Recently we
received a quote from a news commentary on an allocution by Pope Francis to the
effect that the head of the Catholic Church had abolished the natural law. Not all of the natural law, of course, just
the part that some people disagreed with and needed some credible authority to
back them up regarding the alleged abolition of private property by Pope
Francis (or any other pope).
Specifically,
Pope Francis has
reaffirmed the highly traditional and often forgotten doctrine of the Universal
Destination of Goods, by preaching that food is not private property, when
there are people starving worldwide. A culture of sharing is needed and urgent.
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| Did Pope Francis abolish private property? |
This graphically
illustrates the danger of taking things out of context and imposing a personal
or preferred meaning on something. Yes,
Pope Francis said, “Food is not private property.” Taken alone and out of context, the pope’s
statement that food is not private property necessarily implies that nothing can
be private property.
Even in the
context of the talk, however, it appears evident that Pope Francis did not
intend what he said to be taken literally and separated from the rest of the talk. He spoke of “sharing.” Logically, how is it possible for anyone to
share that which he does not own as private property in the first place? You are not “sharing” if you give to another
what belongs to him and not to you. If food is not
private property, then no one has any more right to it than anyone else.
By stating that
food is not private property and that we should share it as “our” food, not
“my” food, Pope Francis was contradicting himself . . . if we fail to take into consideration the framework of traditional concepts of
natural law and Catholic teaching within which the pope teaches. There
is also the fact that Pope Francis is a Thomist, meaning someone who adheres to
the philosophy of Aquinas. We must,
therefore, look not to an isolated statement to understand Pope Francis, but to
the context within which he made his statement.
First and
foremost, we must keep in mind that in Catholic belief, the pope can no more
invent a new truth or change an existing truth than he can command the sun, moon, and stars. “Papal infallibility” refers not to something
being true because the pope says it, but to the “grace” granted to the pope in
Catholic belief to discern truth in matters of faith and morals and teach it. (Also, nothing prevents the pope from making a mistake outside that narrow range of competence, nor is he "impeccable," i.e., incapable of committing a sin.)
That is, in
Catholic belief, nothing is true because the pope says so. Rather, the pope says so because it is true. No pope, therefore, can contradict what
another pope has taught in matters of faith and morals, nor change what the
Catholic Church has always taught.
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| Leo XIII: Private property is sacred and inviolable |
And what does the
Catholic Church teach about private property?
In Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo
XIII declared, “Private ownership must be held sacred and inviolable.” (§ 46.)
And why is
“private ownership” sacred and inviolable? Because it is of the natural law. Referring specifically to food,
Leo XIII stated in the same encyclical,
Here, again, we have further proof that private ownership is in
accordance with the law of nature. Truly, that which is required for the
preservation of life, and for life's well-being, is produced in great abundance
from the soil, but not until man has brought it into cultivation and expended
upon it his solicitude and skill. Now, when man thus turns the activity of his
mind and the strength of his body toward procuring the fruits of nature, by such
act he makes his own that portion of nature's field which he cultivates — that
portion on which he leaves, as it were, the impress of his personality; and it
cannot but be just that he should possess that portion as his very own, and
have a right to hold it without any one being justified in violating that
right. (§ 9.)
This sounds very
bad, for if we take what Francis said and compare it to what Leo XIII said,
Francis changed the natural law . . . which it is not in his power to do.
And it gets worse. Does the “universal destination of goods”
mean that private property is a human invention, and that all private ownership
is invalid as well as that of food?
True, Francis did not say that.
It was the commentator putting words in his mouth, but is that what the
universal destination of goods means?
That could not possibly be
the case. If the universal destination
of goods means that private property is not of the natural law, then it
contradicts the generic right of dominion, which is that every human being has
by nature (Rerum Novarum, § 6) the right to be an owner.
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| Aquinas: property has personal and social aspects |
That is, every
human being has the absolute and inalienable right to be an owner (the generic
right of dominion). At the same time,
what an owner may do with what is owned is necessarily limited, as determined
by the wants and needs of the owner, other individuals and groups, and the
common good as a whole. This is “the
universal destination of all goods,” for no owner may legitimately use that
which is owned to harm him- or herself, other individuals and groups, or the
common good as a whole. He or she must "look to the common good" when using that which is privately owned.
In other words,
there is both an individual and a social aspect to ownership. The individual aspect is absolute, for no one
can legitimately take away the right to be an owner from any human being. There may be times when it is necessary to
define what may be owned and how, but ownership itself — private property — is
a natural right. Natural rights being part of human nature, which is a reflection of God's Nature, you can no more change the natural law than you can change God; God is, in that sense, the natural law.
It is when we
look at how ownership is exercised, “use,” that the concept of stewardship
comes in, and the fact that ownership may not be exercised in harmful
ways. Exercising even natural rights can
never be absolute, for that would contradict its social aspect.
That is how
Aquinas explains the matter in the Summa
Theologica, which we will look at when we next address this subject.
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