Folia Theologica 11. (2000)

Eugene Csocsan de Váralja: The Just Income Distribution

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E. CSOCSAN de Váralja

the realisation of spiritual values, by which the members of the society participate in spiritual perfection.43 The culture is the incessant strive for the values of truth, goodness, beauty and holiness44 and these values subsist and remain valid independently from man and his existence.

Economic prosperity, public health, sports and legal order also belong to the common good, but they could not belong to culture, because in the earlier centuries there were quite a few very high cultures, which nonetheless might have lacked many or even any achievements in these just mentioned fields, by which civilisation is constituted. Civilisation is keeping of the norms, by which the society and its members are raised from the rough savagery of nature in the provision of their physical and biological needs. It has to be stated, that economic prosperity, public health, sports and legal order and any of their goods or achievements have no meaning if no man exists. In this they differ fundamentally from the cultural values as explained above.

Culture and civilisation mutually presupposes each other as content and container.45 Culture however stays always the main aim, which is served by civilisation as its important means. Therefore the civilisation might not be allowed to become self-centered. Meanwhile culture might permeate civilazation, the sports might contain ethical values, and industrial arts might ennoble economic life. Civilization itself might facilitate the development of culture. In this relationship it has been pointed out already by the Rerum novarum ...so is the real national economy realised, in which the all members of the nation obtain those goods ... which are not only enough for subsistence, but which can raise man to higher and nobler cultural life.46

of Christian Social Theory), Budapest 1938, page 156.

43 cf.: Gyula KORNIS, Kultúra és politica (Culture and Politics), Budapest 1928, pages 42-48.

44 KECSKES, loco citato.

45 cf.:KECSKÉS, op.cit. page 141

46 Etenim tum demum res oeconomico-socialis et vere constabit et suos fines obtinuit, si omnibus et singulis bona omnia suppeditata fuerint, quae opibus et subsidiis naturae, arte technica, sociali rei oeconomicae constitutione praestari possunt; quae quidem bona tot esse debent, quot necessaria sunt et ad necessitatibus honestisque commodis satisfaciendum, et ad homines provehendos ad feliciorem illum vitae cultum, qui modo prudenter res geratur, virtuti non solum non obest, sed magnopere prodest, (cf.: S. Thomas: De regimine principum, I. 15, Encycl. Rerum novarum, Acta Leonis, Vol. XI, pagina 123) Quadragesimo anno, AAS 1931, (a. XXIII), pgae 202; Divini Re-