§ 167. General Rules on the Property of the Clergy

With regard to property which the clergy may possess, there exist certain fixed rules, issued partly by the general church legislation and partly by the particular legislation of individual local churches, which concern, first, the right the clergy enjoy over property they may have acquired as private owners, whether by inheritance or by any other lawfully permitted means, and then concern the duties toward the estate belonging to the place of service which one or another member of the clergy occupies.

The oldest church canons speak of the personal right of possession of bishops and priests.[1] By this “possession” the canons recognize in bishops and priests the full right to dispose of it according to their own personal judgment. For this they ordain that the property of the clergy must be kept entirely separate from church property, and that both alike must be accurately known and inventoried, lest church property be in any way damaged, and lest any suspicion of unlawfulness fall upon the property of the clergy. This division is marked in Western church law by particular terms: church property is called peculium ecclesiae, patrimonium ecclesiae, and the property of the clergy peculium clericorum in the broader sense.[2] The norm as to the latter is expressed for Orthodox church law in the 40th Apostolic canon: “Let the bishop’s own things, if he has any, be exactly known, and the Lord’s things exactly known; that the bishop may have power, at his death, to leave his own things to whomsoever he will and however he will; and that under pretext of church affairs the bishop’s own things be not damaged, he who perchance has a wife and children, or kinsfolk, or servants; for this is just before God and before men—that the church suffer no loss through the bishop’s own things not being known, nor that the bishop or his kinsfolk be, under pretext of the church, subjected to confiscation of goods, or that those who belong to him fall into lawsuits, and his death be subjected to evil report.” Moreover, on the basis of later legislative provisions, this right of the bishop—and likewise of all members of the clergy who have occupied some office of public service in the church—to dispose according to their own judgment, for the benefit of their kin, of their private property, concerns only that property which they acquired independently of that service, that is, by inheritance or by some other private and lawful means, whether before entering the church hierarchy or afterward.[3] But with regard to what they acquired from the revenues of their service in the church, they did not have the right to dispose of it for the benefit of their kin or of any other private persons, but had to give or bequeath it for charitable purposes, or to the church at which they served.[4] Of the present-day legal provisions in this regard we have already spoken elsewhere.[5]

In connection with this obligation of the clergy regarding the property bound up with a place of service in the church, a clergyman who occupies such an office—and especially a parish priest—is bound to make use of that property according to his best conscience, and must always regard it not merely as something entrusted to him to enjoy, so as to cover his needs with its income, but also as something he must keep in good order, so as to preserve it for his successor in office. Here we mean all the movable and immovable goods belonging to a given diocese and parish, with regard to whose maintenance there exist, in every local church, its own particular legal provisions. It is the duty of every diocesan bishop, and likewise of every parish priest, in those places where there exist lands held in usufruct, to see to the good administration of those lands, to rational husbandry, and to seeing that the see and the parish house are supplied with everything needful for the working of the land, for the gathering of its produce, and so forth, and that his successor in the see or the parish shall find all this in good order. Besides this, every bishop, and likewise every parish priest, is bound to see to it that, if there is no fundus instructus at the see or the parish, one be established; and if it already exists, that care be taken for its ever greater increase.[6] Among the chief duties in this regard, especially of the parish clergy, is the upkeep and repair of the parish house and of other buildings for its husbandry. By the regulations now in force, every parish priest, parish administrator, and independent chaplain is bound to undertake at his own expense the repair of whatever falls into disrepair through his own fault or that of his household servants; and he is likewise bound, as regards those buildings, to undertake everything that any other person dwelling upon another’s property is bound to undertake.[7] For negligence in this the parish priest is liable to responsibility, both before the church authority and before the civil authority. Oversight of this belongs among the first duties of the district archpriest at his canonical visitation, and he thereupon reports on it in detail to the diocesan consistory, together with his own particular opinion.[8] At the death of a parish priest, careful examination must every time be made as to the condition of the parish house and of the other buildings that served for the priest’s use, and if it be found that these are in disrepair or damaged through his fault or negligence, they must be repaired and restored to their former order at the expense of the deceased priest’s estate.[9] This examination and judgment as to the condition of the respective parish buildings falls within the competence of a mixed delegation, composed of representatives of the diocesan authority and of the district administration.[10]