Well, it goes deeper than that. The Benedictine Order, for instance, agreed with the notion of personal poverty as being commendable. But they didn't extend that to the actual communal property as well. So Benedictine monasteries were full of "poor" monks who lived in monasteries that were extremely wealthy, and had *relatively luxurious lives.
*Relative to the common man, and some other orders such as Franciscans.
The Benedictine Rule was still something they were expected to live by, of course, but they added exceptions to it fairly rapidly, though in small steps. It banned the consumption of alcohol, for instance, but pretty much every monastery would have been serving it by the thirteenth century.
I don't say this to degrade the order--the rule was very strict in general. Only to point out that personal property and communal property can mean essentially the same thing, if the community is kept small.
Which, of course, led to some of the most extreme heretical movements of the early millennium (those that called for true communal poverty as well), which the church very quickly denounced as heretical.
[EDIT]
To clarify, monks generally speaking lived confortably across orders (they didn't starve, though quality of food and the monastery was variable).
Priests, however, often came from the laity, and were quite often poor.
Edited, Apr 12th 2012 1:18pm by idiggory
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