2. As for the second condition, that the Church remain silent as to its thought concerning private property and the family, it also appears to us to be unacceptable, in view not only of the total incom­patibility between Communism and Catholic doc­trine but also ‑ and especially ‑ of the right of property in its relation to the love of God, the vir­tue of justice, and the sanctification of souls.

This second condition is rejected first of all on the basis of a reason of a general kind. The Commu­nist doctrine, atheistic, materialistic, relativistic, and evolutionist, collides in the most radical way with the Catholic concept of a personal God, who pro­mulgated for mankind a Law which contains all the principles of morality fixed, immutable, and in agree­ment with the natural order. Communist "culture," considered in all its aspects and in each one of them, leads to the denial of morality and of law. The colli­sion of Communism with the Church does not occur then merely in the matter of the family and proper­ty. And so it is that the Church would have to be silent about all morality and about all notion of law.

Therefore, we do not see what tactical result would be achieved by such an "ideological armistice" between Catholics and Communists, that is, one cir­cumscribed to these two points, if the ideological struggle continued in respect to all the other points.

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Let us consider, however, for the sake of argu­ment the hypothesis of the Church remaining silent in regard only to the family and private property.

It is so absurd to admit that the Church accept restrictions in her preaching in matters concerning the family that we shall not even detain ourselves in an analysis of this hypothesis.

But let us imagine that a Communist State were to give the Church complete liberty to preach about the family but not about private property. In such a case, what should our response be?

At first glance, one would say that the mission of the Church consists essentially in promoting the knowledge and love of God, rather than in advocating or maintaining a political, social, or economic regime. And that souls can know and love God without be­ing instructed about the principle of private property.

It would seem then that the Church should be able to agree as a lesser evil to a compromise in which She would keep silent about the right of property in order to receive in exchange the freedom to in­struct and sanctify souls, speaking to them of God and the eternal destiny of man, and administering to them the sacraments.

****************

This way of looking at the teaching and sancti­fying mission of the Church collides with a prelimi­nary objection. If any given earthly government de­manded, as a condition for the Church's liberty, that She renounce the preaching of any one of the pre­cepts of the Law, She could not accept this liberty, which would only be a sham.

We affirm that this liberty would be a sham be­cause the teaching mission of the Church has as its objective the teaching of a doctrine which is an in­divisible whole. Either She is free to fulfill the man­date of Our Lord Jesus Christ, teaching that whole, or She must consider herself oppressed and perse­cuted. If her complete liberty is not recognized, She must ‑ due to her militant nature ‑ fight against the oppressor. The Church cannot accept a partial silencing of her teaching function nor a partial op­pression in order to obtain a partial liberty. It would be a complete betrayal of her mission.

***

Besides this preliminary objection, based on the teaching mission of the Church, it is necessary to raise another one, concerning her function as the educator of the human will for the attainment of sanctity.

This objection is based on the fact that a clear knowledge of the principle of private property and respect for this principle in practice are absolutely necessary for a truly Christian formation of souls:

a) FROM THE P01NT OF VIEW OF THE LOVE OF GOD: The knowledge and love of the Law are inseparable from the knowledge and love of God. For the Law is in a certain way the mirror of the Divine Sanctity. And this, which one can say of each of its precepts, is principally true when it is considered as a whole. To renounce the teaching of the two precepts of the Decalogue which form the foundation of private property would be the same as to present a disfigured image of this whole and, therefore, of God Himself. Now, where souls have a disfigured idea of God, they are formed according to an erro­neous model, which is incompatible with true sancti­fication.

b) FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE CARDINAL VIRTUE OF JUSTICE: The cardinal virtues are, as the name says, the hinges upon which all sanctity is supported. For a soul to sanctify itself, it must know them rightly, love them sincerely, and practice them genuinely.

It happens that the whole notion of justice is founded upon the principle that every man, his neighbor individually considered, and human soci­ety are the holders respectively of rights, to which there correspond naturally obligations. In other words, the notions of "mine" and "thine" are to be found in the very foundation of the concept ofjus­tice.

