As an American it is difficult at times to think beyond the Right/Left, Capitalist/Socialist dichotomy that permeates our economic and political landscape. This often makes it difficult for Catholics on either side of the aisle to understand what the Church teaches about the ownership and use of property. As we should always strive to be Catholics first and Americans second, my hope with this article is to concisely share with you what the Church teaches concerning private property, the common good, and the role of government. I hope to dispel any notion of the Church being Capitalist or Socialist as She cuts through and transcends both of these ideologies.
To begin with, the Church recognizes the right to private property. The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church says, “Private property…constitutes one of the conditions for civil liberty” and “..is an essential element of an authentically social and democratic economic policy…” (Paragraph 176). Further, Pope Leo XIII states, “private ownership must be held sacred and inviolable. The law, therefore, should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many as possible of the people to become owners” (Paragraph 46). The defense of private property is one of the reasons that the Church condemns Communism (Paragraphs 111-118). Further, the right to private ownership is a natural right given to us by God, not one merely granted by the state. (Paragraph 45).
However, while private property is indeed a natural right, it flows from what the Church calls “the universal destination of goods.” The Catechism says, “The goods of creation are destined for the whole human race” (Paragraph 2402). Likewise, the fathers of the Second Vatican Council stated, “God intended the earth with everything contained in it for the use of all human beings and peoples” (Paragraph 69).
How is this related to private property? According to St. Thomas Aquinas, “the ownership of possessions is not contrary to the natural law, but an addition thereto devised by human reason” (Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 66, a. 2). In other words, private property is the most reasonable means for man to respect the universal destination of goods. In fact, when Aquinas argues for the necessity of private property he does so on pragmatic terms (Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 66, a. 2). Thus the universal destination of goods is prior to the right to private property (Paragraph 2403), the possession of property is simply the means to an end (Paragraph 177).
Furthermore, the Church recognizes that the right to private property is not absolute. The Compendium states, “Christian tradition has never recognized the right to private property as absolute and untouchable: ‘On the contrary, it has always understood this right within the broader context of the right common to all to use the goods of the whole of creation: the right to private property is subordinated to the right to common use, to the fact that goods are meant for everyone’” (Paragraph 177). Simply put, the right to own something does not mean the right to use it however one wishes. The use of property is ordered to the common good. Vatican II states, “In using them, therefore, man should regard the external things that he legitimately possesses not only as his own but also as common in the sense that they should be able to benefit not only him but also others” (Paragraph 69).
In fact, the Church has very clear and direct teachings about the proper use of material goods. Pope Leo XIII says that we have the duty to give all excess wealth, anything beyond necessity and propriety, to those in need (Paragraph 22). Pope Paul VI amps up this teaching and quotes St. Ambrose saying, “You are not making a gift of what is yours to the poor man, but you are giving him back what is his. You have been appropriating things that are meant to be for the common use of everyone. The earth belongs to everyone, not to the rich” (Paragraph 23). The pope continues, “No one may appropriate surplus goods solely for his own private use when others lack the bare necessities of life” (Paragraph 23).
Notice in this teaching that the Church is explicitly stating that when we give to the poor from our excess we are not performing an act of charity, but an act of justice. The Catechism, quoting Pope Paul VI puts it this way, “”The demands of justice must be satisfied first of all; that which is already due in justice is not to be offered as a gift of charity” (Paragraph 2446).
Now that we are clear that the misuse of our excess property is a matter of justice and not one of personal charity I want to talk about the role of the government in all of this. First, it is worth noting that the Church does not have a negative view of the state, as if government is a necessary evil of some sort. Rather, the Church recognizes that government is both inherent to human nature and ordered toward the common good (Paragraph 384).
