have no care of
souls. Some religious, however, are competent to receive tithes,
because they have care of souls.
_______________________

FOURTH ARTICLE [II-II, Q. 87, Art. 4]

Whether the Clergy Also Are Bound to Pay Tithes?

Objection 1: It would seem that clerics also are bound to pay tithes.
By common law [*Cap. Cum homines, de Decimis, etc.] the parish church
should receive the tithes on the lands which are in its territory.
Now it happens sometimes that the clergy have certain lands of their
own on the territory of some parish church, or that one church has
ecclesiastical property on the territory of another. Therefore it
would seem that the clergy are bound to pay predial tithes.

Obj. 2: Further, some religious are clerics; and yet they are bound
to pay tithes to churches on account of the lands which they
cultivate even with their own hands [*Cap. Ex parte, and Cap.
Nuper.]. Therefore it would seem that the clergy are not immune from
the payment of tithes.

Obj. 3: Further, in the eighteenth chapter of Numbers (26, 28), it is
prescribed not only that the Levites should receive tithes from the
people, but also that they should themselves pay tithes to the
high-priest. Therefore the clergy are bound to pay tithes to the
Sovereign Pontiff, no less than the laity are bound to pay tithes to
the clergy.

Obj. 4: Further, tithes should serve not only for the support of the
clergy, but also for the assistance of the poor. Therefore, if the
clergy are exempt from paying tithes, so too are the poor. Yet the
latter is not true. Therefore the former is false.

_On the contrary,_ A decretal of Pope Paschal [*Paschal II] says: "It
is a new form of exaction when the clergy demand tithes from the
clergy" [*Cap. Novum genus, de Decimis, etc.].

_I answer that,_ The cause of giving cannot be the cause of
receiving, as neither can the cause of action be the cause of
passion; yet it happens that one and the same person is giver and
receiver, even as agent and patient, on account of different causes
and from different points of view. Now tithes are due to the clergy
as being ministers of the altar and sowers of spiritual things among
the people. Wherefore those members of the clergy as such, i.e. as
having ecclesiastical property, are not bound to pay tithes; whereas
from some other cause through holding property in their own right,
either by inheriting it from their kindred, or by purchase, or in any
other similar ma