Now it is precisely the notion of "mine" and “thine” which in economic matters leads directly and ineluctably to the principle of private property.

Hence it is that, without the right knowledge of the legitimacy and of the extension of private prop­erty, and moreover of its limitation, there is no right knowledge of the cardinal virtue of justice. And without that knowledge, a true love and a true prac­tice of justice are impossible; in short, sanctification is impossible.

c) FROM A MORE GENERAL P01NT OF VIEW ‑ THAT OF THE FULL DEVELOPMENT OF THE FACULTIES OF THE SOUL, AND OF ITS SANCTIFICATION: The explanation of this argument presupposes as given that the right forma­tion of the intelligence and the will is, under various aspects, favorable to sanctification and, under other aspects, even identified with it. And it presupposes that, on the contrary, everything prejudicial to the right formation of the intellect and will is, under various aspects, incompatible with sanctification.

We are going to show that a society in which private property does not exist is gravely opposed to the right development of the faculties of the soul, especially of the will. And for this reason it is in itself incompatible with the sanctification of men.

In passing, we shall also refer, for analogous rea­sons, to other consequences of the community of goods, those that are prejudicial to the culture of the people and its development. We shall do this because the true development of culture is not only a factor favorable to the sanctification of the people but also a fruit of that sanctification. Accordingly, a proper cultural life is intimately connected with our theme.

Let us approach the question by making clear an essential point frequently forgotten by those who treat the institution of private property, that is, it is necessary to the equilibrium and to the sanctification of men.

To justify this thesis, we should recall first that the pontifical documents, when they treat of capital, labor, and the social problem, leave not the least doubt about the fact that private property is not only legitimate but also indispensable to the individ­ual as well as to the common good ‑ indispensable for both the material interests of man and for that of his soul.

It is indeed certain that these same papal docu­ments have vehemently risen up against the numer­ous excesses and abuses that beginning, in the main, in the nineteenth century, have occurred in the mat­ter of private property. But the fact that the abuses men make of an institution are very reprehensible and pernicious does not mean absolutely that the in­stitution is not intrinsically excellent. Rather, one should tend in most instances to think the contrary: “corruptio optimi pessima" ‑ the worst is perhaps almost always the corruption of what is in itself the best. Nothing is so sacred and holy, in itself, andfrom every point of view, as the priesthood. Nothing

is worse than its corruption. And for this same rea­son one understands why the Holy See, so severely opposed to the abuses of private property, is even more severe when curbing the abuses of the priest­hood.

There are many reasons why the institution of private property is indispensable to individuals, families, and peoples. A complete exposition of these reasons would exceed the scope of this work. Let us limit ourselves to the explanation of that which is most directly important to our theme: As we af­firmed recently, this institution is necessary to the equilibrium and sanctification of man.

Being naturally endowed with intelligence and with will, man tends, by his own spiritual faculties to provide everything necessary for his welfare; from whence comes a certain number of rights. Accord­ingly, he has the right to seek for himself the things that he needs and to appropriate them when they have no owner. He also has the right of providing, in a stable way, for the necessities of tomorrow by tak­ing possession of the ground, cultivating it, and pro­ducing for this cultivation his instruments of labor. In short, it is because he has a soul that man irrefrag­ably tends to be an owner. And it is in this, say Leo XIII and St. Pius X, that this position in relation to material goods distinguishes him from irrational ani­mals: "Man has not only the simple use of earthly goods, as do the brutes, but also the right of stable ownership, in respect to both those goods which use consumes and those which use does not consume." (Encylical Rerum Novarum). (St.Pius X, "Motu Propio" on Catholic Popular Action, Dec. 18, 1903 ‑ ASS, Vol. XXXVI, pp. 341‑343).

