Joseph Cardinal Höffner CHRISTIAN SOCIAL ... - Ordo Socialis

a) The recognition of Private Ownership
Private ownership, even of the means of production, is accepted, and it is specially emphasized
that free socialism is neither „partial or modified collectivism“ nor does it aim at a „controlled
economy,“ but wishes to help those strata of the population achieve ownership „for
which the social order has thus far made the acquisition of property almost impossible.“ 43
b) The Danger in a Welfare State
Neosocialism is, in general, favorably disposed to the transference of certain branches of the
economy (particularly the basic materials industry) into ‘common ownership’, to economic
co-determination by employees, to regulatory intervention by the state in the economic process,
as well as to the extension of the ‘welfare state’, although opinions are here in no way
undivided. As a result, there may arise opposition to Christian social teaching of the kind envisioned
in the exhortation delivered by Pius XII on May 5, l949, when he warned against
making „socialization the norm for the public organization of the economy“, even if otherwise
in the realm of the economy (though less in that of cultural policy) „it cannot be denied that
its (socialism’s) demands at times come very near those that Christian reformers of society
justly insist upon“(Quadragesimo anno,ll3).
3. The Relapse into Utopian Communism
For several years, an amazing relapse into the doctrine of salvation propounded by utopian
communism has been taking place in the Western world. The New Left, a very heterogeneous
group, is probably united only in the negation of the existing order. Based on a mixture of
pseudoscience and emotion, it sees in Marxism a new church of salvation. The ‘ruling system’
- from kindergarten to the university, from theology to theatre - should be overcome through
infiltration. How the new social and economic order which is to redeem the man of the future
from all ‘alienation’ is to look remains hidden. The future is utopian. 44 Even Eurocommunism,
which is grounded ideologically in an atheistic and antireligious philosophy of the
Marxist type, as, for instance, that worked out for Italian communism by Antonio Gramsci,
does not cease to be communism. As long as it has not yet come to power, it pretends to be
‘social’ and ‘democratic’. Only after its accession to power will it show its true face and realize
the dictatorship of the collective.
§ 3 Private Ownership as the Foundation of the Economic Order in Christian
Social Teaching
l. Three Theses
Christian social teaching responds with three considerations to the Marxist-Bolshevist utopia
and the theory that the „true reign of freedom“ will only begin when, after the abolition of
private ownership, the entire economic process (i.e., the site of production, investments, the
scope and kind of production of consumer goods, as well as their distribution) is determined
by a central planning agency:
a) The Community of Goods in Paradise
A number of Church Fathers and theologians such as Gregory of Nyssa, Basil, John Chrysostom,
Ambrose, and Thomas Aquinas considered it possible that without the Fall a commu-
43 G. Weisser, in Handbuch sozialdemokratischer Politik (Mannheim, 1953), 64.
44 Cf. Wolfgang Fikentscher, Zur politischen Kritik an Marxismus und Neomarxismus als ideologischen Grundlagen
der Studentenunruhen 1965-1969 (Tübingen, 1971); Heinz Schimmelbusch, Kritik an Commutopia (Tübingen,
1971).
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