By Father Matthew Crane
Book V of the 1983 Code of Canon Law is about temporal goods, the money and other material stuff that the Church may acquire, retain, administer and sell. You’d think it would be a rather boring treatise, like an accountancy textbook or a tax code, but it actually stays rather peppy, because it keeps talking about “rights.”
For instance, the first canon of Book V, c. 1254, states that the Church has the right, from her very existence, to acquire, retain, administer, and alienate money and other goods, in pursuit of her proper goals. She has that right apart from any civil power, just by being constituted as she is. Short and pithy as the statute is, it does not directly answer the obvious question: Why? Why does the Church have this right? According to commonly accepted principles of Church Law, every right brings with it an obligation. Ah! There it is. Holy Mother Church has the right to acquire money and other stuff, because all of her children have the obligation to give money and other stuff. True … sort of.
Paging a little farther into Book V, one finds c. 1261 which describes another right, this time of all the Church’s members: “It is integral to the Christian Faithful to give money and other stuff for the benefit of the Church.” A couple modern translations run: “The Christian Faithful have the right to give …” Catch that? They have the right. Not the obligation, the right.
Why do the Christian Faithful have a right to give to the Church? Essentially, it boils down to that perennial problem, what do you get as a gift for the One who created all things? The One God, whole, complete, perfect in himself, requires nothing. Yet, he has constituted us such that we enact love by giving to the other, for the benefit of the other, without counting the cost to ourselves. God has no need of our money or anything else, but knowing how we are made, he has established his Church with real needs, such that by giving to her we can do something for him. So, the Church recognizes that we have a right to give to her, out of our time, talent and treasure, that we might do something for God. Indeed, the Code directs ecclesial authorities not to refuse gifts given by the Christian faithful, unless a just cause requires refusal.
What would require refusal? Almost always it is because of conditions attached to the gift. “Father, I’ll give you a million dollars, but you have to build that ramp we always talked about … Father, I’ll just donate the truck, but you can’t ever change that landscaping my aunt did … Father, I’ll give my land to the parish, but you can never build a new church.” Donors cannot use their gift to take away prudent decisions from Ecclesiastical Authority and the future parish leadership. Binding the Church, for all time, to the decision of one particular donor, right now, would be imprudent and irresponsible stewardship, no matter how much the donor wants to do something good for God.
Father Matthew Crane is the vicar of canonical affairs for the Diocese of St. Cloud.
Above photo: A steady stream of penitents visited St. Mary Help of Christians Church in St. Augusta March 23 for its “Confesstival” event. (Photo courtesy of Father Erik Lundgren)