We have been saying for years that many people get fundamental principles wrong. This is understandable given the state of education today, but it still doesn’t make it right. As people like Robert Maynard Hutchins and Mortimer J. Adler have been warning for about a century or more, schooling has degenerated from actual education, to job training, and finally to ideological indoctrination. This is important because it’s one thing to issue an encyclical, and quite another to have it understood, and understanding comes at a high premium today.
A Basis for Understanding
And what is it we are to understand about Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, “On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence”? Most obviously, the document is a warning about advanced technology taking over the role of human beings; machines controlling human beings rather than human beings controlling machines. The pope opens the encyclical by asking if we want to build the Tower of Babel, or the City of Jerusalem?
From the perspective of the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism, the question is not whether we want to build Babel or Jerusalem, but how — and what kind of Babel or Jerusalem is wanted. As far as we are concerned, the only city or any other human construct worth having is one that provides or contributes to an environment within which each human person can acquire and develop habits of doing good (“virtue”), thereby becoming more fully human.
“More fully human”? Not just “human”?
No, we mean “more fully human.” Every human being is as human, and is human in the same way, as all other humans. Each has the “analogously complete” (think “same,” even though that’s not really correct) capacity to become virtuous (or vicious, for that matter), and it is this capacity, not the virtues or vices someone acquires and develops, that define human beings as human. There are complex philosophical explanations why this is so, but we won’t go into them (yes, we heard your sigh of relief). People become more or less fully human when they become virtuous or vicious, respectively. They do not become more or less human.
Cutting to the chase, the sort of society we want to build is one in which everyone ideally has access to the opportunity and means to become virtuous, that is, more fully human, and — of course — does so. That requires each and every human person — and every human being is automatically a person by nature; a “natural person” — be able to act virtuously, and that in turn requires each and every human person have the power to act virtuously.
The Question of Power
Power? Isn’t power evil?
No, power is not inherently evil. Power is legally defined as “the ability for doing.” If you want to do anything, you must have the power to do it. That is why, when “power” refers to power over your own life, it is a very great good and the chief support of life and liberty. When “power” refers to power over others, it can become one of the greatest evils there is.
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| Daniel Webster |
And that is important . . . why?
Because (as Daniel Webster and countless others have pointed out), “Power naturally and necessarily follows property.”
And that brings in Magnifica Humanitas and its statements regarding private property. As a caveat, CESJ is not a Catholic or a religious organization. The Just Third Way is based on the natural law common to every human being. We are interested in Catholic social teaching from a reason-based natural law perspective, not a faith-based doctrinal perspective.
That is why it is a matter of concern to us when in §§ 66-67 of Magnifica Humanitas, Leo XIV appears to be taking the position that the natural right to private property is a right, but not an absolute right. It is, however, a contradiction in terms to say without qualification, “the Christian tradition has never recognized the right to private property as absolute or inviolable.” (MH § 66.)
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| The State if NOT a god. |
Isolated and taken out of context, we can only conclude this statement means either that the natural law is not an absolute, or that private property is not a natural right — neither of which to the best of our knowledge and its own claims the Catholic Church has ever asserted or in any way declared. (You will find plenty of Catholics and others saying that, but not — whatever their protestations — as official Church teaching.)
This seeming paradox is easily resolved, however, by pointing out that Magnifica Humanitas is a social encyclical. It therefore deals with the relations between human beings within the common good — and the common good is an abstraction, a purely human construct.
Thus, it is correct to say that — within the given context of the human-created common good — “Certainly there is a right to private property, which has its own specific meaning and purpose, yet it is always subordinate to the universal destination of goods.” (MH § 66). At the same time, it is also correct to say that — within the context of natural law based on God’s Nature — “private ownership must be held sacred and inviolable.” (RN § 46).
That requires some explanation.
Understanding Private Property
To be just, human positive law and all institutions of the common good (including private property) — the matter of Catholic social teaching — must conform as closely as possible to the precepts of the natural law, the chief of which is “Good is to be done, evil avoided.” Natural law is based on God’s Nature and is therefore as absolute as God Himself; something is right not because God says so, but because God is so.
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| Heinrich Rommen |
At the same time, human beings can only comprehend the natural law subjectively. Although human beings can understand God’s existence and the natural law by human reason alone, this understanding will inevitably be imperfect; people see “as through a glass in a dark manner” (1 Cor 13:12) and therefore experience truth — conformity with reality — in an obscured, even defective manner.
Thus, while the general natural law precepts on which Catholic social teaching is based can be understood and accepted as inviolable absolutes by any human person, the expression, interpretation, and application of Catholic social teaching is necessarily conditional and subject to human limitations. As Heinrich Rommen noted repeatedly in his book, The Natural Law (1947), the natural law gives general norms only. Particulars can only be determined by human positive law, tradition, and custom.
With respect to private property, so long as human positive law recognizes private ownership and inheritance, there is compliance with the natural law. Whether that recognition is itself just or even tolerable is another issue — and one that, as Leo XIV insists, must be addressed to deal adequately with AI and other developments.
No Essential Conflict
To explain, every person has the absolute right by nature to be an owner; it is God-given and cannot be changed. This is “the generic right of dominion.” What is conditional is what can be owned, how much, and how it can be used. This is “the universal destination of all goods.”
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| Louis O. Kelso |
That is, access to ownership and the means of becoming and remaining an owner is an absolute natural right, while exercise of ownership is determined by the needs of the owner, other people, and the common good; no one may use what is owned to harm him- or herself, other people, or the social order. Widespread ownership is particularly important to resolve the problems Leo XIV noted with AI, for — as Louis O. Kelso pointed out — ownership and control are the same in all codes of law.
Unfortunately, although every person has an absolute right to own, if a few people own too much, they prevent others from exercising that right. Paradoxically, the best way to prevent a few people from using property to harm others or the rest of society is not to abolish private property as the socialists would do or concentrate ownership and deny it to others as the capitalists would do. Rather, the solution is to turn non-owners into owners, thereby spreading property and thus power around to everyone.
And how can that be done? In our opinion, that can best be done by the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism as applied in the Economic Democracy Act.
Yes, we must build Jerusalem — but it must be a Jerusalem that exists not as an end in itself, but to provide the environment within which each human person can develop his or her fullest human potential — become “more fully human” (virtuous) — and that, in our opinion, means a Jerusalem which embodies the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism.
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