Private Property
The Church has a role in discussing these issues. Social and economic issues are vital to her not from a technical point of view but in terms of moral and ethical issues involved. Ethical considerations include the nature of private property concerning which, within the Catholic Church, several conflicting views had developed. Pope Pius XI proclaims private property to be essential for the development and freedom of the individual. Those who deny private property deny personal freedom and development. But, says Pius, private property has a social function as well. Private property loses its morality if it is not subordinated to the common good. Therefore governments have a right to pursue redistribution policies. In extreme cases, the Pope recognises that the State has a right to expropriate private property.
Read more about this topic: Quadragesimo Anno
Famous quotes containing the words private property, private and/or property:
“Private property is held sacred in all good governments, and particularly in our own. Yet shall the fear of invading it prevent a general from marching his army over a cornfield or burning a house which protects the enemy? A thousand other instances might be cited to show that laws must sometimes be silent when necessity speaks.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“Typography is not only a technology but is in itself a natural resource or staple, like cotton or timber or radio; and, like any staple, it shapes not only private sense ratios but also patterns of communal interdependence.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“There is something that Governments care for far more than human life, and that is the security of property, and so it is through property that we shall strike the enemy.... Be militant each in your own way.... I incite this meeting to rebellion.”
—Emmeline Pankhurst (1858–1928)