Catholic Social Teaching demands full freedom for the Church and for free associations of Christians to do the only real work that can unite rich and poor—and to do so without interference by the State

The Rich, Not States, are Called to Help Others

by Anthony Esolen

At the end of part eight in this series, I observed that Pope Leo XIII lays a heavy obligation upon the rich. What is that obligation? Who are the rich?

Like Thomas Aquinas, whom he admired so well, Leo is quite practical. It is right for a man to provide for his family so that they may live in a “becoming” way, worthy of their high calling. That implies more than bare necessities. Think of the life of the Church. She is not Puritan. She does not follow the worldly pseudo-asceticism of Judas, who complains that the adulteress has lavished too much on the ointment for Jesus’ feet. The Church is not drab, nor does she enjoin dreariness upon her children. Our calendar is filled with feasts, and common people, over all these centuries, have delighted in adorning their places of worship with art and music and colorful celebrations.
Most people in America now have the means to live becomingly. But we spend inordinate—I use the word advisedly—resources on things that are neither necessary nor becoming; on things that hinder us on our pilgrimage to the celestial homeland, and that make our villages and towns and cities, or what’s left of them, less like comfortable way-stations than like moral tarpits or bogs of quicksand. I’m not speaking here only of material superfluity. Teachers, professors, doctors, lawyers, advertisers, actors, athletes, journalists, social workers, and politicians possess a superfluity of influence far beyond what a landed gentleman in Leo’s day possessed. And just as an unscrupulous merchant can corner a market to rifle the capital of the poor man, so too now the foolish and selfish who are rich in influence can, and do, rifle the metaphysical and moral capital of the poor—and gain materially and politically from the rifling. That theft is by far the wickeder, because eternal life is at stake.
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