Has the Catholic Church thought of setting up of a corpus to fund the safe commuting of parish priests within the territory of their service?

Upvote:1

Note

I was asked to name sources. I want to make it clear that I'm by no means an expert, and don't want to portray myself as one. I base this answer on conversations I've had with missionaries I met during a monastic retreat, and information I found on the FSSPX website (translates to "the priest brotherhood of Saint Pius"). They have a page titled "how expensive is a priest" where they explain how a priest is paid, what the determining factors are, and how things work legally. In the article, they go into much, much more detail, and touch on differences between various countries a bit more than I do here. reference

I've also taken your question to be broader than just something specific to provide cars to missionaries who can't afford them for whatever reason. I took your question as focusing on a specific symptom of a potential underlying issue (that missionaries often operate on too limited funds). Some parts of the world, a car would be a hindrance, or might in some cases be a more dangerous mode of transport. You acknowledge this yourself when you reference poor infrastructure, so I've attempted to answer why such a corpus doesn't exist, or perhaps even hasn't been considered/deemed doable yet.


The way Catholic priests are "funded" so to speak is a very complex matter. I'm in no way an expert, but I know a bit on how things work in traditionally Catholic, European countries.

They are paid in part from donations from parishioners all over the world, but that money can be used to pay charities, maintenance, and so on. In terms of income, in many countries the state actually provides funds to religious organisations. For the Catholic church, at least in these traditionally Catholic European countries, that becomes a legal matter. Throughout history, Church and state haven't always been separated, and so laws have been established that reflect some sort of power struggle. At some point, rulers have agreed to pay priests, not because of piety, but in an attempt to lessen the grip of the Vatican over local politics, and to exert control over what priests were saying during service. So basically: history and politics have made things rather complicated.

Various countries have something they call Canon Law on the books, but this doesn't refer to the Vatican Canon law per se. It's a legal framework, constructed by individual countries, often in conjunction with local representatives of the church.

Here's an example of how Catholic priests (and missionaries) are paid in certain European countries to drive the point home:

Clergymen - "world clergy"

These are members of the church who, in performing their duties have to live out in the world. Priests, Pastors, Chaplains, and the like

  • titulus beneficii: Essentially clergy entitled to a decent income. As the name suggests, they are seen as beneficiaries, and are assumed to have no private assets/wealth. Everything they need to perform their role is provided. This can include a house, and a car (in Europe, this is seen as needed to do things like visit sick parishioners in hospital). This is linked to the standard of living of whatever country these people reside in, as far as I know.
  • titulus patrimonii: This is most commonly applicable to people who become members of the clergy but have some personal wealth or even income. They are entitled to whatever is considered a "full income", and as such they are eligible for supplementary income, but they generally receive below what is considered minimal wage wherever they reside.
  • pensionaris: a retired member of the clergy, entitled to a pension

Then there are those who carry none of these titles, but are known as either:

  • titulus servitii diocesis: servants of the diocese. As they perform quasi administrative work, and are assumed to have room and board provided to them by the church (or the Diocese to be more accurate), their compensation is, according to Canon law, to be more akin to an allowance. Sufficient to buy some clothes every once in a while. Which brings us to the fifth title:
  • titulus missionis: Here we have the missionaries. According to Canon law, they are essentially sent out in service of the Diocese, or church as a whole, and thus their day-to-day requirements (housing, food, and so on) are the responsibility of the church. They still are eligible for some income, in the same way as the previous category. In other words, they do not receive a full income. What they can get is some pocket money.

Now let's give a hypothetical scenario where a missionary is sent from Luxembourg to Mozambique. The Luxembourg government has more money to spare than their Mozambique counterparts. What's more, the missionary in question is already on their payroll. He is sent on the orders of the Church, so the local government has no incentive, and certainly is under no obligation to pay him anything. If I work for a UK company and they send me to Dubai for work, the company I'm visiting doesn't have to pay me a salary either. Same logic applies here. Because of his legal statute, however, he doesn't receive a full salary from his country of origin either, so he essentially relies on Diocese, and the pocket money he gets from the Luxembourg government. As a result, a car is not really on the cards.

Should the church start a fund? Perhaps, but then what do you do about missionaries from countries where the legal definitions change? Should the fund evaluate things on a case by case basis?

I also wouldn't be surprised that, should they have discussed this option before, someone suggested that if they created such a fund, it might trigger certain governments to reconsider their laws/funding structures to cut costs next time an election is due. Right now, tax payers are paying these people, and politicians really like it when they're able to go to an election and say that they've revised "some old laws which would result in less tax money going to old institutions", or how "some of the tax money has been repurposed to invest in schools" or something like that.

All in all, I think there's a reluctance to change the status quo. Of course, the death of a person is always tragic, but truthfully, the relationship between Church and local governments, especially in Europe is fairly precarious, especially after some very public scandals having come to light over the last decade. I think the Catholic church is choosing to keep a low profile for the time being.


