CHAPLAIN. - In a generic sense the term is often used to indicate the priest to whom is entrusted the office of a chapel or oratory without care of souls. In a strict sense it expresses the qualification proper to the priest assigned to religious service at certain institutions (female religious communities, male lay orders, confraternities and pious associations, the army, the pontifical household, courts, noble families, educational institutes, charitable works, hospitals, prisons, etc.), or bound to special obligations of Masses and worship in the so-called ecclesiastical or lay chaplaincies (cann. 451, § 3, 479, § 2, 529, 698, 1412, n. 2). This latter sense is particularly proper and prevalent in civil legislation on ecclesiastical matters.
In the canonical order the chaplain legally has a figure of his own that partly reproduces that of the parish priest and of the rector of a church, but that at the same time distinguishes him from both. The parish priest is the holder of the care of souls in a parish, a territorial entity, whereas the chaplain either has no care of souls or, if he has it (military, palatine, noble chaplains, etc.), exercises it as a personal office for the benefit of social groups determined qualitatively and not territorially. Likewise, while the office of rector is considered exclusively in relation to a church, the office of chaplain is instead considered predominantly in relation to the moral person for whose benefit it is constituted (can. 479).
In non-exempt lay orders, both male and female, the appointment and removal of the chaplain belongs to the local ordinary; in exempt ones, however, he is designated by the regular superior, supplied in this, in case of negligence, by the bishop (can. 529). The appointment and removal of the chaplain in confraternities and in the other associations of the faithful canonically erected and approved also belongs to the local Ordinary, save for an apostolic privilege to the contrary, with the exception of those erected by religious in their own churches, for which the consent of the Ordinary is required only when the chaplain is chosen from among the secular clergy (cann. 698, § 1, and 3; 480, § 2).
As for rights and duties, the position of the chaplain must be inferred, in individual cases, from the statutes or deeds of foundation, from particular law, where it exists, from the prescriptions of the Ordinary, and from the legitimate customs of the place. The competence of the chaplain is related in general to the degree of autonomy enjoyed, with respect to the local parish priest, by the respective moral person to whom he is attached. The total exemption of the moral person, for example, of a religious community, of a prison, of a hospital, etc. (cann. 615, 464, § 2) authorizes as a rule the chaplain to exercise in its interest the same functions that would belong by right to the parish priest. Thus, if it is a question of religious women not subject to the jurisdiction of the parish priest, the right and the duty to administer the last Sacraments to them and to officiate at their funerals belong to the chaplain (cann. 514, § 3, 1230, § 5).
If it is a question of confraternities, pious associations or other bodies that have their own public church (not annexed to a religious house), the respective chaplain also assumes the role of rector of the same with all the related rights and duties and also with all the limitations and precautions imposed by law on rectors so as not to disturb parochial functions and not to harm the ministry of the care of souls (cann. 481-83, 1345). The same rights and duties of rectors of churches also belong to the chaplains of confraternities and pious associations, in the oratories and chapels of the respective sodality, even when it is not a question of public churches, although, as is obvious, in that case they cannot be qualified as true rectors in the strict sense (can. 479, 1). To all these, moreover, belongs the faculty of blessing and imposing on the candidates the habit or the scapular of the association; for preaching, however, they are bound by the common law (can. 698, 2).
Bibliography3 works
Zaccaria da S. Mauro