acquired and detain them not for themselves but for the common use of the republic.

10. "All fabricators or falsifiers of letters, decrees, or rescripts of the Apostolic See, or those knowingly using the same letters, decrees, or rescripts" (can. 2360, § 1).

This crime is committed very rarely today, especially by laymen. Clerics committing it, however, are moreover to be coerced by other penalties, which can extend even to privation of benefice, office, dignity, and ecclesiastical pension; religious, however, are to be deprived of all offices which they have in the religion and of active and passive voice, besides other penalties established in the proper constitutions of each.¹⁵⁷

¹⁵⁷ Code of Canon Law, c. 2360, § 2.

Dr. Augustus Jessopp used to call the Protestant Reformation in England the Great Pillage. The name was a good one, and it indicated a very important aspect of that complex movement. It has been calculated that about one-third of the wealth of England at the time of the Reformation belonged to the Catholic Church, and this huge sum was taken from the Catholic Church, and what did not find its way into the royal coffers went to found new families henceforth keenly interested in maintaining the new order, or served for the maintenance of the new national Church, or of the remnant of educational establishments that were left by the Reformers.

Dr. Jessopp’s attitude was a little illogical. As a loyal clergyman of the Church of England as by law established, he held that the State or the nation could alienate Church property for a good purpose. That is not Catholic teaching. The Catholic Church in England before the Reformation was not the Church of England. It was a province, a portion of the Church Catholic or Universal; its dioceses, parishes, colleges, schools, and monasteries were subordinate societies or corporations of the one supreme and universal Society called the Catholic Church. The property of all these subordinate societies was the property of the Catholic Church. The Pope was recognized as the supreme head of the Catholic Church and the supreme administrator of all its property. When Cardinal Wolsey desired to appropriate the property of St Frideswide’s and of other monasteries to the foundation of Christ Church at Oxford, he had to obtain a Bull for the purpose from Pope Clement VII. He only succeeded at the cost of considerable delay, subterfuge, and misrepresentation. He had very great powers at the time as papal legate, but they did not enable him to alienate the property of the Catholic Church. When Henry VIII had made himself supreme head of the Church in England, it became an easy matter for him and his successors to rob the Church of its property.

Other northern countries of Europe witnessed similar proceedings. The example was infectious. Albert of Brandenburg, Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, abandoned the Catholic Church and converted the possessions of the Order into the hereditary duchy of Prussia, a bad beginning for a fateful country.

Such glaring examples had many imitators on a smaller scale. The Council of Trent did its best to put a stop to the wholesale robberies of Church property. It enacted that if avarice, the root of all evil, so gains possession of any cleric or layman, of whatever dignity he may be, even though it be imperial or regal, that he has the presumption in any way to convert to his own use, usurp, or hinder from being received by those to whom of right they belong, the jurisdiction, property, income, and rights, fruits, emoluments, and produce of any church, secular or religious benefice, lending banks for the poor, or other pious institutions, which should relieve the necessities of their ministers and of the poor, such a one lies under excommunication until he has made full restitution of his ill-gotten gains, and has obtained absolution from the Pope.

This enactment of the Council of Trent has been in substance reproduced in Canon 2346 of the new Code of Canon Law, and it is now one of the cases simply reserved to the Holy See. It is intended to safeguard the property of the Church as far as spiritual penalties can effect that object. Still, it is a penal law, and it must not be extended beyond due limits. A few cases will help to illustrate its application.

The Roman Congregations whose office it is to interpret and explain the law of the Church, have declared more than once that this censure is not incurred by common thieves and robbers who, for example, break into a church and steal a chalice or rob the poor-box. The censure is aimed at higher culprits who unjustly claim to make ecclesiastical property their own. Thieves and robbers merely seize the property and use it; they make no claim to be its owners. They are guilty of sacrilegious theft, and may be punished as such by spiritual penalties, but they do not incur this censure.

An executor or legatee who refused to pay to the priest a sum of money left by will for Masses would not seem to incur the censure. Of course he sins, and is bound to make restitution, but as the sum of money was not paid over to the Church, it never became ecclesiastical property.

On the other hand, a cleric who converted to his own use as if it were his personal property what had been contributed by the faithful for the general maintenance of religion would incur the censure. The same must be said of collectors who appropriate to their personal use what they have received for the Church.