As I mentioned in at the start, this is the case in countries like Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. Upon reading the article more closely to cite and translate certain sections, I noticed I missed something important.

The organisation a priest is affiliated with is a very important factor, too. My main source (FSSPX) makes it clear that all of their priests are legally not affiliated with the Diocese, and therefore legally free to practice anywhere in the country. As such, they are in the first 3 categories. In the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, priests are legally considered employees of the department of justice, which means they are government employees. In short, Their income, and the statutes they operate under abroad are a matter of international law. If the Vatican or Catholic church were to start a fund of sorts, I'm not even sure if they would be legally allowed to accept anything. The section I'm referring to here is this:

De priesters van de Priesterbroederschap St.-Pius X, hangen niet af van de plaatselijke bisschop, noch van het ministerie van justitie. En daarom kunnen zij vrij de HH. Sacramenten toedienen en het geloof verkondigen.

Translates to:

The priests of the priestly brotherhood of Saint Pius X do not depend on the local Diocese, nor do they depend on the department of justice. This is why they are free to administer the Sacraments, and spread the faith.

The situation in Germany is mentioned as being different, specifically as being a case where "different countries have different laws" (again: I take this to mean that legal statutes and definitions play a significant role here).

Andere landen hebben andere wetten. In Duitsland is er bijvoorbeeld een kerkbelasting. De Katholieke Kerk in Duitsland wordt daarom gefinancierd door deze kerkbelasting die de Duitse burgers die zich katholiek noemen, betalen.

Translation:

Different countries have different laws. Germany, for example, has church-tax. The Catholic Church in Germany is as such financed by the taxes German citizens pay if they call themselves Catholic.

I've asked a German friend about this, and they have confirmed that you have to declare your faith when filling out taxes. If you declare yourself as being an atheist, you don't pay the taxes a religious person does.

France is different again:

De bezoldiging van de priesters door de staat gaat terug op het concordaat van Napoleon in 1805. Om de Kerk voor alle inbeslagnames en vernielingen door de Franse Revolutie te compenseren had keizer Napoleon een concordaat (overeenkomst) gesloten met de Kerk om haar priesters te betalen. Belgiรซ, toen Frans, valt nog steeds onder deze wet, terwijl Frankrijk deze in 1905 heeft verlaten met de wet van scheiding van Kerk en Staat.

Translation:

The state paying priests goes back to the 1805 Concordat of Napoleon. To compensate the Church for the destruction of property and theft that happened during the French Revolution, Napoleon made an agreement with the Church to pay its priests. While this law still holds in countries like Belgium, which were French at the time, it no longer holds in France, because they separated church and state entirely in 1905

As for how things work in France, and what the legal statute of priests and missionaries is in that country, I wouldn't know.

The main points here can be summarised as follows:

  • Priests in different countries are paid differently
  • In some countries, priests are officially government employees. That means for them to accept aid from funds has legal implications. If the fund is set up by the Vatican, that would be considered a foreign government paying employees of other governments. This is illegal in some countries, or requires total transparency, open books, full annual reviews, etc... There's also the problem that in Belgium, it's not allowed to have certain employees receive benefits that their colleagues do not. If this fund extends benefits to clerical department of justice employees, then non-clergy is legally entitled to the same aid.
  • Internal church structures, affiliations may address the government employee issue, but in these cases, these people have a different legal statute, which comes with its own legal issues

Basically, I still stand by my original answer: how priests and missionaries get paid is an extremely complex matter. Even if it were possible to create a fund like the one you propose, the sheer cost to operate it would probably outweigh the benefits. There will be those who will challenge the legality of things. There will be those who will use this to challenge the status quo, arguing that if the church has the money and manpower to set this up, then the state should no longer pay for what they currently pay for. Such a fund would probably have to be tailor made on a country by country (or even region by region) basis, to comply with the local laws. It might even depend on which missionary from what country operates in what other country. You'd need to keep an army of lawyers on the payroll just to make sure it's compliant with all the relevant laws, and these laws are subject to change all the time.

Upvote:2

Has the Catholic Church thought of setting up of a corpus to fund the safe commuting of parish priests within the territory of their service?

Possibly, but it would be hard to track down the exact funding agency within the Church.

For example Aid to the Church in Need helps the Church in need around the world. It is not impossible that such organizations would help out priests with their needs of having proper transportation.

It could be noted that missionaries in remote places like in the high Andes, still use mules to travel to extremely remote villages. Cars and motorcycles would be of little help here! The question of transportation takes on a whole new meaning in such situations.

Some priests may simply prefer to travel by motorcycle than by car (or jeep if they were in remote places of Africa).

There are a lot of nuances to take into consideration here and I am not going to get into them here.

Ask and you shall receive! (Matthew 7:7)

More post

Search Posts

Related post