§ 164. Basic Prescriptions

It is a general law that everyone who renders us some service has the right to receive a corresponding reward for it. By this same law, priests too, as ministers of the mysteries, as teachers and preachers of God’s word, and as pastors, have full right to a reward for their service, which surpasses every other service in the world; and since this priestly service requires that a man devote his whole self to it, and that, once he has received priestly orders, he can perform only that service alone, his reward too must be such that with it he can cover all the expenses necessary for him to be supported in a manner proper to his rank. So it was in all the ages before Christ, and this same principle was adopted and blessed for His Church by the Founder of the Church Himself. ‘The laborer is worthy of his reward,’ He tells His disciples, sending them out to perform the apostolic ministry;[1] and the Apostle Paul teaches that this is a general law, that it is written also in the Law of Moses, that it is nothing extraordinary when those who sow spiritual things seek to reap material things, that those who perform the holy service must also be fed from the sanctuary, and that those who serve at the altar share with the altar, ‘for so also the Lord ordained, that they who preach the gospel should live by the gospel.’[2]

So long as the common holding of church property existed, a third part of all the offerings that flowed into the common treasury of the church was applied to the support of the clergy, nor did there exist any particular source from which the necessities for that support of the clergy were to be drawn.[3] But when this common holding of property ceased, and every church and every church institution became the separate owner of that part of church property allotted to it by the division, it then became necessary to see to how the clergy attached to the respective local church were to be supported. From the revenues of church property, in the first place, the expenses for the church buildings themselves and for worship were covered, and what remained was divided among the clergy. This last might indeed have been sufficient for the support of the clergy at the wealthier churches; but the majority of churches were in a poor economic state, so that the clergy of those churches suffered want and could not live in a manner proper to their rank. This undetermined state of the clergy as regards their support prompted church legislation to issue positive prescriptions on this matter, and it established from which church revenues, specifically, this support of the clergy was to be met.[4] At the opportune moment the state authority too came to the Church’s assistance in this. Constantine the Great issued (in the year 315) an ordinance addressed to Caecilian, bishop of Carthage, by which he fixed a corresponding sum of money to be issued from the state treasury as assistance for the support of the clergy.[5] This ordinance of Constantine’s, which concerned the African church, was extended also to all the other churches that were in a poor state, and became authoritative for future times on the question of granting state assistance for the support of the Church’s ministers.[6] — From the fixed church revenues, then, and from the state treasury, the clergy received what was necessary for them to live in a manner proper to their rank. These sources existed in the Church in the fourth century, and they have existed through all the succeeding centuries down to today.