Joseph Cardinal Höffner CHRISTIAN SOCIAL ... - Ordo Socialis

ody. For that reason, if man wishes to realize his dominion over the material world, he must
appropriate certain goods to himself, „alight on them,“ as it were, and „take them into possession.“
On the other hand, no system of private property may „be severed from every original
right of usufruct,“ since man’s claim to the goods necessary for his own development and
preservation is an inalienable natural right which stands „in the most intimate relation to the
personal dignity and the personal rights of man“ (Pius XII) and to which „all other rights,
whatever they may be, including the rights of property and free trade“ are subordinate (Populorum
progressio, 22).If a person is in extreme need, the superordinate claim of natural right
prevails over every opposing system of ownership: „In cases of need, all things are common
property“ (Thomas Aquinas, II-II, 66, 7) - a daring proposition which places high demands on
the purity of one’s convictions, but which can also have a liberating effect in times of catastrophe.
Pius XII applied these considerations to the community of nations also by declaring it
to be an injustice when rich countries „aim at such an appropriation of economic resources
and raw materials that the nations less favored by nature would be excluded from them“ (Cf.
Gaudium et spes, 69 also). When Pope Paul VI renewed and strongly emphasized the traditional
teaching on property in the encyclical Populorum progressio (22-23), the effect was
almost sensational, a sign of how little known Christian social teaching is.
2. Man’s Dependence on Material Goods.
In order to be able to live, we must extend our selves, as it were, into the material world. As
bodily beings, we are dependent on material goods and services, and not only for the elementary
preservation of our existence or our species (food, clothing, shelter), but also for the development
of an ennobled cultural life. Every culture presupposes provision with material
goods to a considerable extent: in the realm of health care, of education, of research and science,
of art and religious worship. The definition of the economy as the „cultural function that
takes care of subsistence“ (Werner Sombart) is therefore too narrow; it serves not only subsistence,
but all the realms of value in human life, so that it may not be disparaged as „materialistic“
per se. Its goal is the development of „a full-bodied humanism“ which is „open to the
values of the spirit and to God who is their source“, which „points the way towards God“ and
strives after „the fulfillment of the whole man and of every man (Populorum progressio, 42).
The more civilization and culture develop, the greater become the claims of man and of the
social structure on the world of goods. Prehistoric man was exposed to greater affliction and
danger in the satisfaction of his primitive and elementary needs than is modern man who has
gained mastery over nature through natural science and technology. „Early man must have
suffered dreadful privations and hardships as well as unimaginable anxieties confronted with
the forces of nature which he did not understand and which were charged with demonic terror
as a result of his great but unenlightened power of religious experience. Many threatening
things in the depths of our unconsciousness stem from that dark time.“ 1
The advanced industrial states today enjoy a preferential position in the supply of material
goods. A third of the earth’s population disposes of eighty per cent of the goods produced in
the world, whereas two-thirds of humanity must make do with the remaining twenty per cent.
3. Scarcity and the Need to be Economical.
Experience teaches that most essential commodities are not available in unrestricted fullness,
as is air, for instance, but only in a limited way; compared with human needs, they are scarce.
They are also subject to attrition and consumption, so that man must make efforts again and
again to procure them. In addition, man’s claim on the material world is not physiologically
conditioned as it is with the animal, but, because of his spirituality, must be designated as
unlimited and illimitable. In the United States, fifty per cent of the gainfully employed are
occupied with the production and sale of goods which were not even known by name in l9l4.
1 Romano Guardini, Der unvollständige Mensch (Düsseldorf, 1955), l.
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