Socialism Attacks Natural & Just Inequalities
traditioninaction
We continue to expose the errors of Socialism based on the Catholic Popes before Vatican II.
Leo XIII clearly sets out here the total opposition between Catholic doctrine and Socialism regarding inequalities and private property.
Leo XIII clearly sets out here the total opposition between Catholic doctrine and Socialism regarding inequalities and private property.
Pope Leo XIII
But Catholic wisdom, sustained by the precepts of natural and divine law, provides with special care for public and private tranquility in its doctrines and teachings regarding the duty of government and the distribution of the goods that are necessary for life and use.
For, while the socialists would destroy the "right" of property, alleging it to be a human invention altogether opposed to the inborn equality of man and, claiming a community of goods, arguing that poverty should not be peaceably endured, and that the property and privileges of the rich may be rightly invaded, the Church, with much greater wisdom and good sense, recognizes the inequality among men, who are born with different powers of body and mind, as well as inequality in actual possession.
The Church holds that the right of property and of ownership, which springs from nature itself, must not be touched and stands inviolate. For she knows that stealing and robbery were forbidden so strongly by God, the Author and Defender of right, that He would not allow man even to desire what belonged to another, and that thieves and despoilers, no less than adulterers and idolaters, are shut out from the Kingdom of Heaven.
Leo XIII, Encyclical Quod apostolici muneris, of December 28, 1878,
Petropolis: Vozes, 1955, § 1, pp. 3-4
Petropolis: Vozes, 1955, § 1, pp. 3-4