Everything is on loan from God

The second principle of stewardship is that everything is on loan from God for me to manage.

It’s not uncommon to hear people criticize Pope Francis for his comments on owning private property and the universal destination of goods, calling him a wild-eyed, Latin American liberal.

But what the Pope says on those topics isn’t his personal opinion. Rather, it’s Catholic social teaching, taught by all the Popes in the modern era, and enshrined in the Catholic Catechism.

References to this teaching go all the way back to Pope Leo XIII, in his Encyclical Letter Rerum Novarum, published in 1891 – far from wild-eyed and liberal, he, the Vatican, and the times in which he lived.

In fact, Pope Leo XIII wrote that encyclical in part to counter protests made by wild-eyed communists and socialists who opposed ownership of private property.

The Catholic Church teaches we have the right to hold private property, provided we recognize God’s sovereignty (we don’t want to end up like King Nebuchadnezzar), and as long as we view private property as a tool of stewardship.

Private ownership facilitates our care for the land and our responsible use of natural resources, for our benefit, and to be shared with others in the world, and ensuring that it’s still around for future use.

In fact, the more people there are who exercise ownership, the greater chance there is that good stewardship and a just sharing of resources will result.

Adam and Eve are examples of stewardship. They received creation from God, with the mandate to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it (Genesis 1:28). 

The Old Testament patriarch Joseph is another example of stewardship: Potiphar put him in charge of his household, entrusting everything he owned to Joseph’s management (Genesis 39:4).

 

This is part of a teaching document written by Archbishop Michael Jackles titled,
"How to be the Church of the Poor, for the Poor, Stewardship as a Way of Life"
which was published in August of 2021.

PREVIOUS                       NEXT