Glimpses of Church History

Church & Property
Over the centuries, the Catholic Church  has ensured its survival by siding with the ruling classes. Popes had insisted on crowning and dethroning European royalty. The Church came to be rewarded with vast lands in Europe by royal patrons and in Latin America by the Christian conquerors. Like corporations, the Church invented a legal fiction to make itself a ‘juridical person’ with right to property and this right was enshrined in Canon Law.

Then came the backlash. The leaders behind the Protestant Reformation were the first to seize church lands. The French revolutionaries did likewise, declaring them to be national goods. Then in 1848, nationalist fervour swept across Italy and a republic was proclaimed in 1849. The new government stripped the pope of his secular powers and confiscated some of the church lands. In 1860 the Kingdom was Italy was founded and all the papal states were annexed. In 1870 Rome became the capital of Italy and the pope was confined to a small patch in the Vatican.

The Communist Manifesto (1848) sent alarm bells ringing in the Vatican. Its concern was with the welfare of the workers and the stated goal was to abolish private property and establish a classless society. At the time, only Britain, parts of western Europe and the US were industrialised but working class consciousness was growing. Next came another revolutionary publication - Marx’s Das Kapital on the mechanics of capitalism and its exploitation of workers. The socialists and communists espoused the common good and the equality of all men. Astonishingly, the Vatican disagreed.
In Dec 1878, the very first year of his reign, Leo XIII responded in an encyclical on Socialism. It was addressed to all church leaders (bishops, patriarchs, etc).

Extracts from the encyclical (slightly edited):
“We hasten to point out that a deadly plague is creeping into the very fibers of human society and leading it on to the verge of destruction... That sect of men called socialists, communists or nihilists, bound together in a wicked confederacy, have long been planning the overthrow of all civil society.

“They proclaim the absolute equality of all men in rights and duties... They assail the right of property sanctioned by natural law. They strive to seize and hold in common whatever has been acquired by lawful inheritance or by labour or thrift... Socialists would destroy the right of property, alleging it to be a human invention, claiming a community of goods.

"The socialists have sought to distort the Gospel to suit their own purposes. Their habit is always to maintain that nature has made all men equal...

"The inequality of rights and of power proceeds from the very Author of nature.... God has appointed various orders in civil society, differing indignity, rights and power. The Church with much greater wisdom recognises the inequality of men, inequality in actual possession and holds that the right of property and of ownership stands inviolate.

"The Church does all she can to help the poor - provides them homes and hospitals... she is constantly urging the rich to give what remains to the poor. She does all she can to comfort the poor. This is the best method - else the human race will fall back into the vile condition of slavery which so long prevailed among the pagan nations.

“Men of the lowest class, weary of their wretched home or workplace, are eager to attack the homes and fortunes of the rich... The recruits oif socialism are especially sought among artisans and workmen who are lured by the hope of promise of wealth. It is well to encourage artisans and workmen to make all associates contented with their lot and lead a quiet, peaceful life.”

1. The notion of ‘private property’ is a peculiarly western concept that first appeared in the 17th century and (together with individualism) was conceived to promote the capitalist creed and justify the expropriation of communal resources. Capitalism is about the accumulation of material goods and it was necessary to legalise and sanction the notion of private property.

2. The Church from the time of Emperor Constantine in the 4th century had become used to owning vast lands. As stated earlier, it sought to legalise this ownership by investing itself with the status of a ‘juridical person’, entitling it to property and this right was enshrined in Canon Law.

3. It was therefore a foregone conclusion that the popes would condemn any ideology that opposed the right to hold property. Pope Leo promptly condemned socialism as ‘a deadly plague’. Indigenous peoples outside Europe have treated property as a common resource for the benefit of its members but it didn’t occur to to the pope to study their values. For this holy man, non-Europeans were simply ‘barbarous people’, a label used in this encyclical.

4. Pope Leo claims that the right to property is sanctioned by ‘natural law’ but he did not explain what this natural law is. Should natural resources be owned by single persons (physical or juridical) or shared for for the common good? He also claims that the condition of inequality is God-given but he fails to quote the relevant Bible texts in support.

5. Pope Leo warns that socialist doctrine can lead to slave conditions in Europe - something that prevailed in ‘pagan nations’. But curiously he made no mention of on-going European enslavement of blacks in the trans-Atlantic slave trade - a virtual Black Holocaust. This trade was only abolished in 1834. Slavery in Brazil was still in force when Pope Leo wrote his encyclical. It would seem that slave conditions outside Europe were a lesser concern to him.

6. Nor is the pope sympathetic to the aspirations of the poor to improve their lot. He suspects they are out “to attack the homes of the rich” and advises them to be “contented with their lot”. Why then did he not object to the millions of Europeans who migrated to the Americas (and elsewhere) to better their lot, slaughtering or hunting down the natives and grabbing their land in the process?

7. The encyclical contains no words of rebuke for the capitalists plundering the resources of distant societies or the on-going military interventions in Asia and Africa at the time.