First moral economic principle: Ownership=Responsibility.  

God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth”.
- Genesis 1:28

As part two would have it, we will continue in the economic moral challenge; ‘management of the household’. Which on its own merits; ‘management of my household’ is at least a two if not three series volume.

Let me not forget, to whom I give all credit for his works, Fulton J. Scheen (pray Saint to be) continued:

Economic: The economic way to meet communism is to make capitalists out of workers (all citizens) by a wide diffusion of private property. Before suggesting how this can be done, a word about the morality of property is necessary. The moral law affirms that the right to property varies in direct ratio and proportion to its nearness to personality (Personalism). For example, a man may not use the word “mine” in exactly the same way when applied to his food, clothing, and shelter, as to his yacht or his Rembrandt. The nearer things are to personality, which is the source of responsibility, the stronger the right to ownership; the farther away they are from personality, the weaker is the claim. It used to be when property was real rather than financial, as it is today, that the right of property was inseparable from responsibility...

Brother have we messed that up (I Quit*). For how long a time, (as ‘Time Mangement” would require) may be a better question to answer.

Responsibility,.. for the mess we are in, I will repeat Part I: “Nothing can do men of ‘good will’ more harm than apparent compromises with parties that subscribe to anti-moral and anti-democratic and anti-God forces”. But Sheen has already provided a remedy, if not by this piece then by his Life Is Worth Living*, television series.

But did you catch any of that, “Expand Capital Ownership”, and the moral responsibly therein? It’s as if the events and time horizon unfolding on the American identity and the whole of the world, its personality if you will, is an American Tragedy ("America's Tragedy"*). Sheen goes on to explain another crucial factor.

“With the development of finance (capital formation) those two things which were meant to be joined, namely ownership and responsibility, have tended to become separated. Today, too often, those who own do not labor or manage, and those who labor or manage do not own…

He further elaborates through example the common thread stockholders, laborers and managers, at one time had, an ‘individual’ moral responsibility to a productive good. And that this relationship has been strained, and the social tension between what was once and understanding of purpose and a developing just relationship between capital, management, and labor, has been all together surrendered. Surrendered to a form of financing absent of a Natural Moral Law – responsibility- and thereby the moral challenge to make right, what would be wrong has itself been sacrificed, on that alter of a materialistic lie. And the original definition of economics, the family, is the sacrifice.

Unfortunate for us, that in the place of what would be ‘Just” and “moral’ is in its stead a system of governance that has perpetuated the problem by transferring the Moral Responsibility of ownership, and financing of and to, the parties or agencies of a central command collective, a Bureaucracy if you will, is substituted as virtue and becomes all things, great and small- communism plain and simple. As and in the footnote number five, Fulton Sheen allows this point to be elaborated by a William A. Orton, Affirmations (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1938)

"Nay, let us look at where we are. We find the secular State, in the interests of a minimum humanity, impelled to the almost impossible task of regulating industry and business from without, because the community cannot trust those activities to regulate themselves from within; and a sort of trench warfare develops between the community as sovereign and its own constituent organizations. In truth, it is futile for a non-Christian (absent from morals or justice) society to rail at bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is its sole substitute for virtue."[1]

We will examine the rightful role of ownership and its birthing in the Moral Responsibility equation and see what St. Thomas Aquinas and a contemporary Louis Kelso had to say about the Moral Challenge,.. until than.

“Yours in Justice”

or as Fulton J. Sheen would say; "God Love Ya."

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After a brief intermission with thoughts and video of Alan Keyes- Moral Challenge, we continue;

The Political and Economic moral Challenge Part III

When we last left Sheen’s work he was about to explain Moral:,.. (If the book were available, one could read it themselves, on page 132,). Or this from page 94;

“,…, communism labors under the difficulty of not being sufficient indignant against the injustices of the political and economic order. This is so because communism denies an independent existence to ethics and morality.” **

As Sheen does through out this work, he reiterates, that we the American audience (Conscience of the West) must give moral direction [p. 132] in all spheres of mans activities. From the Work Place [p.126], to Education [p. 133] , to Churches [p.134], and Governance [p. 124]. In fact he refers to that moral direction more as the ‘Moral Obligation and Duty’.

Much of Sheen’s work and thoughts, have been articulated even further in the past, by Leo XIII, Pius XI and Thomas Aquinas, and other notables taking up 26 pages in and of it self, in this his 1948 book. Let us take an examination of Sheen’s footnotes as it has to do again with the Economic moral challenge.

“The root cause of present injustices is not to be attributed to division of goods, nor the inequalities of the division, [Health Care or Bail-Outs] but rather to the fact that the mass of people are practically bereft of ownership.”

What’s the first moral economic principle: Ownership=Responsibility. And thereby as Sheen articulates, ‘The Moral Responsibility” to right the wrongs and to be fruitful and multiply, to subdue it- the whole of the creation. Perhaps our current condition of the conscience, has more to do with a deep lack and understanding in the culture and ‘consciences of the West’, of what property is, and even more so what ownership requires – again responsibility. And therefore the culture looks back to the leader(s), and “The apathy of an electorate to moral leadership is always reflected in the apathy of their politicians” and thus the loss of inclusive and unifying moral sanctions over the whole of man's activities, this is our Political and Economic moral challenge. How to change the institutions, of mans design; that paradigm of immorality?

He continued with McDonald’s use of St. Thomas;

“Some means must be devised to admit the proletariats within the proprietory system. Widely distributed property makes for social stability. Any alternative offered lacks the moral discipline of responsibility and ownership. Perhaps the best summary argument for private property is the impossibility of finding any better general system to take its place.”[2]

But again one would have to be well read of the past, or some will say of ancients, to understand the process for what I will call great architects, thinkers, and seekers of the truth. Fulton Sheen does the best he can to stir a passion in others to read the wisdom of sage’s like Thomas Aquinas again, or for the first time.

As a caution he suggests, “We must have the courage to detach our support from men (and women) who are doing evil. We must bear them no hatred, but we must break with them.” And stay far from those whose opinion would suggest the materialistic lie or moral relativism;

“This opinion is wide spread, but I am convinced that it is quite wrong. The encyclical Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth) demonstrates this,.. and addresses rather the great treat posed to Western civilization by moral relativism. [Another –ism]  Pope Paul VI (quoted at end) sensed this deeply and knew that it was his duty to undertake the battle against such relativism for the sake of the essential good of man. With his encyclical Humanae Vitae he put into practice the words the Apostle Paul wrote to his disciple Timothy: “Proclaim the word; be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient … For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine” (2 Tm 4:2-3)

Unfortunately, don’t these words of the apostle seem to characterize the situation today? And remembering a comment made about the immoral media in Part I, and their influences on the condition of moral conscience, John Paul II said in his “Crossing the Threshold of Hope”;

The media have conditioned society to listen to what it wants to hear (cf. 2 Tm 4:2-3). And even worse situation occurs when theologians, and especially moralists, ally themselves with the media, which obviously pay a great deal of attention to what they say when it opposes “sound doctrine.” Indeed when true doctrine is unpopular, it is not right to seek easy popularity. (Notre Dame Commencement 2009, all over again, - Moral Relativism) John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, p. 172.