masters of that which they possess, and do not treat the needy as their brethren, there must of necessity arise an inner shattering of the commonwealth.  False teachers and deceivers of the people will then gain influence, as has happened in Bohemia, by preaching to the people that earthly property should be equally distributed among all, and that the rich must be forcibly condemned to the division of their wealth.  Then follow lamentable conditions and civil wars; no property is spared; no right of ownership is any longer recognised; and the wealthy may then with justice complain of the loss of possessions which have been unrighteously taken from them; but they should also seriously ask themselves the question whether in the days of peace and order they recognised in the administration of these goods the right of their superior lord and owner, namely, the God of all the earth.’[1]

[Footnote 1:  Quoted in Janssen, op. cit., vol. ii. p. 91.]

It must not, however, be imagined for a moment that the community of user advocated by the scholastics had anything in common with the communism recommended by modern Socialists.  As we have seen above, the scholastic communism did not at all apply to the procuring and dispensing of material things, but only to the mode of using them.  It is not even correct to say that the property of an individual was limited by the duty of using it for the common good.  As Rambaud puts it:  ’Les devoirs de charite, d’equite naturelle, et de simple convenance sociale peuvent affecter, ou mieux encore, commander un certain usage de la richesse; mais ce n’est pas le meme chose que limiter la propriete.’[1] The community of user of the scholastics was distinguished from that of modern Socialists not less strongly by the motives which inspired it than by the effect it produced.  The former was dictated by high spiritual aims, and the contempt of material goods; the latter is the fruit of over-attachment to material goods, and the envy of their possessors.[2]

[Footnote 1:  Op. cit., p. 43.  The same writer shows that there is no authority in Christian teaching for the proposition, advanced by many Christian Socialists, that property is a ‘social function’ (ibid., p. 774).  The right of property even carried with it the jus abutendi, which, however, did not mean the right to abuse, but the right to destroy by consumption (see Antoine, Cours d’Economie sociale, p. 526).]

[Footnote 2:  Roscher, op. cit., p. 5:  ’Vom neuern Socialismus freilich unterscheidet sich diese Auffassung nicht blosz durch ihre religioese Grundlage, sondern auch durch ihre, jedem Mammonsdienst entgegengesetze, Verachtung der materiellen Gueter.’]

The large estates which the Church itself owned have frequently been pointed to as evidence of hypocrisy in its attitude towards the common user of property.  This is not the place to inquire into the condition of ecclesiastical estates in the Middle Ages, but it is sufficient to say that they were usually the centres of charity, and that in the opinion of so impartial a writer as Roscher, they rather tended to make the rules of using goods for the common use practicable than the contrary.[1]