75                    TRUE

Land, like every other kind of property, lends itself to private ownership. Thus the land owner does not owe the State any rent for its exclusive use. Taxes must be the same for land owners as for all others, in accordance with distributive justice. Land is not the only source of economic wealth. A tax that would fall exclusively on land would disrupt the private economy and would be insufficient to provide for all the normal expenses of the State.

FALSE

Land does not lend itself per se to private ownership because it belongs to the community as a whole. Thus people who live on the land must pay the State for the "advantages" they derive from its exclusive use. The State can collect this rent or tax by means of a taxing system that derives all revenues from land taxes. Since land is the ultimate source of all goods, such taxation should suffice to provide for all the State's needs.

Explanation: The erroneous sentence is one of the classic theses of the "Agrarian Socialism" of Henry George (1839-1897). The Church is far from sharing this phobia of real property. On the contrary, she sees in the ownership of land a precious support of the stability of families, social classes, pious and charitable associations, as well as ecclesiastical institutes.

76                    TRUE

While it is desirable for property to be as widely distributed as possible among men as the natural extension of personality, the prosperity of the State includes and sometimes requires there to be larger and even vast estates. The equality of men is not to be understood univocally, but proportionally: the rights and duties of each correspond to the place that a person holds in society.

FALSE

Large estates are intrinsically evil because contrary to Catholic doctrine, which allows only small holdings more in conformity to the equality that should exist among men.

Explanation: Since property also has a social function, there are necessary limits to the expansion of property ownership, as, for instance, when it favors the unproductiveness of resources to the detriment of the common good; when it so concentrates wealth in the hands of a few that the rest are reduced to misery, indigence, or servitude; or prevents a sizable number of men from becoming owners.

The Holy Father pronounced on the legitimacy of large estates in his allocution to the members of a congress met at Rome to study the improvement of the living conditions of farm laborers on July 2, 1951.¹ After speaking on the interests of the small farms, the Pope added: "Nonetheless, the utility, and very often, the necessity of vaster agricultural enterprises cannot be denied."

77                        TRUE

The social question is first and foremost a moral and religious question.² It includes questions of justice and of charity, and will never be resolved by the practice of the simple duties of justice.

FALSE

The social question is a matter of simple justice in the economic domain. To resolve it, one must not invoke the virtue of charity.

Explanation: The incorrect sentence would correspond to the teaching of historical materialism, which does not take into consideration, in the social question, the existence of the human soul, but only the body and its needs. In fact, the Church teaches that the social question is firstly moral, and as all moral questions are religious, it is essentially religious. Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum teaches that the social question has no possible solution unless two principles be admitted: 1) the existence of social inequality; 2) the necessity of joining the social classes. In developing this second principle, he provides the means to be applied so as to obtain this union, to wit, 1) justice and 2) friendship, which encourage the rich not only to fulfill the duties of strict justice, but also to be generous with their superfluity. He adds that this duty of almsgiving is a true moral obligation through which Providence maintains the union of the classes. When Providence gives to some more than to others, whether talents or riches, it is so that they would give to the less fortunate by distributing their superfluous goods, enabling all to live in friendly union.

Moreover, the sentiment of Christian charity, by penetrating other relations between the classes, impregnates social life with this ordered goodness that is the perfection of human life in common. Thus, Leo XIII, far from limiting the social question to the narrow and petty limits of the "do ut facias–I pay, you work," sees the question in a human way and with the breadth with which our God, our Lord, has made all creatures for the same last end, which must be obtained by the multiform help which they give one another here on earth.

In Graves de Communi, written ten years later, in 1901, Leo XIII declared categorically that the social question cannot be resolved exclusively by the mere increase of wages and the reduction of work hours or other such measures. Social peace is the fruit of virtue which only religion can firmly implant.

78                     TRUE

In general, the Church considers all three forms of government–monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy–to be equally compatible with her principles, and thus with the evangelical spirit. St. Thomas teaches that, in principle, the best regime is monarchy, but that, given human contingencies, the best system of government must comprise elements of each of these three regimes.³

FALSE

The Church has been wrong in the past when she approved monarchic and aristocratic forms of government, which favor inequality and class pride, and are thus incompatible with the spirit of the Gospel.

