The more one studies the Fathers the more one becomes convinced that property was regarded by them as one of the normal and legitimate institutions of human society.  Benigni’s conclusion, as the result of his exceptionally thorough researches, is that according to the early Fathers, ’property is lawful and ought scrupulously to be respected.  But property is subject to the high duties of human fellowship which sprang from the equality and brotherhood of man.  Collectivism is absurd and immoral.’[1] Janet arrived at the same conclusion:  ’In spite of the words of the Fathers, in spite of the advice given by Christ to the rich man to sell all his goods and give to the poor, in spite of the communism of the Apostles, can one say that Christianity condemned property?  Certainly not.  Christianity considered it a counsel of perfection for a man to deprive himself of his goods; it did not abrogate the right of anybody.’[2] The same conclusion is reached by the Abbe Calippe in an excellent article published in La Semaine Sociale de France, 1909.  ’The right of property and of the property owner are assumed.’[3] ’It is only prejudiced or superficial minds which could make the writers of the fourth century the precursors of modern communists or collectivists.’[4]

[Footnote 1:  L’Economia Sociale Christiana avanti Costantino (Genoa, 1897).]

[Footnote 2:  Histoire de la Science politique, vol. i. p. 319.]

[Footnote 3:  P. 114.]

[Footnote 4:  P. 121.]

When we turn to St. Thomas Aquinas, we find that his teaching on the subject of property is not at all out of harmony with that of the earlier Fathers of the Church, but, on the contrary, summarises and consolidates it.  ’It remained to elaborate, to constitute a definite theory of the right of property.  It sufficed to harmonise, to collaborate, and to relate one to the other these elements furnished by the Christian doctors of the first four or five centuries; and this was precisely the work of the great theologians of the Middle Ages, especially of St. Thomas Aquinas....  In establishing his thesis St. Thomas did not borrow from the Roman jurisconsults through the medium of St. Isidore more than their vocabulary, their formulas, their juridical distinctions; he also borrowed from Aristotle the arguments upon which the philosopher based his right of property.  But the ground of his doctrine is undoubtedly of Christian origin.  There is, between the Fathers and him, a perfect continuity.’[1] ‘Community of goods,’ he writes, ’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 possession is not according to the natural law, but rather arose from human agreement, which belongs to positive law.  Hence the ownership of possessions is not contrary to the natural law, but an addition thereto devised by human reason.’  This is simply another way of stating St. Augustine’s distinction between natural and positive law.  If it speaks with more respect of positive law than St. Augustine had done, it is because Aquinas was influenced by the Aristotelian conception of the State being itself a natural institution, owing to man being a social animal.[2]