Folia Theologica 11. (2000)
Eugene Csocsan de Váralja: The Just Income Distribution
134 E. CSOCSAN de Váralja On the other hand the Quadragesimo anno acknowledges, that the reservation of certain goods for public property can be demanded with every right, because the excessive power connected with them can not be owned by private persons without the damage of the common good.81 4. Investigation of the connection and hierarchy of socio-economic goals. a). “The ultimate principle in distribution, as in every phase of economic process, can be no other, than the principle ruling and regulating the whole process: the goal of the economy, the providing for the needs of the people conformable to the then attained cultural standards.”82 Therefore the provision of the population, (the requirements of the ius utendi) have a priority over the accumulation of wealth among the social goals. This priority also follows from the difference in force between the natural law of the ius utendi and the ius gentium prescribing private property. The same precedence is demonstrated by the ontological foundations of the two, because the transcendental relationship forming the base of the ius utendi is stronger then the causal relationship from which the right of private property stems. If the economy does not keep this priority, depending on the deviation, economic depression, or even crisis will emerge, as the Charitate Christi compulsi wrote it in 1932: “...even the few, who caused the troubles by their unsatisfiable hunger for profit, or who cause it up to now, have been submerged bringing the wealth of many into destruction. It becomes justified in a striking manner, what the Lord God Holy Spirit said of the individual sinners: ‘one is punished by the very things by which he sins’ (Sap 11 )6 )”83 81 Etenim certa quadam bonorum genera rei publicae reservanda merito contenditur, cum tam magnum secum ferant potentatum, quantus privatis hominibus, salva re publica, permitti non possit, huiusmodi iusta postulata et desideria iam nil habent, quod a Christiana veritate abhorreat, multoque minus socialismo sunt propria. Quapropter, qui haec tantummodo persequentur non habent cur socialismo se aggregent. Quadragesimo anno, ÀAS 1931 (a. XXIII), page 214. 82 MULCAHY S.J, Richard: The Economics of Heinrich Pesch, New York 1952, page 123. 83 ii porro perpauci qui immodico quaestui servientes, tantorum malorum magnam partem, causa fuerunt et sunt, ii ipsi - inquimus - haud raro iisdemque hisce malis inhoneste obruuntur primi, plurimorum bona fortunasque in suam perniciem rapiuntur, de singulis flagitiosis hominibus Spiritus Sanctus ea sententia edixerat: “Per quae peccat quis, per haec et torquentur” Sap XI 17
