Joseph Cardinal Höffner CHRISTIAN SOCIAL ... - Ordo Socialis

nist community of goods might have been realized in paradise, since in paradise the negative
spirit of discord and greed would have been lacking. Man in paradise would not have contented
himself with the so-called ‘negative community of goods’, i.e., with grasshoppers and
wild honey, but would have subdued the earth through common planning to an extent that we
can scarcely imagine. This opinion, which others such as Francisco Suarez have controverted,
cannot be dismissed as utopian, since the essence of utopianism lies in the invention of social
and economic orders that are impossible in the fallen age; those theologians, however, presupposed
the paradisiacal state. At all events, compared with the order of private ownership,
they no doubt considered the community of goods as the more perfect order in itself.
b) The Community of Goods in Families and Monasteries
After the Fall, the community of goods can only be realized without pernicious results in
families and in the cenobitic communities of monasteries which are an „image of the holy
community“ and whose property represents a holy „commune“ (Basil the Great). In the monastic
rule of St. Benedict it says: „Everything is common to everyone...and no one should
call anything his own...One should hold to what is written: it was distributed to each according
to his need...Let him who uses less thank God...let whoever needs more humble himself
because of his weakness...Thus all members shall remain at peace.“ Families and monasteries
are communities of limited size held together through the bonds of blood, piety, and devotion
to Christ, which are led by fatherly or motherly authority so that abuse of power and exploitation
are less to be feared. From time to time the question is raised whether larger communities
such as Christian parishes could also live in a community of goods. In a sermon at Constantinople,
John Chrysostom, for example, said: „If all men and women were to hand over all
their money and to transfer all their fields, possessions, and houses, I reckon that a million
pounds of gold would be raised and perhaps even two or three times that much...Would God
then not bestow a superabundance of his grace upon us a thousand fold? Would we not make
the earth into a heaven?“ (in Act Ap. Hom. XI:3). In general, however, such plans were rejected
or discussed with caution and reservation, even by Chrysostom, who remarks in his
sermon: „I mean this only rhetorically; therefore no one needs to get excited, neither the rich
nor the poor.“
c) The Necessity of the System of Private Property for the Economic Order
In the present era - i.e., after the Fall - there can only be a question of a system of private
ownership for the entire economic order. By ‘private ownership’ one here understands not
only the legally recognized and exclusive power of disposal of a natural or legal person or
body of persons (co-ownership, joint ownership) over things (chattels and real estate), but
also the obligatory rights which are gaining ever greater importance in the modern economy
(membership rights such as stocks and bonds, etc.) and the limited rights in rem such as copyrights,
in short, everything that qualifies as ‘property.“ Furthermore, it is to be noted that, under
the system of private ownership, corporations, institutions, and foundations possess property
on a considerable scale. It is estimated that in the Federal Republic of Germany about a
third of the nation’s wealth belongs to the state as things in public use (streets, parks, etc.), as
administrative properties (office buildings, schools, etc.), and as financial operations that
should serve to generate revenues (railways, post offices, public lands, industrial plants in the
hands of the federal government or the Länder, factories owned by the municipality, etc.). On
the other hand, „common goods“ (air, sunshine, etc.) are not property at all because they cannot
be particularized, whereas the equivocal concept ‘common property’ implies either what
is public property by law or, as in the social utopias, a community of goods.
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