Massaro Catholic Social Teaching section 5

Chapter 5, section 5 within the handout by Massaro indicated that the material things can only be good if they are shared amongst a community for the common good with a wide availability. Massaro indicates that the Catholic Church isn’t necessarily opposed to private ownership. The church simply encourages that the private ownership of property be used efficiently in a way that the resources i.e., material goods associated with the property are equitably distributed amongst people, offering them incentives to be more productive and care for the goods as though they were somehow sacred to God. The Church tended to follow the teachings of Thomas Aquinas on property ownership, who admonished those for being greedy with material wealth and proposed that individuals ought to impose limits on themselves in terms of how much property they could hold. Alas, some of these admonishments by Aquinas and the church fell on deaf ears, largely being ignored by some. The Church believed according to Aquinas, that God didn’t favor individuals to have unlimited wealth and there seems to be an implication that it’s a kind of social sin to not share those excess material goods with ones less fortunate neighbors. In God’s eyes all people are equal as his children, therefore to redistribute material goods to the less fortunate is in God’s plan.

The Catholic church under Paul VI indicated that there was great concern amongst the clergy about excessive hoarding of wealth. Especially amongst the land owning classes in Latin America. Paul VI indicated that if lands weren’t being used efficiently and their resources weren’t being given to the common good that perhaps the church should encourage measures in which the people would forcibly take those resources for themselves if they couldn’t acquire it peacefully. But the pope at the time indicated that this would have to be reserved for circumstances defined as “extreme measures when he presented these arguments in 1967; as a consequence of the industrial revolution people were more dependent upon some implied means and modes of production. Many it seemed implied didn’t own their own modes of production, so therefore there ought to be measures in place for people to have upward mobility in which they could have their needs met. This would require a certain amount of social responsibility and socialization. John XXIII indicates that government could act as a catalyst to seize and redistribute material goods for the common good using church principles as guidelines for their distribution. The church began to recognize that the government and private sectors of life ought to have a vested interest in promoting redistribution of material goods for the common good of the people. But, make no mistake about it, the church doesn’t suggest all property ought to be collectivized, since early in the section the church endorsed limited individual property rights.