Day 314: Goods of Others (2407-2414)

• It’s Day 314!!

• RESPECT FOR PERSONS AND THEIR GOODS

• When we talk about principles, it touches the world of politics

• It touches the world of behavior

• What we are really holding up are the principles of VIRTUE

• The principles of GOODNESS

• The principles of JUSTICE

• Paragraph 2407 says, “In economic mattress, respect for human dignity requires the practice of the virtue of temperance, so as to moderate attachment to this world’s goods; the practice of the virtue of justice, to preserve our neighbor’s rights and render him what is his due, and the practice of solidarity, in accordance with the golden rule and in keeping with the generosity of the Lord, who ‘though he was rich, yet for your sake…became poor so that by his poverty, you might become rich.’”

• RESPECT FOR THE GOODS OF OTHERS

• Remember, one of the goods is the right to private property

• Another good is the universal destination of goods

• The whole of the world’s resources can serve to meet the whole of the world’s needs

• How are we going to try to balance that out?

• How can we avoid any behavior that would contradict these goods?

• Let’s pray!!

Prayer by Fr. Mike: “Father in Heaven, we give you praise and glory. We thank you for this day. We thank you for revealing to us that you are justice, that you are just, that you are good, and that you come and meet us. Help us in this moment. Help us to be men and women who are temperate, who use the world’s goods as we should be using them to continue to see ourselves as stewards and not owners, and also continue to see ourselves as brothers and sisters of those around us. Lord God, help us to be good brothers and sisters. Help us to be good stewards. Help us to live temperance and justice and solidarity in such a way that the people around us are cared for. Help us be men and women of great virtue so that this world can be a world that is full of your goodness. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen”

• So there we have it!!

• Today we are talking about principles

• These principles are going to be lived out in politics

• They are going to be lived out in our daily lives

• They are going to be lived out in our civil lives

• They are going to be lived out in our commonly shared life

• AND YET…

• It all comes back to not only the dignity of the person

• The ability to live this way is a virtue

• The ability to live out this Seventh Commandment…

• The ability to live in this community…

• The ability to live in a society…

• It all comes back to the ideal that people have virtues

• In a civil society, yes justice has to be enforced from the outside

• People have an interior strength

• Not merely an external structure that holds them in place

• Does that make sense?

• Paragraph 2407 says, “In economic mattress, respect for human dignity requires the practice of the virtue of temperance, so as to moderate attachment to this world’s goods; the practice of the virtue of justice, to preserve our neighbor’s rights and render him what is his due, and the practice of solidarity, in accordance with the golden rule and in keeping with the generosity of the Lord, who ‘though he was rich, yet for your sake…became poor so that by his poverty, you might become rich.’”

• Remember the principle of subsidiarity?

• If something can happen at the lowest level, it should be taken care of at the lowest level

• If a family can take care of the person who is sick

• If the family can’t, then it goes to the extended family

• If they can’t, then maybe the parish or whoever

• Solidarity is this reality that we belong to each other

• This is a radical idea

• Let’s look at Jesus

• Jesus highlights the Great Commandment, “Love the Lord God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself.”

• The scribe who points this out but wants to justify himself so he asks who his neighbor is

• Then Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan

• The story of the Good Samaritan is very important

• Samaritans and Jews were not of the same people

• They were not of the same tribe

• They were not of the same faith

• They were not united by a commonly shared anything

• They were foreigners to each other

• AND YET…

• What does Jesus describe?

• Jesus describes the Samaritan coming upon a Jewish man who is in need

• He recognized that he had an obligation to treat that Jewish man as his neighbor

• Solidarity is we belong to each other EVEN IF WE ARE DIFFERENT

• Paragraph 2408 says, “The seventh commandment forbids theft, that is, usurping another’s property against the reasonable will of the owner. There is no theft if consent can be presumed or if refusal is contrary to reason and the universal destination of goods. This is the case in obvious and urgent necessity when the only way to provide for immediate, essential needs (food, shelter, clothing…) is to put at one’s disposal and use the property of others.”

• If a person typically loans me his car, or lets me have milk for my cereal

• Consent can be presumed

• Let’s listen to Fr. Mike talk about Kramer from Seinfeld…(not a fan of Seinfeld, sorry haha 😉)

• Let’s also listen to Fr. Mike’s example of being stranded in the mountains…

• Paragraph 2409 says, “Even if it does not contradict the provisions of civil law, any form of unjustly taking and keeping the property of others is against the seventh commandment: thus, deliberate retention of goods lent or of objects lost; business fraud; paying unjust wages; forcing up prices by taking advantage of the ignorance or hardship of another. The following are also morally illicit: speculation in which one contrives to manipulate the price of goods artificially in order to gain an advantage to the detriment of others; corruption in which one influences the judgment of those who must make decisions according to law; appropriation and use for private purposes of the common goods of an enterprise; work poorly done; tax evasion; forgery of checks and invoices; excessive expenses and waste. Wilfully damaging private or public property is contrary to the moral law and requires reparation.”

• Finders keepers, losers weepers is not a Church teaching

• Payday loans are an unjust and evil practice where these loans have massive interest because people find themselves in need

• Work poorly done consistently is a violation of the Seventh Commandment

• This is primarily about virtue and the heart

• There is commutative justice which regulates exchanges between persons and institutions

• There is legal justice which concerns what the citizen owes in fairness to the community

• There is distributive justice, which regulates what the community owes its citizens

• There is reparative justice, which comes back to virtue

• If I have done anything to take something away from another, then reparative justice must come from my heart

• Why?

• Because the law is limited

• My awareness of what I have taken has to come from within

• Let’s listen to Fr. Mike talk about John Adams…

• The idea of the Constitution is founded on the idea that it is made for a religious people because a religious people can be governed without the government becoming so large that it is in everything

• In order to have a free people, you have to have a limited state

• In order to have both, the people have to be religious people and be people of virtue

• They have to realize that there is a higher law than civil law

• There is a higher power than governmental control

• Even if I can get away with breaking the civil law, I need to realize that I can never get away from God’s justice

• We want a civil society that is just

• But it is only possible when our hearts are aligned

• When we are just

• When we are virtuous

• If I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will restore that

• Not because someone is making me

• But because I am choosing to do this

• Does that make sense?

• This all comes back to not handing power over to some authority as much as it is to actually become that kind of person who is a person of justice

• Paragraph 2413 says, “Games of chance (cad games, etc.) or wagers are not in themselves contrary to justice. They become morally unacceptable when they deprive someone of what is necessary to provide for his needs and those of others. The passion for gambling risks becoming an enslavement. Unfair wagers and cheating at games constitute grave matter, unless the damage inflicted is so slight that the one who suffers it cannot reasonably consider it significant.”

• Paragraph 2414 says, “The seventh commandment forbids acts or enterprises that for any reason-selfish or ideological, commercial, or totalitarian-lead to the enslavement of human beings, to their being bought, sold and exchanged like merchandise, in disregard for their personal dignity. It is a sin against the dignity of persons and their fundamental rights to reduce them by violence to their productive value or to a source of profit. St. Paul directed a Christian master to treat his Christian slave ‘no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother,...both in the flesh and in the Lord.’”

• Hopefully we all are challenged, invited, and convicted to deeper and deeper freedom and deeper and deeper trust in the Lord

• Fr. Mike is praying FOR YOU!!

• Please pray for Fr. Mike and for each other!!

• I cannot WAIT…