Now, regarding the use, or misuse, of private property, the Church also sees the state as having a necessary role. The Catechism teaches, “Political authority has the right and duty to regulate the legitimate exercise of the right to ownership for the sake of the common good” (Paragraph 2406). Further, this regulation of the right to ownership includes the redistribution of property. The Compendium says, “Authentic economic well-being is pursued also by means of suitable social policies for the redistribution of income which, taking general conditions into account, look at merit as well as at the need of each citizen” (Paragraph 303). Pope Benedict XVI affirms this teaching saying that “Economic life…also needs just laws and forms of redistribution governed by politics” and he goes on to say that the state needs to intervene into civil society “for purposes of redistribution” in order for society to regulate itself (Paragraphs 37 and 39).
In addition, if it is not clear already, should the state regulate the use of property in order to redistribute the resources of a society, it is the excessively wealthy, and only the excessively wealthy, who should be targeted. Pope Pius XI states:
“It must likewise be the special care of the State to create those material conditions of life without which an orderly society cannot exist…To achieve this end demanded by the pressing needs of the common welfare, the wealthy classes must be induced to assume those burdens without which human society cannot be saved nor they themselves remain secure. However, measures taken by the State with this end in view ought to be of such a nature that they will really affect those who actually possess more than their share of capital resources, and who continue to accumulate them to the grievous detriment of others” (Paragraph 75).
From all of this it becomes clear that the Church sees government as having not just the authority, but the duty, to limit and regulate the use of private property, even if this means redistributing that property, in order to meet the needs of the poor and promote the common good. Furthermore, Pope Pius XI says that this kind of regulation not only strengthens and safeguards the right to private property, but it is also a “friendly service” for property owners. Referencing Pope Leo XIII, Pope Pius XI states:
“Wherefore the wise Pontiff declared that it is grossly unjust for a State to exhaust private wealth through the weight of imposts and taxes. “For since the right of possessing goods privately has been conferred not by man’s law, but by nature, public authority cannot abolish it, but can only control its exercise and bring it into conformity with the common weal.” Yet when the State brings private ownership into harmony with the needs of the common good, it does not commit a hostile act against private owners but rather does them a friendly service; for it thereby effectively prevents the private possession of goods, which the Author of nature in His most wise providence ordained for the support of human life, from causing intolerable evils and thus rushing to its own destruction; it does not destroy private possessions, but safeguards them; and it does not weaken private property rights, but strengthens them” (Paragraph 49).
So on one hand the Church unapologetically values and promotes the right to private property, while on the other hand the Church recognizes that it is the duty of the government to help ensure that this private property is being used justly, even if that means redistributing that property. Like I said at the beginning of the article, this teaching cuts through the Right/Left dichotomy we find ourselves in, which could be both refreshing and frustrating. But there it stands, demanding our attention and inviting our intellectual assent.
Works Cited:
Caritas in Veritate
Catechism of the Catholic Church
Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church
Divini Redemptoris
Gaudium et Spes
Populorum Progressio
Quadragesimo Anno
Rerum Novarum
Summa Theologiae
Paul Fahey is a husband, father, and professional lay person. He is a student of Theology, History, and Catholic Studies. If you like what he has to say, check out his other articles or follow him on Facebook.
- Caritas in Veritate
- Catechism of the Catholic Church
- Catholic Social Teaching
- Common Good
- Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church
- Divini Redemptoris
- Gaudium et Spes
- Pope Benedict XVI
- Pope Leo XIII
- Pope Paul VI
- Pope Pius XI
- Populorum Progressio
- Private Property
- Quadragesimo Anno
- Rerum Novarum
- St. Ambrose
- St. Thomas Aquinas
- Summa Theologiae
- Thomas Aquinas
- Universal Destination of Goods
- Vatican II
The Porch 
The conclusion of the article that it is the government’s job to ensure that private property is used justly or else redistribution is in order sounds totalitarian. It does not have my intellectual assent. The government’s job is to ensure that no crimes are committed. The job of religion is to promote unselfishness.
Then you and the Church have a different understanding of the proper role of government.
