§ 168. Assistance to Infirm Clergy

Infirm priests may be of two kinds: a) those who, on account of deep old age or incurable illness, can no longer serve the church at all, and b) those who are only in some measure unfit to serve—namely, when some weakness overtakes them which may last longer or shorter but to which they are not permanently subject, or when someone cannot, on account of a weak bodily constitution, perform certain of the heavier duties, or, lastly, when on account of the location of his post he cannot cope with all the services he would have to perform. Toward both the one and the other the church authority has always exercised, as it exercises today, its due care. As regards the first, it has established that from the general church revenues there be paid out to them as much as is needful for them to live on—this is the so-called pension (pensio); and as regards the other, that permanent or temporary assistants be appointed to them, who will perform in their place those services which they themselves cannot perform.

Of pensions for clergy in the church we find the first mention in the acts of the Fourth Ecumenical Council (451).[1] At that council a pension was assigned to several such persons, and thereby a canonical foundation was laid for the practice of later times. By that conciliar foundation, a pension can be assigned to a clergyman only when a justified cause for it exists and when the competent authority acknowledges that cause. The determination of the amount of the pension belongs to that authority, as does likewise the source from which the pension is to be paid. A pensioned clergyman retains his priestly rank and his sacerdotal rights, but is not bound to undertake all those sacerdotal duties which are attached […]