Note 194 — Chapter VII

Even the Fathers of the Church, Bishops and Popes could not refrain from preaching in a communistic vein during those early centuries when community of property still prevailed, but its theft was assuming larger proportions. The Syllabus and the encyclicals of the nineteenth century have lost all recollection of this tone, and even the Roman Popes have been compelled to become subjects of capitalist society, and now pose as its zealous defenders against the Socialists.

In contrast therewith Bishop Clemens I. (deceased 102 of our reckoning) said: "The use of all things in this world is to be common to all. It is an injustice to say: 'This is my property, this belongs to me, that belongs to another.' Hence the origin of contentions among men."

Bishop Ambrose of Milan, who lived about 347, exclaimed: "Nature bestows all things on all men in common, for God has created all things that their enjoyment might be common to all, and that the earth might become the common possession of all. Common possession is, therefore, a right established by Nature, and only unjust usurpation (usurpatio) has created the right of private property."

St. John Chrysostomus (deceased 407) declared in his homilies directed against the immorality and corruption of the population of Constantinople: "Let none call aught his own; we have received everything from God for enjoyment in common, and 'mine' and 'thine' are words of falsehood."

St. Augustine (deceased 430) expressed himself thus: "Because private property exists there exists also law suits, enmities, dissensions, wars, rebellions, sins, injustice, murder. Whence proceed all these scourges? From property only. Let us then, my brothers, refrain from possessing anything as our property; at least let us refrain from loving it."

Pope Gregory the Great declares about 600: "Let them know that the earth from which they spring and of which they are formed belongs to all men in common, and that therefore the fruits which the earth brings forth must belong to all without distinction."

And one of the moderns, Zacharia, says in his "Forty Books on the State": "All the evils with which civilized nations have to contend, can be traced back to private property in land."

All these authorities have recognized more or less accurately the nature of private property, which, since its existence, as St. Augustine correctly puts it, brought law suits, enmities, dissensions, wars, rebellions, injustice and murder into the world,—all of them evils that will disappear with its abolition.