A friend from church posted an interesting quote from Thomas Aquinas on facebook the other day. I tracked down the reference and found it in Pope Leo XII's Encyclical on Capital and Labor from 1891.
It rests on the principle that it is one thing to have a right to the possession of money and another to have a right to use money as one wills. Private ownership, as we have seen, is the natural right of man, and to exercise that right, especially as members of society, is not only lawful, but absolutely necessary. "It is lawful," says St. Thomas Aquinas, "for a man to hold private property; and it is also necessary for the carrying on of human existence."" But if the question be asked: How must one's possessions be used? - the Church replies without hesitation in the words of the same holy Doctor: "Man should not consider his material possessions as his own, but as common to all, so as to share them without hesitation when others are in need.
I was intrigued by the last part in particular, where Thomas mentions the purpose and sphere associated with owning property. I tend to think of ownership in an abstract way, or at least in a way that is contained to an individual disconnected form time and space. But the above quote says the universal idea of ownership does not exist without an account for purpose and neighbors. To take it to its extreme, there would be no such thing as private ownership without others - and not to keep from, but to use as common to all. In way you might say their is no ownership, only ruled user-ship (or stewardship).
In the same way, we tend to think about Liberty in the abstract or ego-centric way, or at least in terms of Liberty from X (often another abstraction like Tyranny). But what is the purpose and sphere of Liberty? The time and space of it? How do we take into account the fundamental corporate-ness of our humanity and thereby see Liberty first in communal terms? Following line of thinking from the earlier paragraph, there is no such thing as individual liberty, at least not as it pertains only to an individual. Freedom is freedom with others, a freedom to do things for others, as well as a freedom from others.
Man is about loving God with all his heart, and loving his neighbor as himself. This is the sum of the Torah and Prophets. In the Gospel According to John, chapter 8, Jesus says that he has freed us from sin, from a world of bondage, a world where humanity struggled to be what they were created for. And now Jesus brings freedom. And this is not a freedom to neutrality, or an invitation to autonomy, it is a freedom to follow him, to become Christ-like, to grow into our truer selves, as a community and as individuals.
Ironically, true Liberty is the freedom to love, to serve, and to die-to-self for God and neighbor.
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