Powers of American Religious Corporations

Religious corporations in the United States have assumed various shapes. The original two forms, (corporation sole and territorial parish) being unsuited to our conditions, have completely passed away. In their stead have grown up four other classes, the aggregate corporation, the trustee corporation, the modern form of the corporation sole, and the Roman Catholic Church in our insular possessions. These four kinds of corporations, however diverse they may be in their history and otherwise, have a number of important qualities in common.

None of them are ecclesiastical corporations in the European sense of the word. All of them owe their existence, not to the 'authority of the church, but to the authority of the state. The Roman Catholic Church is recognized as a corporation by virtue of the treaty of 1898 with Spain, while the other corporations mentioned derive their life from their charters granted to them by the states of their domicile. All are private, civil corporations, created merely for the purpose of conducting the temporal affairs of the particular church of which they are the handmaids.