§ 216. The Legal Position of Church Brotherhoods

Brotherhoods may be larger or smaller, according to the task which they set themselves, and according to that task they may be limited to one place, or may extend over several places, several provinces. Brotherhoods with a missionary purpose extend over all the lands in which there are unbaptized persons who need to be converted to Christianity. Brotherhoods may be composed of laymen alone, or there may also be such in which the members are both clergy and laymen. But whatever the scope and composition of a brotherhood, it is always in direct dependence on the competent central church authority, which has the right to dissolve the brotherhood as soon as it has justified cause to do so. The position and rights of a brotherhood are conditioned by the corresponding community statute, which the competent church authority confirms (§. 142). If the community statute makes no mention of any privileged right, every member of the brotherhood belongs to the parish of the place in which he permanently resides. The eparchial authority may, moreover, assign to a brotherhood a separate church with a separate priest, and in such a case that church becomes similar to a parochial institution. Confirmation of the persons who are to compose the brotherhood’s administration belongs to the diocesan bishop; and under the bishop’s personal responsibility it is permitted for one brotherhood to enter into association with another brotherhood having the same purpose, even outside the borders of the state, and the bishop is obliged to inform the civil authority concerned of this.[1]

Of the establishment of every brotherhood the civil authority of the place in question must at once be notified, with an exact statement of the brotherhood’s purpose and organization. Insofar as a brotherhood has received no special rights from the state, nor has been specially approved by it, it is subject to the general state laws on associations, and in matters of property the civil authority proceeds according to the same norms that exist for every other kind of private property.[2]

CHAPTER FIVE. Christian Death.