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To: ebb tide

I would think Pope Leo the Great and Thomas Aquinas know more about the Gospel than you and I. But here’s Pope Leo with scriptural references. The footnotes have been omitted.

From Pope Leo The Great
Rerum Novarum Para.22

Private ownership, as we have seen, is the natural right of man, and to exercise that right, especially as members of society, is not only lawful, but absolutely necessary. “It is lawful,” says St. Thomas Aquinas, “for a man to hold private property; and it is also necessary for the carrying on of human existence.””

But if the question be asked: How must one’s possessions be used? - the Church replies without hesitation in the words of the same holy Doctor: “Man should not consider his material possessions as his own, but as common to all, so as to share them without hesitation when others are in need. Whence the Apostle with, ‘Command the rich of this world... to offer with no stint, to apportion largely.’”

True, no one is commanded to distribute to others that which is required for his own needs and those of his household; nor even to give away what is reasonably required to keep up becomingly his condition in life, “for no one ought to live other than becomingly.”

But, when what necessity demands has been supplied, and one’s standing fairly taken thought for, it becomes a duty to give to the indigent out of what remains over. “Of that which remaineth, give alms.” It is a duty, not of justice (save in extreme cases), but of Christian charity - a duty not enforced by human law. But the laws and judgments of men must yield place to the laws and judgments of Christ the true God, who in many ways urges on His followers the practice of almsgiving - ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive”; and who will count a kindness done or refused to the poor as done or refused to Himself - “As long as you did it to one of My least brethren you did it to Me.”

To sum up, then, what has been said: Whoever has received from the divine bounty a large share of temporal blessings, whether they be external and material, or gifts of the mind, has received them for the purpose of using them for the perfecting of his own nature, and, at the same time, that he may employ them, as the steward of God’s providence, for the benefit of others. “He that hath a talent,” said St. Gregory the Great, “let him see that he hide it not; he that hath abundance, let him quicken himself to mercy and generosity; he that hath art and skill, let him do his best to share the use and the utility hereof with his neighbor.”


12 posted on 07/11/2015 5:32:47 PM PDT by Steelfish
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To: Steelfish

Pope Leo the Great is Pope Leo I.

Rerum Novarum was issued by Pope Leo XIII.

Rerum Novarum is the antithesis of Francis’s call for socialism. Your very quote proves it.


13 posted on 07/11/2015 6:13:50 PM PDT by ebb tide
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