4. The coexistence of the Church with a Communist State would be
possible if all owners renounced their rights.
In the hypothesis of a Communist inspired tyranny,
prepared to exercise every type of violence to impose, the regime of the community
of goods, and of owners who persist in affirming their rights against the State
(which neither created them nor can validly suppress them), what is the
solution for the tension resulting therefrom?
Offhand we do not see any
other except fighting. This would not be just any fight, however, but a fight
to the death of all Catholics faithful to the principle of private property,
Catholics placed in an attitude of legitimate defense against the exterminating
action of a tyrannical power whose bestial brutality in the face of the refusal
of the Church can reach inconceivable extremes. In short, it would be a revolt,
a revolution with all of the atrocious episodes inherent to it, accompanied by
the general impoverishment and the inevitable uncertainties regarding the
outcome of the tragedy.
This being established, one might ask if the owners
would not have in conscience, then, the duty of renouncing their rights in
favor of the common welfare, thus allowing the establishment of a community of
goods upon a morally legitimate foundation, according to which a Catholic
could accept, without problems of conscience, the Communist regime.
This proposition is inconsistent. It confuses the
institution of private property, as such, with the property rights of persons
concretely existing at a given historical moment. Let us admit as valid the
renunciation by these persons of their patrimony, imposed under the effects of
a brutal menace to the common welfare; their rights in such a case would cease:
From thence, however, there would not follow in any way the elimination of
private property as an institution. It would continue to exist, so to speak,
"in radice," in the very natural order of things, as immutably
indispensable to the spiritual and material welfare of men and of nations, and
as an unshakeable imperative of the Law of God.
And because it continues to exist thus "in radice,"
that is, in its root, it would spring up again at every moment. Every time, for
example, that a fisherman or a hunter took something, from the sea or from the
air, necessary to maintain himself and to accumulate a saving, and every time
that an intellectual or a manual laborer produced more than the indispensable
to live from day to day, and reserved for himself the surplus, there would be
constituted again small private properties, generated in the depths of the
natural order of things. And, as is normal, these properties would tend to
increase ... To avoid the anti‑Communist revolution yet again, it would
be necessary to be repeating the renunciations at every moment, which, as is
evident, leads to the absurd.
Besides, in numerous cases, the individual could not
perform such a renunciation without sinning against charity towards himself in
addition, such a renunciation would frequently clash with the rights of another
institution having a profound affinity with property, and even more sacred than
it; that is, the family. Indeed, many would be the cases in which a member of a
family could not practice such a renunciation without failing in justice or
charity to his own.
PRIVATE PROPERTY AND THE PRACTICE OF JUSTICE: Now,
after having described and justified this continuous revival of the right of
property, we shall make a few comments that could not have been offered before
with the necessary clarity.
These comments concern the virtue of justice in its
relations with private property. In section VI, no. 2, letter b of this work,
we spoke of the role of property in the knowledge of, and the love of, the
virtue of justice. Now we will consider the role of property in the practice of
justice.
Granted that the rights of property are springing up
at every moment in Communist countries as in others, then it follows that the
collectivist State that confiscates the goods of individuals places itself, in
all morality, in the position of a thief. And those persons who receive the
confiscated goods from the State are in principle, in relation to the owner who
has been despoiled, like those who enrich themselves with stolen goods.
Starting from this point, any moralist will easily
foresee the immense train of difficulties that the collectivization of goods
will bring to the practice of the virtue of justice. These difficulties will be
such that, above all in police States, they will demand frequently, perhaps at
each moment, heroic acts on the part of every Catholic. This is another proof
of the impossibility of coexistence between the Church and the Communist State.
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