American Cardinal Declares You Will Own Nothing And Be Happy
Return To Tradition | 15 Sept. 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwUuoNU83QY
2:10 No one intrinsically owns anything.
Did you note the word "intrinsically"?
The corrollary is, all private ownership is extrinsically assigned, by a kind of art.
Now, what did St. Thomas say?
Reply to Objection 1. Community of goods is ascribed to the natural law, not that the natural law dictates that all things should be possessed in common and that nothing should be possessed as one's own: but because the division of possessions is not according to the natural law, but rather arose from human agreement which belongs to positive law, as stated above (II-II:57:3). Hence the ownership of possessions is not contrary to the natural law, but an addition thereto devised by human reason.
Reply to objection 1 is in article 2 of question 66 of Secunda Secundae, in case you wonder.
Sometimes when people find me childish in expression, I am going by wordings that simply translate St. Thomas. Like "thing" for "substance" or "can be" for "is in potency" or "is actually" for "is in act" ... and sometimes when people find me not a Christian conservative in content, it's because that's what they would think of St. Thomas too, if they actually read him (and some Protestant Conservatives actually do think that).
3:08 For "co-creators" I'd definitely prefer Tolkien's term "sub-creators" ...
3:25 Catholic teaching certainly says that private property is in a sense a right.
1) It is a right to have property for what one needs, collective or private.
2) Once it has been allotted either way, usually privately, one usually has a right to undisturbed use of it, even if it should exceed one's needs, it's not as if everyone had to give away all according to his possibilities and just keep the bare needs, or as if keeping more than one strictly needs were immediately in respect to everyone having less an injustice.
Same article, this time I give the corpus:
I answer that, Two things are competent to man in respect of exterior things. One is the power to procure and dispense them, and in this regard it is lawful for man to possess property. Moreover this is necessary to human life for three reasons. First because every man is more careful to procure what is for himself alone than that which is common to many or to all: since each one would shirk the labor and leave to another that which concerns the community, as happens where there is a great number of servants. Secondly, because human affairs are conducted in more orderly fashion if each man is charged with taking care of some particular thing himself, whereas there would be confusion if everyone had to look after any one thing indeterminately. Thirdly, because a more peaceful state is ensured to man if each one is contented with his own. Hence it is to be observed that quarrels arise more frequently where there is no division of the things possessed.
The second thing that is competent to man with regard to external things is their use. On this respect man ought to possess external things, not as his own, but as common, so that, to wit, he is ready to communicate them to others in their need. Hence the Apostle says (1 Timothy 6:17-18): "Charge the rich of this world . . . to give easily, to communicate to others," etc.
3:52 Let's cite Divini Redemptoris:
In consequence he has been endowed by God with many and varied prerogatives: the right to life, to bodily integrity, to the necessary means of existence; the right to tend toward his ultimate goal in the path marked out for him by God; the right of association and the right to possess and use property.
Let's presume that this includes sime kind of gradation, given the Pope said "varied prerogatives", and let's assume the basic rights are given in their order of importance:
In consequence he has been endowed by God with many and varied prerogatives:
1) the right to life,
2) to bodily integrity,
3) to the necessary means of existence;
4) the right to tend toward his ultimate goal in the path marked out for him by God;
5) the right of association
6) and the right to possess and
7) use property.
The main problem during the Holodomor wasn't that Ukrainian farmers were denied property. The main problem is, that therefore they were also denied the necessary means of existence and therefore also bodily integrity and life. However, the denial of property was in this specific case the necessary means from taking away their rights to means of subsistance.
In the Irish Famine, which was also manmade, English landlors in Ireland were not denied their property, rather they made the utmost of it. Irish tenants were not primarily denied their property, since the wheat they grew by right of contract belonged to the landlord, the potatoes they grew to themselves. Now, certain years, there were no potatoes. The landlords didn't step back one millimetre from their contractual rights and as a consequence Irishmen starved or fled.
4:04 As many individuals and families as possible should own as much property as they need for independence.
When the property one owns denies some people both independence and even the relative independence (compared to the dole) of being a hired worker, one might be owning too much.
A Swedish popup politician from Örebro (pronounce Ur-rebroo) missed getting elected even in his district yesterday, but he made a comment about the "transferiate" ...
Formerly, Employers and Workers were the main contenders about the produced goods and their monetary value, but now they are both up against a third class, the "transferiate" ... people living by transfer via the tax bill.
It has an upper class, like social workers, integration officers, project leaders and so on. It has a lower class, and for some reason he doesn't count genuinely needy Swedes as part of this "lower class transferiate" but does count improductive (currently so) immigrants as the lower class of the transferiate.
The thing is, the more things are rationalised in production, the bigger first non-necessary sectors and finally the transferiate become. The mouths to feed don't become fewer just because fewer are engaged in physically producing food. The eyes to read don't become fewer just because fewer are engaged in printing. And crucially, their tastes in reading don't diversify enough to accomodate all new authors. Some authors are also blocked for other reasons. Therefore, rationalisation means more and more need to get their food and possibly reading from other things than earning them. Like tax transferred resources, like becoming social workers or private security or the cases they work for or against.
There genuinely is a sense in which ownership doesn't justify rationalisation, especially in the case of ownership by big banks.
"Every bit of land in a country that is a monarchy is owned by the monarch."
That degree of Communism (alias State Capitalism) is not common to all governments, it was reached in England at the Norman invasion.
Like, William I wanted sth to reward fellow Normans with.
In France, the theory is actually somewhat different. Private ownership of land is real. Roman and Frankish giant fortunes have since then become socialised into divisions of government. And when I speak of giant fortunes getting socialised, that's not a figure of speech. In the Roman Empire, each Civitas (often centred on a city i e urban centre, hence the modern meaning) is to some degree self governing, and the theory is basically, there is a double citizenship, of that city and of Rome.
And in each city, the very richest man each year is chosen as Decurion. This meant, he was personally giving to the poor in a dignified way, simply from his fortune. Next year he was reelected if he was still the richest. If he got ruined, he got a place at the table. Now, in Pagan times, that office was tied to Pagan sacrifices, and one Christian martyr was martyred for refusing it on this ground. However, in whatever place has been referred to as Bannavem Taburniae, a certain couple who were certainly Christians were the Decurion and his wife. Their son is St. Patrick.
But a local ruler as former ex highest fortune and it's succession, once he was truly a local ruler, tended to become a ruler, not an owner. Former serfs were in practise new and smaller owner.
8:27 No ... a country is NOT property of the governing class, it's field of jurisdiction of the governing class.
Aristotle would have argued that if the governing class assumes property over everything (qua governing) that makes the government a bad one.
A tyrant is a king who treats himself as owner of the country. A king is in some ways like a tyrant, but instead acknowledges smaller owners.
[Skipping the part on immigration.]
Summa Theologiae > Second Part of the Second Part > Question 66
Article 2. Whether it is lawful for a man to possess a thing as his own?
https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3066.htm#article2
DIVINI REDEMPTORIS
https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19370319_divini-redemptoris.html
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