From the bulletin of November 22, 2020
We continue our journey through the landmark document Rerum Novarum this week by picking back up on the theme of private property. When Pope Leo XIII defends the right to private property, he also acknowledges an important principle that will continue to develop in the Church’s social teaching. He writes, “The fact that God has given the earth for the use and enjoyment of the whole human race can in no way be a bar to the owning of private property.” We see here what becomes known as the Universal Destination of Goods, which is that God has given the earth to all people and to no one person in particular. As the Pope makes clear, the fact that human beings need to secure a future for themselves and their loved ones means that people can own part of the land or what is produced by labor on that land.
At this point in his letter, the Pope briefly turns to the fact that human beings are also free to choose a vocation or state in life. He refers specifically to the option to get married or to seek holy virginity as a priest or religious. This gives him the chance to mention another important part of the Church’s teaching, namely that family comes before the state. As he puts its “We have the family, the ‘society’ of a man’s house… a true society, and one older than any state. Consequently, it has rights and duties peculiar to itself which are quite independent of the State.” In other words, part of the reason that the government can’t simply eliminate all private property is that it would be taking away a persons’ ability to provide for the family and the family is not something controlled or decided by the government.
As with private property, the rights of a family are not absolute. Leo writes, “Provided, therefore, the limits which are prescribed by the very purposes for which it exists be not transgressed, the family has at least equal rights with the State in the choice and pursuit of the things needful to its preservation and its just liberty.” In other words, so long as the family doesn’t “transgress” certain natural limits, it has rights that no government can take away. An example would be if a persons’ family sought to kill or seriously injure a member of the family. At that point, because the person is also part of the larger society, the government has the right to step in and protect that person and punish family members who seek to do harm.
This interchange of belonging to the state and a family at the same time also means it is appropriate for the government to offer help to the family. The Pope writes, “if a family finds itself in exceeding distress, utterly deprived of the counsel of friends, and without any prospect of extricating itself, it is right that extreme necessity be met by public aid, since each family is a part of the commonwealth.” But this offer of help cannot flatly override all parental authority which because that authority “can be neither abolished nor absorbed by the State.” Those who would want to set “aside the parent and set up a State supervision, act against natural justice, and destroy the structure of the home.” This “structure” and “natural justice” are obvious in Genesis when God establishes Adam and Eve as a family and it’s also obvious by human nature. A man and a woman come together to produce children, making it perfectly reasonable and natural for that child to be primarily in the care of the parents who brought him into being. Again, the state can act in the interest of protecting one or more family members when their rights are violated, but that doesn’t justify the outright elimination of the right to belong to a family and provide for them through the use of private property
Having established that getting rid of all private property is the wrong answer to social problems, Pope Leo is now ready to start laying out where a good answer can be found.
– In Christ,
Fr. Albert