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“The fundamental error of socialism is anthropological in nature. Socialism considers the individual person simply as an element, a molecule within the social organism, so that the good of the individual is completely subordinated to the functioning of the socio-economic mechanism. Socialism likewise maintains that the good of the individual can be realized without reference to his free choice, to the unique and exclusive responsibility which he exercises in the face of good or evil. Man is reduced to a series of social relationships, and the concept of the person as the autonomous subject of moral decisions disappears.”
—Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus
“The modern business economy has positive aspects. Its basis is human freedom exercised in the economic field.”
—Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus
“There exists another form of ownership which is becoming no less important than land: the possession of know-how, technology and skill. The wealth of the industrialized nations is based much more on this kind of ownership than on natural resources.”
—Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus
“Besides the earth, man's principal resource is man himself.”
—Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus
“Where self-interest is suppressed, it is replaced by a burdensome system of bureaucratic control that dries up the wellsprings of initiative and creativity.”
—Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus
“The first and fundamental structure for 'human ecology' is the family, in which man receives his first ideas about truth and goodness and learns what it means to love and be loved, and thus what it means to be a person.”
—Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus
“If Socialism, like all errors, contains some truth (which, moreover, the Supreme Pontiffs have never denied), it is based nevertheless on a theory of human society peculiar to itself and irreconcilable with true Christianity. Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are contradictory terms; no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist.”
—Encyclical of Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, no. 120, On reconstruction of the social order, May 15, 1931 [contributed by Michael Etchison] |