Page:Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent Buckley.djvu/234

202 receive the sacraments ; or they shall make such other provision as may be more profitable, according as the character of the place may require. And they shall also take care that the same be done, as soon as possible, in those cities and places where there are no parish churches; any privileges and customs, even though immemorial, notwithstanding.

CHAPTER XIV.

That no one be admitted to the Possession of a Benefice, or of Distributions, with a Distribution of the Fruits not to be applied to Pious Uses.

In many churches, as well cathedral as collegiate and parochial, it is understood to be the practice, derived either from their own constitutions, or from some evil custom, that upon any election, presentation, nomination, institution, confirmation, collation, or other provision or admission to the possession of any cathedral church, benefice, canonries, or prebends, or to a participation in the revenues, or the daily distributions, there are introduced certain conditions, or deductions from the fruits, payments, promises, or unlawful compensations, as also the profits which are in some churches called Tumorum lucra. whereas the holy synod detests these practices, it enjoins on bishops, that they suffer not anything of this kind to be done, unless [the proceeds thereof] be turned to pious uses, nor permit any of those modes of entering [on benefices] which carry suspicion of a simoniacal taint, or of sordid avarice; and they themselves shall carefully take cognizance of their constitutions, or customs in the matters above mentioned; and, those only being excepted which they approve of as laudable, the rest they shall reject and abolish as corrupt and scandalous. And it decrees that those, who act in any way contrary to the things comprised in this present decree, are liable to the penalties set forth against simoniacs by the sacred canons, and various constitutions of the Sovereign Pontiffs, all which this synod renews; any statutes, constitutions, customs, even though