Expert: Michael Clark, Ph.D. - 11/26/2005

Question
Hi Dr. Clark,
 I am trying to find the definition of 'ecclesiastical preferment.'  I've found tons of information on people who have refused them or accepted them, but nothing saying what it is!  I would greatly appreciate any help you could give.  Thank you!
 Elizabeth

Answer
Hi Elizabeth... the following is from the Catholic Encyclopedia:

"From the spiritual point of view an ecclesiastical preferment was a duty, a cure of souls, with endowment for support of him to whom this spiritual duty or trust was confided, but from the English legal point of view the preferment (subject to performance of parochial duties) was a benefice enjoyed by the incumbent, who, to quote a reported law case of the year 1303, took the "great tithes, small tithes, oblations, obventions, and other kind of issues."

Source: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01169a.htm

I'd like to give you a little tip so you can find things like this easily in the future. The way I found this was to search at www.google.com using the keywords >> ecclesiastical preferment

When I saw that the search results brought a rather long Catholic Encyclopedia article, I hit the back button on my browser (or you could do the same search again) and clicked on the "Cached" link at google. This highlights the specific keywords you're searching for, and makes it easy to quickly scroll down an article (any article) to find the keywords you're interested in. Try it, you'll see!