To those who blame the Church for inequality

Conferences of the Rev. Père Lacordaire, p. 514-521

THIRTY-THIRD CONFERENCE. OF THE INFLUENCE OF CATHOLIC SOCIETY UPON NATURAL SOCIETY WITH REGARD TO PROPERTY. Here is the first position maintained against the evangelic law: “You boast,” say they to us, “of having laboured for the weak against the strong; but if such has been the intention of the Gospel, was it not its duty to put an end to the inequality which reigns here below in the distribution of property? If it be true that justice is the foundation of natural society, one of the chief objects of that justice is the equitable division of property. Now, is property equitably distributed? Are there not men who die of weariness in abundance; and who, after having satiated their passions, no longer know what to do with the rest, whilst others, and a very great number, pine away in misery, and too often in inanition? Well, what have you, the Gospel, you, men of the evangelic law, done against this horrible abuse? What have you done against the rich in favour of the poor? What have you done? You have consecrated the inequality of property; you have sanctioned it; you have placed it under the protection of God and of Jesus Christ; you have declared that some should have all, and that the others should be content to stretch out their hands and receive, under the name of alms, the crumbs which the rich choose to let fall from their tables and their luxury. This is what you have done in a question so grave, which affects the life and death of mankind. We require an account of this from the Gospel, from the Church, from that power which you have exercised during so many centuries, from that new law of which you are so proud, and which has served but to sanctify in property the living source of all injustice and of all misery.” I do not disguise the objection, Gentlemen, and shall combat it as frankly as I exposed it to you. But I shall combat it without being wanting in respect to those who occupy themselves about this question … Society, they say, should be the sole proprietor of the soil and of labour. But what is society? In appearance it is everybody; in reality, when it regards administration or government, it is always a very limited number of men. Whether society is called monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy, it is always represented and conducted by two or three men, who are called to power by the course of human things, and are made the depositaries of all the social elements. At twenty years of age, men do not believe it; at forty, they no longer doubt it: they know that positive government, in spite of all imaginable combinations, always falls into the hands of two or three men, and that when those men die, their places are invariably filled by others; and so on for ever.

We know that on this very account, it is necessary to oppose to power, invincible conclusions, without which, society would become lost in an autocracy so exacting that the earth would not be habitable even for a quarter of an hour. Now, property is one of these conclusions, an invincible force communicated to man, which unites his [daily] existence to the immortality of the earth, to the power of labour, and enables him to stand erect, with his hands upon his breast, and the soil underneath his feet. Take away from him the domain of the land and of labour, what will there be left but a slave? For there is but one definition of a slave: it is the being who is neither master of land nor of his own labour. … I distrust nature very much in the hands of a few men directing the activity of a nation as sovereigns; but, however that may be, let us see the result in regard to equality. Today I am poor, but I have reasons for consolation: if I have no land, I have intelligence, heart, my devotedness, my faith. I console myself with thinking, that after all, if fate is not unpropitious, I shall be as well able as another to use a pencil or a pen. God has neither given all nor taken away all at once; he has distributed his gifts. But here is another order: all is measured by capacity. My dinner is measured by the amount of my intelligence; I receive with a ration of food an official ration of idiotism. I was poor only by chance, I am so now by necessity; I was insignificant only in one regard, I am so now altogether. The social hierarchy becomes a series of insults; and even a glass of water cannot be drunk in it without the exact shade of its indignity being visible in its colour. In a word, inequality was but accidental amongst men, now it is logical, and universal servitude has, as an alleviation, the domination of intelligent men over the plebes of incapacities. This, once more, is what the Gospel is reproached with not having established! And yet, … the men who brought such strange ideas to light were not common men, and many of them even were devoted men; but everything is possible to those who leave nature in order to emerge from evil, and above all, when they leave the Gospel in the intention of doing better than the Gospel.