Catholic Lawyers' Guild Progresses - Archives - University of Notre ...

June, 1937 The Notre Dame Alumnus 259
BACCALAUREATE SERMON
(Continued from Page 242)
merely private opinion as a rule of
faith.
Whilst finance-capitalism sins by
excess in emphasizing the rights of
individual property, Communism goes
to the opposite extreme and repudiates
the divine commandment "Thou
shalt not steal." It has ruthlessly
confiscated both productive and use
property. It denies that the individual
has any right in property antecedent
to or superior to that of the
State of the Community. In robbing
men of property, it robs them of true
liberty and subjects the citizens or
the individual to the Community,
making him a slave of the State just
as certainly as any slave was ever
bound to an individual master. We
warn you, therefore, against the easy
assumption that theories do not count
or that principles and attitudes respecting
property have no bearing
upon practical life.
Labor Disputes and Strikes
Most of our social unrest at the
present time in this country concerns
itself with labor disputes and strikes.
Now what light do Christian principles
throw upon this dispute? At
the outset we mast remember three
things: first, the dignity of man as
a child of God. Second, the right of
private property as the sole guarantee
of man's ultimate liberty or freedom.
Third, the correlative nature of
rights and duties. We cannot have
one without the other.
The Church, revealing to us the
mind of Christ, teaches us that labor
is honorable; it is divinely ordered;
it is worthy of its hire. Most certainly
it is not a commodity to be purchased
in the open market. God has
decreed that all men must work:
"thou shalt eat thy bread in the
sweat of thy brow." The Son of God
coming into the world chose to be
known as the son of Joseph the Carpenter.
He took the status of a workingman
in order to teach us an abiding
lesson viz. that the work of the
laboring man is worthy of reverence
and respect.
What are the consequences that
flow from an understanding of these
truths? If we look to ancient times,
we find everywhere that the hard and
disagreeable work of the world was
done by means of the institution of
slavery. Manual labor was treated
with contempt in all the ancient civilizations.
Wars were waged for the
direct purpose of solving labor problems
by means of captured slaves.
With the advent of Christ's teaching
slavery slowly disappeared from the
face of Christian Europe. There was
no forceful prohibition at first by
law. The thing was simply incompatible
with the acknowledged dignity of
man. You could not treat a creature
of God, redeemed by the precious
blood, a member of the mystical body
of Christ, a brother in grace—^yott
could not treat him as a slave.
In our modem social organization
under the influence of competitive individualism
a new doctrine took the
place of Christianity. Men were no
longer regarded as brothers in Christ
but merely as so many hands. Labor
was a commodity to be purchased.
Wages were not determined by the
value of the product but by the old
slave principle of minimum subsistance
for the worker. The principal
that regulated relations between employers
and employees for all too long
a time was "Might makes right";
"Fortune smiles upon the strong";
What was the result? Long hours for
labor. Hard work. Minimum wages.
No wonder Leo XIII as early as 1891
was forced to Avrite his encyclical
deploring the condition of the working
classes. He called the attention
of the Christian world to fundamental
principles of Christ's Gospel.
The rights of labor were once more
vindicated; namely the right to a
decent wage; the right to humane
working conditions in keeping with
the dignity of man; the right of collective
bargaining; the right of w^orkingmen's
associations and the right
of freely choosing their own representatives.
Marriage and the Family
Let us turn now to the question of
Marriage and the Faintly. From
the time that Christianity first made
itself felt in the ancient world, the
sanctity of the family has been safeguarded
by a definite code of domestic
ethics. When Christ began His
family life. He worked His first miracle
at the marriage feast of Cana
as if to show His deep concern with
the family as the f-ondamental social
unit. He reminded His disciples that
marriage is one and indisoUuble. He
raised this most solemn contract
amongst men to the dignity of a Sacrament.
Now what happens when this
teaching is disregarded? When marriage
is completely secularized and
amounts to nothing more than a civil
contract or a companionate of temporary
duration or convenience, then
we deny the very essence of the
Christian concept of the family. To
break its unity, therefore, with wanton
divorce is to let loose a host of
evils upon the world. To frustrate
its purpose by the suicidal practice of
birth control is to deny its purpose
and foster death, not life. The family
is the social unit. Change it in essence
or destroy its character, and
civilization such as we have known it
for more than a thousand years will
be inevitably changed or destroyed.
In analyzing the origin of oar social
principles and onr social attitudes
let us turn our attention finally
to GOVEHNMENT itself. Today all
thoughtful students of public affairs
are watching %vith keen anxiety the
steady drift towards state dictatorship.
We have dictatorship of the
right and of the left There is the
dictatorship of the proletariat in
Russia and there is the dictatorship
of Nazi Germany. There are a halfdozen
other dictatorships scattered
throughout Europe. In these dictatorships
we have a new concept of
government. The citizen no longer
has any inherent rights as a man,
antecedent and prior to all government.
Instead he is made the creature
of the state.
In America we still point proudly
to our Declaration of Independence
and our Constitution in which is set
forth the doctrine that there are certain
inalienable rights given to man
by the Creator, namely, the right to
life, liberty, property and the pursuit
of happiness. Since the emergence of
the totalitarian state these rights no
longer are recognized in a large part
of Europe. The state encompasses
%vithin itself now the whole of man;
it tells him not merely what he can
do in public but tells him what he
must think in private. In consequence
there is no freedom of conscience; no
freedom of worship; no freedom of
assembly, nor freedom of the press.
If you seek the explanation of
this new phenomenon you wU find it
in the progressive departure from
Christian truth which has been taking
place in the intellectual life of
the world for the past several centuries.
It is only now reaching its
climax and final fruition. Christianity
teaches that the citizen precedes
the state. It teaches that man has a
value and a dignity all his own; that
he has rights that are inseparable
from his existence as a man; rights
given to him by His Creator which
no state can steal away. The Church
does not impose any particular form
of government upon her members.
They may choose a republic or a
kingdom, a democracy or an empire,
but the Church does teach that whatever
be the form of government it is
limited in its powers. Its authority
is from God, but the rulers who exercise
this authority are not divinely
appointed. They are designated by
the citizens themselves and restrained
by his ordinances.
The state, therefore, must subordinate
its plan of human welfare to
the prior rights of the plan that God
Himself made. The state in other
words must carry out its work within
the moral order that God Himself
established. If you accept these principles
no matter what you call your
government it never becomes an absolute
dictatorship or a comprehensive
totalitarian state.