There are two possibilities: Either the author has missed a nuance in the Church’s teaching, or the Church has missed a vital truth.
I prefer to believe the former because I am a Catholic.
But there is more reason than that. Notice the following: “Measures taken by the State with this end in view ought…to affect those…who continue to accumulate [capital resources] to the grievous detriment of other.”
Question: Are all accumulations of more-wealth-than-you-need the result of accumulations of capital resources to the detriment of others.
No. No they aren’t. And yet the Church here teaches that only those detrimental accumulations justify redistributive “measures taken by the State.”
The Church does not teach that all accumulation of capital resources is to the detriment of others, but only that sometimes accumulation of capital resources is to the detriment of others. This allows us to hold that the “measures taken by the State” are appropriate only when targeted at those situations where capital accumulation is to the grievous detriment of “other.”
When would that be?
Well, let us consider the land-use situation in medieval Europe, or in modern rural-and-impoverished areas in Latin America. In economies where the only form of productive capital a person can wield is tillable land, there might be situations in which one man accumulated all the land and thus all the opportunity for generating wealth. In such circumstances it would be his responsibility to rescue the starving by alms, of course; but also his responsibility to rescue the starving who are able to work by some policy of allowing them to work his land and eventually to own it for themselves.
If he withholds all opportunity from them, then their starvation is specifically at his hand, and a kind of assault against them…and they have just authority from God to use force against a person who would assault them in such a way. In the absence of a civil society, this would probably look like mob violence and end badly. But in a civil society, their proper recourse is to hire armed men to defend their right and competent legislators to carefully regulate the behavior of the armed men. This is called constituting a government. And thus when that government forcibly confiscates the wealthy landowner’s property and devises some scheme to distribute the land more broadly amongst the people, it is “the people” who have taken action, delegating their just authority of armed self-defense to their own employees (the legislators and policemen).
This is all very well, provided the redistribution scheme doesn’t turn out to be unwisely devised and incompetently or corruptly managed. It usually does. But that’s beside the point: The moral authority of the poor persons deprived of any chance at productively making use of the land to force the land-monopolist into a redistribution of the land is undeniable, even if they usually mismanage it once they’ve got it.
Ah, but in this situation we are talking about land. There’s only so much land. What about other forms of capital, though? Intellectual capital? Stock ownership in private firms?
Here also are forms of capital, but they are different from land ownership in a purely agrarian economy, because the use of them is generally for the benefit of others. Does Apple have patents on iPhones? You bet. Do they get wealthy as a result? You bet…but, do millions of people have pretty darned good phones as a result? Why, yes. And for that matter, do millions of investors manage to improve their retirement years by having invested in Apple stock? Why, yes.
G.K.Chesterton, in promoting “Distributism,” said that the problem with capitalists is not that there are too many, but too few. Karl Marx wanted the proletariat to murder the bourgeoise and take their stuff and distribute it amongst themselves; but that always produced poverty. Stock ownership, by contrast, allows millions of persons to be part-owners of “the means of production.” This raises the number of capitalists from “few” to “many.” And the use of that capital redounds to the benefit of all.
This is why, if the Church’s teaching is to be strictly followed, we would not have had just authority to seize control of Apple Computer and its assets from the late Steve Jobs.
It is not that he didn’t accumulate a lot of wealth. He did.
It is not that it wasn’t more than he needed. It was.
But, it didn’t fulfill that critical requirement of being an accumulation of capital “to the extreme detriment of other.” Every cent he made was made by making his customers wildly happy about the quality of the products, with fanboys lining up ’round the block for every new release. And the capital which produced this wealth was Apple Computer…owned not by Jobs alone, but by millions of persons through stock ownership.
Only a moron, or a person who embraced the zero-sum fallacy, or a communist ideologue (but I repeat myself), could hold that this particular concentration of wealth came about through the accumulation of capital to the extreme detriment of everyone else.
