Incompatibility of Benefices

Incompatibility of benefices. - According to can. 1439, several incompatible benefices cannot be accepted and held in title or in perpetual commendam, that is, those whose obligations cannot be fulfilled together by the same beneficiary, or of which one alone would suffice for the beneficiary's livelihood. The source of the i. of b. is therefore twofold: 1) the impossibility in which the holder of two or more residential or cura animarum benefices, whether major or minor, finds himself of performing by himself all of them together, such as two bishoprics, two canonries, two parishes, etc.; 2) the fact that one of the benefices is sufficient for the honest support of the beneficiary. The judgment on this second point is left to the prudent discretion of the Ordinary. Every i. of b. ceases if the benefices, by their nature incompatible, are canonically united in perpetuity, in accordance with cann. 339 § 5, 460 § 1, 1949.

The plurality or accumulation of benefices was forbidden from the Councils of the 5th century onward, with various sanctions that became ever more severe under the pontiffs Alexander III, Innocent III, Boniface VIII, Clement V and John XXIII. Here too it was the Council of Trent that abolished all the exceptions that especially the sublimes et litteratae personae managed to obtain.

In current law, the acceptance of incompatible benefices brings about the invalidity of the provision; indeed, once the second benefice is accepted, the first becomes vacant (can. 188, 3).

Whoever, having obtained an office or benefice incompatible with the previous one, presumes to retain both, is deprived of both (can. 2396).

From this law of the common law none can dispense but the supreme pontiff, and the dispensation will be valid only if the petitioner, in his request, has made mention of the previous incompatible office or benefice, or if the concession contains the clause derogating from the common law (can. 156 § 3).