Now, since, in the case of man, directing his own destiny and providing his own subsistence is the proximate, necessary, and constant object of the exercise of the intelligence and the will, and owning property is the normal means for him to be sure and to feel sure of his future and to be his own master and to feel that he is his own master, it follows that to abolish private property, and as a consequence deliver the individual like a helpless ant to the direction of the State, is to deprive his mind of some of the basic conditions for its normal functioning; it is to cause the atrophy of the faculties of the soul through lack of exercise; it is, in short, to deform it profoundly. Whence arises, to a great extent, the sadness that characterizes the populations subjected to Communism, as well as the tedium, the neurosis, and the suicides which are becoming more and more frequent in certain highly socialized countries of the Occident.

It is indeed well known that the unexercised faculties of the soul tend to atrophy. It is also known, however, that adequate exercise can develop these faculties, at times even prodigiously. Upon this fact are founded a great number of didactic and as­cetic practices approved by the greatest masters and consecrated by experience.

Since sanctity is the perfection of the soul, it is easy to understand how important the foregoing conclusions are to the salvation and sanctification of men. The condition of proprietorship, of itself, creates circumstances highly propitious for the right and virtuous exercise of the faculties of the soul. Without accepting the utopian ideal of a society in which each individual, without exception, is a pro­prietor, or in which there are not unequal fortunes, great, medium, and small, it behooves us to affirm that the greatest possible diffusion of property favors the spiritual welfare, and obviously the cul­tural as well, not only of individuals and families but also of society. On the other hand, proletarization creates conditions highly unfavorable to the salva­tion, sanctification, and cultural formation of peo­ples, families, and individuals.

For greater facility of exposition, let us consider now some objections to the argument expounded under this letter "c":

Do those who are not proprietors go insane in a society where there is private property? Is it impossible for them to sanctify themselves?

In responding to this objection, it is reasonable for us to consider the fact that private property is an institution which favors nonproprietors indirect­ly, but in a very genuine way. For when a great number of persons take adequate advantage of the moral and cultural benefits which the condition of ownership confers upon them, there results there­from an elevated social environment, which by the natural communication of souls favors even the non­-owners. Accordingly, the situation in which the non-­owners find themselves in such a society is not iden­tical with that of individuals living in a regime where no private property exists.

Is private property then the cause of the moral and cultural elevation of the peoples?

We say that property is a most important condi­tion for the spiritual and cultural good of individuals, families, and peoples. We do not say it is the cause of sanctification. It is like the freedom of the Church, which is a condition for her development. But the Church, persecuted, flourished admirably in the cat­acombs. It would be exaggerated to say, for example, that it necessarily follows that the more diffused the institution of property,the more virtuous and cul­tured the people will be. This would amount to making that which is supernatural depend on matter and that which is cultural depend on the economy.

However, it is certain that it is not licit for any people to contravene the designs of Providence by abolishing an institution, such as private property, which has been imposed by the natural order of things, and institution constituting a very important condition for the good of souls both in the religious and the cultural planes. And any people proceeding in this way prepares the factors for its moral and cultural degradation and, therefore, for its complete ruin.

If this is so, how was it possible for so much culture to exist in Imperial Rome where the major­ity of the population consisted of proletarians and slaves? And how was it possible for several slaves, both in Rome and in Greece, to attain an elevated moral and cultural level?

      The difference between a brightly lighted room and one with only a flickering light is not as great as the difference between a room with only a flick­ering light and one in total darkness. This is so be­cause the evil produced by the total lack of an im­portant good ‑ in this case, the light ‑ is always incomparably greater than that produced by the in­sufficiency of this good. The Roman society had, though to a lesser degree than was desirable, a vast and cultured propertied class: whence the existence in the Empire, at least in a certain proportion, of the cultural benefits of property. The situation would be very different in a country entirely deprived of a propertied class; from this point of view, it would be in complete darkness.

Some person may perhaps object that experience contradicts this theoretical conclusion, since among the Russian people there is an undeniable cultural and technical progress in spite of the community of goods imposed by the Marxist regime.

