Sources & Extracts

 Review this excerpt and then go back to the main thread.

The stress on the moral obligations of property owners to the common good was clearly stated in Economic Justice for All, a pastoral letter from the American Catholic Bishops published in 1986. The following excerpts will provide a sense of the Catholic view.
111. Persons in management face many hard choices each day, choices on which the well-being of many others depends. Committment to the public good and not simply the private good of their firms is at the heart of what it means to call their work a vocation and not simply a career or a job....Large corporations and large financial institutions have considerable power to help shape economic institutions within the United States and throughout the world. With this power goes responsibility and the need for those who manage it to be held to moral and institutional accountability.

112. Business and finance have the duty to be faithful trustees of the resources at their disposal. No one can ever own capital resources absolutely or control their use without regard for others and society as a whole. This applies first of all to land and natural resources. Short-term profits reaped at the cost of depletion of natural resources or the pollution of the environment violate this trust.

113. Resources created by human industry are also held in trust. Owners and managers have not created this capital on their own. They have benefited from the work of many others and from the local communities that support their endeavors. They are accountable to these workers and communities when making decisions....

114. The Catholic tradition has long defended the right to private ownership of productive property. This right is an important element in a just economic policy. It enlarges our capacity for creativity and initiative....For these reasons ownership should be made possible for a broad sector of our poopulation.

115. The common good may sometimes demand that the right to own be limited by public involvement in the planning or ownership of certain sectors of the economy. Support of private ownership does not mean that anyone has the right to unlimited accumulation of wealth. "Private property does not constitute for anyone an absolute or unconditioned right. No one is justified in keeping for his exclusive use what he does not need, when others lack necessities." Pope John Paul II has referred to limits placed on ownship by the duty to serve the common good as a "social mortgage" on private property. For example, these limits are the basis of society's exercise of eminent domain over privately owned land needed for roads and other essential public goods. The Chuch's teaching opposes collectivist and statist economic approaches. But it also rejects the notion that a free market automatically produces justice. [Economic Justice for All: Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy, p. 56-58]