In conclusion: We “free marketers” in the U.S. need not be afraid of this teaching of the Church.
It certainly encourages us to give voluntarily to the poor, and we should.
But it never authorizes the government to seize our property except under circumstances which, frankly, rarely happen in modern economies.
Like capital punishment, it is not so much that government redistributive seizures are always and everywhere intrinsically wrong. It’s just that — in the prudential opinion of modern popes — you might just as well outlaw it, since the circumstances under which it is justifiable are, in a modern economy, so very, very rare.
Now in the United States, only the states have such a power anyway, because it was never delegated to the Federal Government in the U.S. Constitution, and, per Amendment X, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
So one reason the U.S. Federal government should never be involved in redistribution schemes is because they’re so rarely — practically never — justified, and another is because that would be a usurpation of power from either the states or the people.
At any rate, the Church teaches that forcible redistribution is sometimes called for, but under circumstances that probably haven’t applied in the U.S. in your lifetime or mine.
Therefore, let us get on with the kind of redistribution which does apply, all the time: Voluntary almsgiving.
If you’re a Catholic, are you tithing?
If you’re a Catholic living in the U.S. whose income percentile is anywhere north of 50th percentile…aren’t you more than tithing?
If not, why not?
And really, is it wise for you to be advocating for a wrongful use of force by parts of the government that aren’t constitutionally authorized to wield it anyway under circumstances the Church hasn’t traditionally described as justifying forcible redistribution…if you aren’t, yourself, yet exceeding 10% of your pre-tax income to the needy?
Think about it.
Thanks for the comment.
You said, “Question: Are all accumulations of more-wealth-than-you-need the result of accumulations of capital resources to the detriment of others.”
Is theft detrimental to others? The Catechism, quoting St. John Chrysostom, says, “Not to enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them and deprive them of life. The goods we possess are not ours, but theirs” (2446). So if stealing is detrimental to someone, then any accumulating wealth that is not enabling those without basic resources falls into the criteria of this teaching.
You said:
“Stock ownership, by contrast, allows millions of persons to be part-owners of “the means of production.” This raises the number of capitalists from “few” to “many.” And the use of that capital redounds to the benefit of all.
This is why, if the Church’s teaching is to be strictly followed, we would not have had just authority to seize control of Apple Computer and its assets from the late Steve Jobs.
It is not that he didn’t accumulate a lot of wealth. He did.
It is not that it wasn’t more than he needed. It was.
But, it didn’t fulfill that critical requirement of being an accumulation of capital “to the extreme detriment of other.” Every cent he made was made by making his customers wildly happy about the quality of the products, with fanboys lining up ’round the block for every new release. And the capital which produced this wealth was Apple Computer…owned not by Jobs alone, but by millions of persons through stock ownership”
A couple thoughts here. First, in my study of these teachings the Church is referring to individuals and not businesses or companies. I could be wrong of course, but please direct me to the document that I missed if I am. This distinction is important because it means that we are referring to Steve Job’s personal wealth and not the value of Apple stock. So yes, any personal wealth he had beyond the needs of necessity and propriety that wasn’t actively being used to enable the poor was unjust wealth that did not belong to him.
Second, making customers widely happy isn’t the criteria for the just use of wealth. It can be a means to an end, but it’s not an end that could justify the unjust accumulation of wealth.
You said, “Only a moron, or a person who embraced the zero-sum fallacy, or a communist ideologue (but I repeat myself), could hold that this particular concentration of wealth came about through the accumulation of capital to the extreme detriment of everyone else.”
Which concentration of wealth are you talking about specifically? And it potentially could be causing the grievous detriment of others if it’s stealing from the poor.
You said, “At any rate, the Church teaches that forcible redistribution is sometimes called for, but under circumstances that probably haven’t applied in the U.S. in your lifetime or mine.”
You will need to argue that statement with more facts before it’s a given.
