PIOUS UNION. - It is an association of the faithful established for a purpose of piety or charity. It is not strictly required that it be a moral person, since the simple approval of the Ordinary suffices for its juridical subsistence and spiritual capacity; if, however, it should acquire an organic structure through formal erection, it would take the name of sodality (cann. 707 § 1, 708 CIC). Thus the works of the Holy Childhood and of St. Francis de Sales are merely pious unions; the Missionary Union of the Clergy, on the other hand, is a sodality.
Before the promulgation of the CIC, the terms confraternities, congregations, sodalities, pious unions were used indiscriminately even by ecclesiastical authority. The CIC, by contrast, clearly distinguishes Third Orders, confraternities and pious unions, assigning to them respectively as their distinguishing element the purpose of personal sanctification, of worship, of piety or Christian charity. Pious unions, although they are associations approved by the Church, do not always rise to the full figure of juridical entities as do Third Orders and confraternities, and thus constitute an intermediate category between lay associations founded for a purpose without the authority or approval of the Church, but merely recommended or praised by it (St. Vincent de Paul Conference, Catholic Action Associations), and ecclesiastical associations erected as moral persons. In fact, by virtue of the decree of approval, a pious union receives from ecclesiastical authority a public recognition that avails it for obtaining spiritual graces and indulgences and subjects it to the jurisdiction of the Church, but does not confer perpetuity upon it; and its members remain united by a personal bond and may therefore separate at will. The goods it may possess belong to the members, who are nevertheless obliged to respect both the conditions laid down by the donors and the special destination to which they have consented to devote such goods at the time of their enrollment.
In this form pious unions began to appear in the Church after the Council of Trent and multiplied especially in recent centuries, that is, after the invasion of the modern State into the ecclesiastical sphere established as a principle the lay figure of confraternities, subjecting them to its authority and preventing their free exercise of piety and Christian charity.
Like confraternities, pious unions may be erected in collegiate churches, with the prior consent of the Chapter, or also in semi-public oratories, but never in private ones. In churches of religious women, only pious unions of prayer are permitted (can. 712), with the exclusion of men. Competence to erect pious unions belongs by right to the Holy See and to Ordinaries; by apostolic privilege it also belongs, exclusively or cumulatively, to certain moral persons, who must, however, as a rule obtain the permission of the Ordinary before using it. Pious unions, like any association that wishes to be approved by the Church, must take their name either from some attribute of God, or from a Mystery of the Christian religion, or from the feasts of the Lord, of the Virgin and of the Saints. A plurality of pious unions of the same title and the same character in the same locality is forbidden, unless it is a matter of the major urban centers. An exception to this rule is the pious union or Sodality of the Most Blessed Sacrament, which Ordinaries, according to circumstances, may erect in individual parishes in place of the confraternity of the same Mystery. When a pious union can aggregate other similar ones for the sharing of spiritual privileges, it is called an archsodality or respectively a primary society, depending on whether it belongs to the section of sodalities or of simple pious unions. Only from the Holy See derive the faculty to aggregate and the concession, even merely by way of honor, of the competent qualification (cann. 721, 725); and then, by a sort of special manuum, it is not permitted to transfer to another seat the pious union that serves as the aggregating center (can. 724). Save by apostolic indult, only unions of the same title and the same end may be aggregated (can. 721 § 2). Aggregation does not imply hierarchical subordination (can. 722 § 2); it must be perpetual and is granted only to canonically erected pious unions, that is, to sodalities. If, however, the primary pious union is merely approved, the canonical erection of the pious union to be aggregated does not seem necessary. The Ordinary may, for grave reasons, suppress associations, not excluding those erected by others by privilege subordinate to his consent: recourse against his measure is, however, permitted; associations erected by the Holy See cannot be dissolved by a lower authority. To enjoy the rights, privileges, indulgences and other spiritual graces proper to each pious union, enrollment suffices (can. 692). Anyone may be validly enrolled in a pious union, in accordance with the CIC, who belongs to the Church, provided he has not incurred a notorious censure, does not participate in a condemned society and is not a public sinner (can. 693 § 1). Entry is regulated according to the statutes (on request or by co-optation), and if the pious union is a moral person, enrollment produces no effect until it has been entered in the roll or social register (can. 694). One who enrolls in person must have reached the use of reason; it is lawful, however, by common law, to admit absent persons into pious unions not constituted as an organic body, and by privilege some pious unions may admit infants (can. 693 § 3).
