Folia Canonica 5. (2002)
STUDIES - Jobe Abbass: Alienating Ecclesiastical Goods in the Eastern Catholic Churches
ALIENATING IN THE EASTERN CATHOLIC CHURCHES 127 norms for the various Eastern Catholic Churches substantially differ from the rules regarding alienation established in CIC canon 1292 for the Latin Church. I. Preliminary Questions 1. Ecclesiastical Goods Subject to Norms on Alienation While CIC canon 1291 establishes that the goods which are subject to the norms governing alienation are those “which constitute by legitimate designation the stable patrimony of a public juridic person,”5 CCEOcanon 1035 §1 identifies the ecclesiastical goods “which constitute by legitimate designation the stable patrimony of a juridic person.” Given the Latin Code’s recognition of both private and public juridic persons, CIC canon 1291 necessarily specifies the goods of a public juridic person since the temporal goods of a private juridic person, which are not considered ecclesiastical goods, are governed generally by that juridic person’s statutes rather than the canons on alienation (cf. CIC c. 1257). Since private juridic persons do not exist in the Eastern Code, CCEO canon 1035 §1 simply refers to juridic persons, whose temporal goods are defined as ecclesiastical goods (cf. CCEO c. 1009 §2). For the rest, the parallel Latin and Eastern norms are similar in identifying only those ecclesiastical goods legitimately designated as part of the juridic person’s stable patrimony to be subject to the general norms governing alienation.6 The legitimate designation of ecclesiastical goods as stable patrimony may either be implicit or explicit. It is implicit, for examèle, in a juridic person’s long-term acquisition of lands, buildings or immovable property. In the case of cash certificates, stocks and other liquid assets, which are ordinarily not held over a long period, the designation must be explicit for them to constitute part of the juridic person’s stable patrimony. Although what constitutes stable patrimony is not always easy to identify, R. J. Kennedy offers this succinct definition: Stable patrimony is all property, real or personal, movable or immovable, tangible or intangible, that, either of its nature or by explicit designation, is destined to remain in the possession of its owner for a long or indefinite period of time to afford financial security for the future. It is the opposite of free or liquid capital 5 Unless otherwise indicated, English translations for the canons of CIC and CCEO have been taken from: Canon Law Society of America (CLSA), Code of Canon Law; Latin-English Edition, Washington 1999; and Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches: Latin-English Edition, Washington 2001. 6For a fuller commentary on CIC c. 1291 (CCEO c. 1035 §1), see Kennedy, Temporal Goods (nt. 4), 1493-1496.