Even here the response is not difficult.

It is obvious that the resources drained from the four cardinal points of the compass of this vast em­pire are subject to the will of the Soviet government. It disposes arbitrarily of the talents, the work, and of the production of hundreds of millions of persons.

Accordingly, we see that the Soviet government was by no means lacking in the resources needed to construct a certain number of artificial environments which would represent for it a great technical or cultural development (an anti‑cultural development, we should more properly say). Without denying the volume of the results obtained in this way, we never­theless can legitimately express some surprise that they are not much greater, since a totally anti-­natural Moloch State that does not produce Moloch results in the artificial order is not really effectual.

Moreover, this hot‑house intellectual flowering is entirely cut off from the population. It does not constitute a product of the society. It does not re­sult from a germination in the womb of the society. Rather it is obtained outside of it and with the blood extracted therefrom. It grows and manifests itself outside of society and, in a certain sense, against it.

Such production is not the index of the culture of a nation, just as the products of a hot‑house on an abandoned rural property are not a valid proof of the suitable cultivation of that property.

Returning now to the objection concerning Im­perial Rome, we note that there were slaves, it is true, who attained surprising moral and intellectual levels: marvels of grace in the moral plane, and of nature, which even now fill us with wonder. These glorious exceptions, however, are not sufficient to deny the obvious truth that the servile condition is, in itself, oppressive and harmful for the soul of the slave from both the religious and the cultural point of view. And they are not sufficient to deny another obvious truth: that slavery, already in itself morally and culturally noxious, would have been incompara­bly more so for the slaves of antiquity if there had been no patricians and freemen and society had been composed only of men with neither autonomy nor property, such as occurs in a Communist regime.

But someone will finally ask is the religious state, then, not intrinsically harmful to souls, in view of the vows of obedience and poverty which constitute it? Don't these vows hamper man's tend­ency to provide for himself?

The answer is easy. This state is highly benefi­cial to souls which grace attracts to exceptional ways. If this state were to be lived by a whole socie­ty, it would be harmful, for that which is suitable for exceptions is not suitable for all. For this reason, the community of goods among the faithful was never generalized in the primitive Church and ended up, being eliminated. It is notable also that the Com­munist‑Protestant experiences of certain collective bodies in the 16th century resulted in spectacular failures.

***

These multiple arguments and objections having been pondered, the thesis holds good that it is vain to keep silent about the immorality of a complete community of goods in order to obtain, in return for this silence, the sanctification of souls through freedom of worship and a relative freedom of preach­ing.

Moreover, even though this monstrous pact were accepted, not even by these means would the dreamed of coexistence be practical. Indeed, in a society with­out private property, the upright souls would always tend, by the very dynamism of their virtue, to create conditions favorable for themselves. For everything that exists tends to fight for its own survival by des­troying adverse circumstances and by implanting propitious ones. On the other hand, anything ceas­ing to fight against circumstances gravely unfavor­able to itself is destroyed by them.

Whence it is that virtue would be in a perpetual struggle against the Communist society where it flourished, and would tend perpetually to eliminate the community of goods. And the Communist so­ciety would be in a perpetual struggle against virtue and would tend to asphyxiate it. All this is just exactly the opposite of the dreamed of coexistence.

3. In regard to the third condition, it seems to us to be equally unacceptable, for the necessity of tolerating a lesser evil cannot lead to the renouncing of its total destruction.

When the Church resolves to tolerate a lesser evil, She does not thereby imply that this evil should not be combated with all efficiency. All the more so when this "lesser" evil is most grave in itself.

In other words, the Church must form in the faithful, and renew in them at every moment, a most vivid regret that it was necessary to accept the lesser evil. And with this regret, She must raise up in them the efficacious resolution to do everything to remove the circumstances that made it necessary to accept the lesser evil.

Now, acting thus, the Church would destroy the possibility of coexistence. And moreover, it seems to us, She could not act in any other way within the imperatives of her sublime mission.