Folia Canonica 12. (2009)
STUDIES - Péter Artner: The remuneration of diocesan clerics
THE REMUNERATION OF DIOCESAN CLERICS 17 such a situation the cleric has to have enough support to pay his medical fees and his own needs, including those whose service he needs. 6.7. Annual Holiday As all workers, clerics have the right for regular vacation. It is part of normal human needs. The Church encourages the clerics to have annual holidays and recreation, and by implication approves of means that are needed for assuring enough income to enable them to secure and enjoy that recreation. It is the responsibility of the diocesan bishop, to see to it that priests are able to have holidays.54 The absence of a cleric from his parish is determined by §2 of c. 533, and the canon allows not more than 30 days for vacation, but it can be determined differently by particular law. The shortage of priest can cause a huge problem for priests in active pastoral work to leave their parish for a holiday. As in some places they do not have anybody to replace them therefore to organize the annual holiday is sometimes almost impossible. 6.8. The Simplicity of Life Clerics have to foster simplicity of life and they have to refrain from all vanity or worldliness.55 However, the evangelical simplicity and poverty does not mean a lack of self-respect. The evangelical poverty means that the cleric has to be satisfied with less, and not to demand a higher sustentation. Extravagance in living is completely foreign and abhorrent to clerical life, no matter how opulent the economic condition may be of the society the cleric serves.56 The Code prescribes in §2 of c. 282, that the cleric has to use for the good of the Church and for works of charity those goods which have come to him on the occasion of exercising ecclesiastical office and which are left over after provision has been made for his decent support and for the fulfillment of all the duties of his own state. Although this canon does not apply to those goods that he received from his family or from other sources, according to §2 of c. 222 he has to promote social justice and to assist the poor from his own resources, just as other faithful have to. This is not a juridical bond, the canon entrusts it to the free discretion of the priest.57 54 Okoh 95-97, PO 20. 55 O. Cruz, Adequate Remuneration and Social Welfare of Clerics, in Boletino ecclesiastico de Filipinos 53 (1987) 51. 56 Hannah, The Canonical, 124. 57 Exegetical Commentary, II/1, 369.
