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? 131 Among the seventy canons enacted by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) several deal with ecclesiastical goods and related matters like, the sale of saints’ relics (c. 62), simony (c. 63), abuse of office by extortion by bishops (65) and by other avaricious clerics (c. 66). Several other canons deal with tithes, the obligation to pay it under “divine law” is enforced against landlords who cheated by leasing out their property (c. 53). Tithes are to be paid to the Church before taxes are paid to the State (54). Tithes are due also from religious institutes (c. 55). And a parish church is not to be defrauded of its due by clerics and religious who bagged the tithes from their tenants: Many regulars, as we have learnt, and sometimes secular clerics, when letting houses or granting fiefs, add a pact, to the prejudice of the parish churches, to the effect that the tenants and vassals shall pay tithes to them and shall choose to be buried in their ground. We utterly reject pacts of this kind, since they are rooted in avarice, and we declare that whatever is received through them shall be returned to the parish churches,33 Since tithing was in effect a sort of Church tax, tithe evasion was frequent like tax evasion. The Council of Vienne (near Lyons), held in 1311-1312 during the Avignon captivity under Pope Clement V, addressed again this abuse (cc. 11, 12) along with other issues like the suppression of the Templars and the destination of their huge property. Canon 12 provided for the security of church utensils by exempting them from distraint by tithes collectors: If a tithe on the benefice of anyone be granted for a time, the tithe can and should be raised in accordance with the customary valuing of the tithe in the regions in which the grant is made, and in the money generally current. We do not wish the chalices of churches, books and other equipment destined for divine worship to be taken or received as security or distraint by the collectors, raisers or exactors of the tithes, nor are such objects to be distrained or seized in any way.34 The system of tithe and first fruits was disciplined by the first Latin Code (1917) by prescribing the retention of “the peculiar statutes and the laudable customs of each region” (CIC c. 1502). And the previous partial Oriental Code (CICO), which dealt with the temporal goods of the Church in the motu proprio of Pope Pius XII Postquam Apostolicis Litteris (1952), urged it as an obligation: “Christ’s faithful are to fulfil faithfully their obligation to pay tithe and first fruits, according to the laws and legitimate customs of their rite and place” (c. 239). The new Codes, both Latin and Oriental, have omitted altogether these canons. That does not mean the abolition of the particular laws or customs in force regarding tithe and first fruits, but that these are no more urged by the common law. The Churches sui iuris are, therefore, free to maintain them or to suppress them as they see fit while they reform their particular law. 33 Ibid., 260-261. 34 Ibid., 361.
