Last week we noted that we had received a link to a
three-year-old article in U.S. Catholic, “How
Much Do You Really Own?” by Barry Hudock, sent to us in refutation of our
contention that the right to be an owner (the right to property) pertains to
the natural law, while the rights of ownership (the rights of property) come
under human positive law, custom, and tradition — as long as these do not
nullify the underlying right to be an owner in the first place. This posting was originally titled, "Hudock's Fatal Errors," but we have since discovered that the individual who sent us the link asserting that it disproved our position may have been a little mistaken, and might have slightly misunderstood Hudock's position as well as our own. We (mistakenly) assumed that our commentator could substantiate his interpretation of Hudock's article, which he could not. We've taken this opportunity to correct this, and (incidentally) get rid of the bold typeface that somehow sneaked into the last two paragraphs. And screwed up the rest of the formatting, of course.
 |
| Dr. Samuel Johnson: Definitions are important. |
Last week we gave our definitions of terms and understanding
of property as it appears in Catholic social teaching. Today we can examine the errors made in
attempting to refute our position without understanding it.
The idea that the right to be an owner (the right to property, the generic right of dominion) is of human positive law and not the natural law — which the individual who sent the link incorrectly implied was Hudock's position, rests on the primary
error of confusion over the definition of property, and the derived error
over the distinction between access and use stemming from a misunderstanding
of property. These are the “small errors
in the beginning that lead to great errors in the end.”
First, Hudock
quoted John Paul II, and gave his, Hudock’s, understanding of what John Paul
II meant. Fine. Nothing wrong there. Unfortunately for our commentator's
argument, John Paul II’s — and Hudock's — discussion was not about access as our commentator supposed, but use.
 |
| Paul VI: "Yes I can . . . write an encyclical." |
Paul VI put a similar argument under the heading “The Use of
Private Property” in Populorum Progressio
when he explained that “the right to private property is not absolute and
unconditional.” The fact that this is
under the heading “The Use of Private Property” clearly indicates that the
sense is “the right to use private property is not
absolute and unconditional.” You would
otherwise have to make the argument that Paul VI didn’t know how to write an
encyclical and was unable to put subjects under the proper heading:
The
Use of Private Property
23. "He who has the goods of
this world and sees his brother in need and closes his heart to him, how does
the love of God abide in him?" Everyone knows that the Fathers of the
Church laid down the duty of the rich toward the poor in no uncertain terms. As
St. Ambrose put it: "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." These words indicate that the right to
private property is not absolute and unconditional.
No one may appropriate surplus
goods solely for his own private use when others lack the bare necessities of
life. In short, "as the Fathers of the Church and other eminent
theologians tell us, the right of private property may never be exercised to
the detriment of the common good." When "private gain and basic
community needs conflict with one another," it is for the public
authorities "to seek a solution to these questions, with the active
involvement of individual citizens and social groups."
 |
| Fer th' luva Mars, just say it in Latin! |
The official Latin is clearer on this point than the English
translation, which leaves out a few key words and concepts. Where the English has, “These words indicate
that the right to private property is not absolute and unconditional,” the
Latin has: Quae verba declarant, privatam bonorum proprietatem nemini
ius tale concedere, quod supremum sit nullique condicioni obnoxium, a transliteration of which
reads —
“These
words declare that no one may take away such goods belonging to the private
right of property [i.e., the rights
that accompany ownership], subject to the condition that such [i.e., exercise of the rights that
accompany ownership] is not overriding [“uppermost to none,” i.e., absolute].”
Thus, to understand this passage we must take into account
the fact that the entire discussion is in a section headed “The Use of Private
Property,” and that the official Latin text includes specific words that
emphasize this point that are only implied in the English text. No one, therefore, can legitimately claim that
this passage overturns previous papal teachings that every human being has by
nature the right to be an owner (the right to property, Rerum Novarum, § 6). This is
despite the fact that the good of the individual and common good as a whole
require that the exercise of the rights of property be limited — as long as
this is done without prejudice to the underlying right to be an owner in the first
place.
 |
| "Even a dumb ox like me gets it." |
Second, Hudock cites
Aquinas’s strictures concerning the use
of “external things.” Again, no problem — with Hudock. What the commentator carefully
ignored or failed to take into account, however, was Aquinas’s preceding discussion and
conclusion on access to ownership of
those same things (ST IIa IIae, q.
66, a. 1), and Hudock's assumption of its validity:
“It is by this
argument that the Philosopher [Aristotle] proves (Polit. i, 3) that the
possession of external things is natural to man. Moreover, this natural dominion of man over
other creatures, which is competent to man in respect of his reason wherein
God’s image resides, is shown forth in man’s creation (Gn.1:26) by the words:
“Let us make man to our image and likeness: and let him have dominion over the
fishes of the sea,” etc.”
You also commit a “logical fallacy of equivocation” by confusing property in the sense of the right to be an owner inherent in every human being under natural law, with the sense of property as the necessarily limited and socially determined bundle of rights under human positive law, tradition, and custom.