Private Property Is the Salary
in Another Form

traditioninaction

To staunch the onslaught against private property being made by Pope Francis, we continue to offer our readers texts of the Pontifical Magisterium prior to Council Vatican II that teach precisely the opposite of those of the present day Vatican. 

Today, we post a solid text of Pope Leo XIII basing Catholic Doctrine on Natural Law for the establishment of private property.

Pope Leo XIII

As is easily understood, the intrinsic reason for work done by one who engages in a profitable art and the immediate goal sought by the worker is to acquire a good that will belong to him as his own. For if he places his strength and skill at the disposition of another, it is evidently for the purpose of providing for his own maintenance and needs of life. He expects from his work, therefore, not only a salary by right but, moreover, a written and rigorous guarantee to use this salary as he wishes.

Therefore, if, by trimming his expenses he manages to save money and, then, to ensure his sustenance he invests it, for example, in land, it is evident that this land is nothing but the salary in another form. The land thus acquired will be the property of the worker under the same title as the remuneration for his labor. Who does not see that it is precisely this that constitutes the right to property of land and assets?

Leo XIII, Encyclical Rerum novarum, of May 15, 1891,
Petropolis: Vozes, 1954, § 9, pp. 5-6.