The legal institution of an incorporated parish is a very old institution. It does not exist in the new Code but the incorporations that came into being before the new Code still survive in the Church legal order. Questions remain as to what their position is in this order and what their mode of operation is. According to CIC 1917, a parish was solely an administrative unit with the office of parish and its benefice as the material security component. According to Canon 1425, based on a Holy See indult, a parish could have been combined pleno iure with a votary house (the classical term "incorporation"). The parish then became a votary parish, the votary community became the parish priest (parochus habitualis) and it had the right to own and administer the parish's property and enjoy its increments. In fact, it was one member of the votary, the so-called vicarius actualis, who administered the parish and was responsible for it to the bishop. Vatican Council II changed the notion of a parish. It defined a parish as a community, communio, as a "grouping of the faithful" (SC 42), "a certain part of the diocese" (CD 30) and "an obvious example of the apostolate on the community level" (AA 10). In addition, the Council called upon bishops to relinquish the system of benefices(PO8) and the votary to cooperate in the diocese apostolate (CD 33-35). The postulates of the Council were introduced in practice by Pope Paul VI in moto proprio Ecclesiae Sanctae I (6 August 1966), which indicated the system of reform of benefices and introduced parish reform. It abolished the legal combination of a parish with another subject; however, as far as the parishes administered by a votary were concerned, it enabled the local ordinary to entrust the parish to a clerical institute based on a written agreement with its superior. Due to doubts cast upon the position of the previously established so-called "incorporated parishes," the Commission for Interpretation of Decrees of Vatican Council II decided on 25 June 1979 that these parishes would continue to exist; however, following an agreement with a clerical superior, a bishop may abolish such an incorporated parish within the provisions of the agreement entrusting the parish but salvibus iuribus quesitis. Based on the ecclesiology of the Council, the new Code defined a parish as "a certain community of Christ's faithful stably established within a particular Church, whose pastoral care, under the authority of the diocesan Bishop, is entrusted to a parish priest as its proper pastor" (Canon 515 1). It stipulated that by an establishing decree by a bishop, the parish ipso iure becomes a legal entity. As far as a votary is concerned, it adopted the provision of Ecclesiae Sanctae about the possibility of a bishop entrusting the parish to a clerical institute through a written agreement made between the diocesan bishop and the competent superior (Canon 520 1 and 2). The Code awarded legal personality to the parish, which is separated from the legal personality of a votary house, and for the future excluded the combination pleno iure of a parish and another subject. However, there were still doubts about the legal regime of the so-called "incorporated parishes," particularly about what are in this case the so-called "acquired rights." The matter has been clarified by the Decree Resultando quae issued by the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts on 8 February 2000. The Decree confirms that the parish is a grouping of the faithful fully subordinated to the bishop's authority. It declares that the ius quaesitum of a clerical institute in the case of the so-called " legally incorporated parish" means that this clerical institute has the right to continue in the parish's administration but in line with the new legal order. The reason for this continuation is that these so-called "incorporated parishes" are, as parishes, fully subordinated to the diocesan bishop and, therefore, fall under the same pastoration, economic and fiscal regime as other parishes in the diocese.