You said, “Therefore, let us get on with the kind of redistribution which does apply, all the time: Voluntary almsgiving.”
Personal almsgiving is necessary, yes. But it doesn’t preclude the teaching my article presented about the role of government.
“If you’re a Catholic living in the U.S. whose income percentile is anywhere north of 50th percentile…aren’t you more than tithing?
If not, why not?”
I don’t fully understand your question here, please explain.
“And really, is it wise for you to be advocating for a wrongful use of force…”
Wrongful according to who?
“…by parts of the government that aren’t constitutionally authorized to wield it anyway under circumstances the Church hasn’t traditionally described as justifying forcible redistribution…”
Please share the documents you’re citing that indicate that our current situation is except from this teaching.
“…if you aren’t, yourself, yet exceeding 10% of your pre-tax income to the needy?”
Are you trying to imply that teaching of the Church I presented has less merit if I don’t give away more than 10% of my income? Further, there is no Church teaching that I know of that says we should be giving away 10%. Please correct me if I’m here. From what I’ve read we should be giving away anything above what’s necessary for survival and what’s necessary for our vocation to those in need…and that’s because doing otherwise is theft. Charity doesn’t kick in until we give from our need.
In the Bible, tithing, defined as 10% of one’s increase (this, arguably, could be either net or gross income) precedes the imposition of the Mosaic Law. It goes back to the Book of Genesis. It is most notably seen in Abraham’s tithe to Melchizedek. As such, tithing should still be incumbent upon Christians.
I’ve seen Catholic apologists try to wriggle out of this. I am aware that there is no explicit teaching of the Church that we must give exactly, or at least, 10% of our income to the Church. There is also no explicit teaching of the Church AGAINST tithing. Given that uncertainty, I will fall back on what the Bible both teaches and implies: a 10% tithe or income (gross or net is not clear to me) is required of Christians.
The teaching of the Church is that we must help provide for the needs of the Church and that what we own beyond what what is necessary for our survival and vocation is owed to the poor. As Pope Leo XII taught:
“True, no one is commanded to distribute to others that which is required for his own needs and those of his household; nor even to give away what is reasonably required to keep up becomingly his condition in life, ‘for no one ought to live other than becomingly.’ But, when what necessity demands has been supplied, and one’s standing fairly taken thought for, it becomes a duty to give to the indigent out of what remains over.” (Rerum Novarum, 22)
I think that tithing, giving 10% of our income, is very Biblical and a very good practice for Christians. However, I wouldn’t ever tell anyone that the Church’s teaches that we must tithe.
I like the idea of employing people to till your land; but why is it your responsibility to have them eventually own it? If the owner has land that needs cultivating; the only way that people starve is if he withholds wages. Then there would be reason to get upset. This is a situation that would invite government intervention; but not to redistribute the land. The landowner should pay a just wage.
Yes, we agree here, because the property (in this case land) is being used to enable the poor to share in the goods owed to them out of justice. Likewise, wealth that is being used for the ends of justice and human flourishing is perfectly just and good and encouraged. However, excess wealth that is not actively contributing to justice and the common good is theft, and therefore grievously detrimental to others.
It is also theft to confiscate a person’ s wealth because we don’t like the way that they are using it or not using it.
Yes. But that isn’t what the Church is talking about here.
The competent authority, the government, can regulate (and even redistribute) private property if that property is being used unjustly (an objective standard, not a subjective feeling).
That assumes that the government is honest, has a Catholic understanding of just and unjust uses of wealth, and has not been corrupted by power or wealth. None of these things is true of our present American government, nor of most other governments in the world, ASAIK.
Well that is the question. I presented a principle of Catholic Social Teaching, how and when that principle should be applied is a matter of fervent debate. Really what this teaching does is set the parameters. A society that denies private property is out of the question, and so is a Libertarian free market. And what’s allowed in the middle should be informed by these principles.
In other words, It really just gives us the playing field for a discussion.