Folia Canonica 4. (2001)

STUDIES - George Nedungatt: Who is to Administer Church Property? - The Answer of the Ecumenical Councils

120

GEORGE NEDUNGATT

public treasury and administered by a procurator (whereas the public revenue were administered by the fiscus), and passed from one emperor to his successor in the imperial office since Augustus. The concern for relatives has always been a trap for churchmen. If, with the celibate clerics of the Latin Middle Ages, it took the form of nepotism, in the earlier centuries the danger was even greater since clerics, including bishops, being normally married, their first relatives being their wife and children. In this life situation it is easily understood why the Apostolic canon 40 prescribed that the personal goods of the bishop should be clearly distinguished from those of the Church, so that neither the Church nor the family of the bishop suffer harm.

Let the personal goods of the bishop, if he has any such, be clearly distinguished from those of the Lord, so that the bishop can leave his own goods at his death to whom he will, and how he will, and that the bishop ’s own property may not be lost through the false claim that it is Church property. For it may be that he has a wife or children or relatives or domestic servants, and it is just before God and man that neither the Church suffer any harm through ignorance of the bishop ’s own property, nor that the bishop or his relatives suffer loss on the count of the Church: nor that his own people be entangled in lawsuits and his death be surrounded by reproaches.6

The temporal goods of the Church are called here “the property of God.”7 And the bishop, who is the “economus of God” (that is, of the Church) is to regard his poor relatives, not as relatives but as poor, according to Apostolic canon 38.

Let the bishop have the care of all the goods of the Church, and let him administer them as the economus of God. But he must not alienate any of them or give the things that belong to God to his own relatives. If they are poor let him succour them as the poor; but without selling the goods of the Church under that pretext.8

Let us note that the laypeople are not assigned any role in these ancient Eastern canons on church property and its administration. This is significant. It shows that the exclusion of the laity from the administration of Church property is not a late development of the feudal times with its rich Fürsten bishops. Nor is it a matter of clerical arrogance claiming that bishops are holier than laypeople. The fact is in the case of the bishops there were some institutional controls: first, from their election itself they had a certificate of trustworthiness ; second through the presbyters and deacons around the bishop the Church could check any improper administration by the bishop. That was not the case with laypeople.

6 Joannou, Les canons (nt. 2) 27-28.

7 Cf. “All the tithe of the land ... is the Lord’s” (Leviticus 27,30).

8 Joannou, Les canons (nt. 2) 26-27.