Folia Canonica 4. (2001)
STUDIES - George Nedungatt: Who is to Administer Church Property? - The Answer of the Ecumenical Councils
WHO IS TO ADMINISTER CHURCH PROPERTY? 123 It was also decided that the priests are not to sell without the consent of their bishops the property of the church to which they were appointed, even as the bishops are not allowed to sell the land of the Church without the consent of the synod or of his presbyters. Except for necessity, the bishop, too, is not allowed to dispose of the things listed in the inventory of the church.'5 Thus, neither the bishops nor the parish priests may act single-handed in the administration of church property, but they have to consult and obtain due consent. What share was left to lay people in this area? III. The Role of the Laity None of the early councils, whether local or ecumenical, positively assigns any role to the laypeople in the administration of Church property. The laity live in the world, and their specific vocation is characterised by secularity. So it was then, as it is now. And yet they are excluded at first in practice, and then by law enacted by certain regional councils, from the administration of the temporal goods of the Church. Why? A leading lay historian of the Church and of canon law, Jean Gaudemet, sums up the gradual process leading up to this exclusion of the laity by the clergy. “During the first centuries they were closely associated. But with the increase of the number of the ‘faithful,’ the unequal intensity of their fervour, the different level of their education as well as the difficulty of exercising effective control, the clerics, taught by certain unfortunate experiences, limited ever more the domain open to the laity. Here is the beginning of an evolution which we shall meet with later on and which will be summed up in the phrase ‘two kinds of Christians’ [duo genera Christianorum}1'’... For all the clear cleavage, the laity are not marginalised. ...They furnish valuable counsellors to the bishops for the administration of a patrimony that becomes ever more important. Some laymen turn out to be little trustworthy. The councils distrust them and exclude them from having charge over temporal goods.”15 16 17 The Council of Chalcedon in its canon 26 decreed "... that every church having a bishop is also to have an administrator, belonging to his own clergy,” thus excluding the laity. In the West local councils studiously enforced the Chalcedon legislation and decreed that the economi (finance officers) were to be designated exclusively from the clergy. Thus, canon 9 of the Council of Seville (619) decreed: “ex proprio clero oeconomum sibi constituat.” And canon 48 of the Council of Toledo (633) ordained: “oeconomos ... omnes episcopos 15 JOANNOU, Les canons (nt. 2), 248. 16 J. GAUDEMET, Église et Cité. Histoire de droit canonique, Montchrestien, 1994, 66. 17 Ibid, 65. In footnote, reference to the Synod of Antioch (341), c. 24, to the Council of Chalcedon (451), c. 26, etc.