A fundamental characteristic of pious unions, as of lay associations in general, is the gratuitousness of erection (can. 686 § 5), of aggregations (can. 723, 5°) and of entry (can. 695); save for the indemnity for the procedures required in the first case, excluding any gift even spontaneous in the second, and permitting legitimate enrollment fees in the third. Internal life develops on the basis of the statutes, subject in every case to the prior approval and possible subsequent amendments of the Ordinary, unless they are directly imposed or confirmed by the Holy See (can. 689 § 2). The appointment of officers and administrators is also subject to the ratification of the Ordinary, who has the right to annul it and to remove the elected from office, if he is satisfied of their unworthiness or lack of suitability; intervention and presidency at both ordinary and extraordinary sessions, as well as confirmation of resolutions, belong to him only in the case of confraternities, not of pious unions (can. 715). Finally, there belong to him the control of annual budgets, consent for collections, and verification of the income from quests and offerings (can. 691). As regards the appointment and removal of the assistant and the chaplain, two offices that may be combined in a single holder, the Ordinary provides directly for all pious unions, even if erected by religious outside their churches; in the churches of religious, his consent is required only in the case in which the superior of the community designates a secular priest (can. 698). Parallel to the continuing subjection to the Ordinary, today far more prominent than it was in the previous discipline, is the economic and cultural autonomy with respect to parish priests, which belongs to associations, and therefore to pious unions, erected in their own church; which independence is not lost if by chance the church of the pious association should host the seat of the parish (cann. 691, 716). But if the pious union is a guest in another's church, it cannot go beyond the exercise of worship from the chapel or altar assigned to it, and its budget is separate from the administration of the church's goods. This patrimonial distinction is prescribed also in the case of joint ownership ex aequo of the same church by the pious union and the parish (can. 717).
It is clear that the autonomy of the u. p. does not entail for individual members exemption from the rights inherent in the office of the proper parish priest, and in particular from the ius funerandi within the limits of the common law. Contacts between the u. p. and other associations in the exercise of worship are determined, as regards precedence, by the descending order: Third Orders, effective and honorary archconfraternities; confraternities; primary effective and honorary u. p.; u. p. (can. 701). In the same order of ranking, precedence is regulated according to the norms of the common law, by quasi-possession or, in its absence, by priority of time. In any case, the exercise of the right of precedence is inseparable from the collegial and official participation of the members with the banner and their respective insignia (can. 710). The insignia, an outward profession of the associative bond, have a juridical importance. Their form ranges from a simple badge to a complete habit, and it falls to the chaplain to bless and impose them according to the approved rite (can. 698 § 2). This faculty of the chaplain is held to be ordinary and therefore delegable without any special permission. By virtue of the Lateran Concordat (arts. 30-32) the u. p., like all pious associations, save for the special juridical treatment of confraternities, depend exclusively on ecclesiastical authority and may obtain from the Italian State also juridical recognition for civil purposes and, consequently, authorization to acquire and possess even immovable property. According to the implementing regulation of the law of 27 May 1929, no. 848, the application to obtain recognition of juridical personality is submitted by their representative to the Minister of the Interior.
Pious associations too, and therefore the u. p. juridically recognized by the Italian State, remain excluded from any state interference, save for observance of arts. 4, 5, 9 of the implementing law concerning respectively any substantial change in the purpose, in the destination of the goods and in the mode of existence of pious associations, their activity of an educational or charitable character, as well as the capacity to acquire immovables, to accept donations, inheritances or legacies.