Explanation: The erroneous sentence was condemned by St. Pius X in the letter Our Apostolic Mandate against Le Sillon, organ of propaganda with a modernist bent directed by Marc Sangnier. In this document, the Holy Father declares that Christian civilization, according to Leo XIII, is possible with any of the three forms of government.

Moreover, the refuted sentence proceeds from the false supposition that equality among all men has been taught by Jesus Christ. All pontifical documents discussing the social question establish the inequality of the classes as a basis of society willed by God. Examples of this are Rerum Novarum, Quadragesima Anno, Pope Pius XII's 1944 Christmas Message, etc.

79                      TRUE

"Christian democracy" is an expression used to indicate any government which promotes the common good according to the law of God, whether this government be a monarchy, an aristocracy, or a democracy. This is what Leo XIII taught when he said that a Christian democracy "does not absolutely have to be a form of government preferred and established in place of all others."⁴ The democratic form of government is compatible with Church doctrine as long as it signifies the participation of the people in public affairs. But by the people the Church does not mean a mere numerical majority, "the masses," but rather the whole population, taking into account all legitimate differences of class, region, etc. In this way, legitimate democracy is not the domination of the many over the few, the masses over the elite, but the just and proportionate influence of classes, families, regions, and social groups in public affairs.

FALSE

Christian democracy consists in popular government, that is, majority rule.

The people, and a shapeless multitude (or, as it is called, "the masses") are two distinct concepts. The people lives and moves by its own life energy; the masses are inert of themselves and can only be moved from outside. The people lives by the fullness of life in the men that compose it, each of whom–at his proper place and in his own way–is a person conscious of his own responsibility and of his own views. The masses, on the contrary, wait for the impulse from outside, an easy plaything in the hands of anyone who exploits their instincts and impressions; ready to follow in turn, today this flag, tomorrow another. From the exuberant life of a true people, an abundant, rich life is diffused in the State and all its organs, instilling into them, with a vigor that is always renewing itself, the consciousness of their own responsibility, the true instinct for the common good.

Now, the "common good" of the people according to the Democrats is exactly what Pius XII defined as the masses. This can be deduced from the words of the gloriously reigning Pope (Pius XII, 1953):

In every way, currently, the life of the nations is split apart by the blind worship of the importance and value of numbers. The citizens become the voters but, as such, they make up a majority or a minority which the simple switch of a few votes, or even one, suffices to upset. From the point of view of the parties, the voter in the competition for his vote counts for nothing more than that potential vote, his other roles in the family or in the workplace being completely ignored.⁵

Democracy in the acceptable meaning of the word can never be identical to the revolutionary myth of popular sovereignty. All authority comes from God. The people–and by the people is meant what was defined above in opposition to the masses–can only choose those who will govern by the authority that comes to them from God.

80                      TRUE

Catholics must accept neither liberalism nor socialism.

FALSE

Catholics must prefer socialism to liberalism.

Explanation: According to Church doctrine, both the liberal and the socialist regimes are evil and when carried to their ultimate consequences, they subvert the entire social life. The Catholics, therefore, must strive to bring about the establishment of a regime rooted in a totally different ground. The erroneous sentence is defective by posing liberalism as the opposite of socialism. In reality, as Leo XIII affirms, liberalism is one of the causes of socialism because, following the current secular and inorganic notion of society, it is impossible to avoid one extreme without falling into the other. Let us look at a pagan society. If the public authority shows itself liberal and condescending, if the laws allow much ease of movement to individuals, the alarming unbridling of passions will necessarily lead to anarchy. The maintenance of order requires such a multiplicity of laws, decrees, rules, and many interventions to insure the achievement of countless State functions that the isolated citizen, disarmed and frightened, soon becomes a grain of sand, an inert slave before the Moloch State.

The foundations of the true solution to liberalism and socialism are found in the following words of the Holy Father: "The State neither includes as such nor joins mechanically in a given territory a shapeless agglomeration of individuals. In reality, it is, and must be, the organic and organizing unity of a true nation."⁶