II. RESPECT FOR PERSONS AND THEIR GOODS

2407 In economic matters, respect for human dignity requires the practice of the virtue of
temperance, so as to moderate attachment to this world's goods; the practice of the virtue of
justice, to preserve our neighbor's rights and render him what is his due; and the practice of
solidarity, in accordance with the golden rule and in keeping with the generosity of the Lord,
who "though he was rich, yet for your sake . . . became poor so that by his poverty, you might
become rich."[189]

Respect for the goods of others

2408 The seventh commandment forbids theft, that is, usurping another's property against the
reasonable will of the owner. There is no theft if consent can be presumed or if refusal is
contrary to reason and the universal destination of goods. This is the case in obvious and
urgent necessity when the only way to provide for immediate, essential needs (food, shelter,
clothing . . .) is to put at one's disposal and use the property of others.[190]

2409 Even if it does not contradict the provisions of civil law, any form of unjustly taking and
keeping the property of others is against the seventh commandment: thus, deliberate retention
of goods lent or of objects lost; business fraud; paying unjust wages; forcing up prices by
taking advantage of the ignorance or hardship of another.[191]
The following are also morally illicit: speculation in which one contrives to manipulate the price
of goods artificially in order to gain an advantage to the detriment of others; corruption in
which one influences the judgment of those who must make decisions according to law;
appropriation and use for private purposes of the common goods of an enterprise; work
poorly done; tax evasion; forgery of checks and invoices; excessive expenses and waste.
Willfully damaging private or public property is contrary to the moral law and requires
reparation.

2410 Promises must be kept and contracts strictly observed to the extent that the
commitments made in them are morally just. A significant part of economic and social life
depends on the honoring of contracts between physical or moral persons - commercial
contracts of purchase or sale, rental or labor contracts. All contracts must be agreed to and
executed in good faith.

2411 Contracts are subject to commutative justice which regulates exchanges between
persons in accordance with a strict respect for their rights. Commutative justice obliges strictly;
it requires safeguarding property rights, paying debts, and fulfilling obligations freely
contracted. Without commutative justice, no other form of justice is possible.
One distinguishes commutative justice from legal justice which concerns what the citizen owes
in fairness to the community, and from distributive justice which regulates what the community
owes its citizens in proportion to their contributions and needs.

2412 In virtue of commutative justice, reparation for injustice committed requires the restitution
of stolen goods to their owner:
Jesus blesses Zacchaeus for his pledge: "If I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it
fourfold."[192] Those who, directly or indirectly, have taken possession of the goods of
another, are obliged to make restitution of them, or to return the equivalent in kind or in
money, if the goods have disappeared, as well as the profit or advantages their owner would
have legitimately obtained from them. Likewise, all who in some manner have taken part in a
theft or who have knowingly benefited from it - for example, those who ordered it, assisted in
it, or received the stolen goods - are obliged to make restitution in proportion to their
responsibility and to their share of what was stolen.

2413 Games of chance (card games, etc.) or wagers are not in themselves contrary to justice.
They become morally unacceptable when they deprive someone of what is necessary to
provide for his needs and those of others. The passion for gambling risks becoming an
enslavement. Unfair wagers and cheating at games constitute grave matter, unless the damage
inflicted is so slight that the one who suffers it cannot reasonably consider it significant.

2414 The seventh commandment forbids acts or enterprises that for any reason - selfish or
ideological, commercial, or totalitarian - lead to the enslavement of human beings, to their
being bought, sold and exchanged like merchandise, in disregard for their personal dignity. It is
a sin against the dignity of persons and their fundamental rights to reduce them by violence to
their productive value or to a source of profit. St. Paul directed a Christian master to treat his
Christian slave "no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother, . . . both in
the flesh and in the Lord."[193]

Respect for the integrity of creation

2415 The seventh commandment enjoins respect for the integrity of creation. Animals, like
plants and inanimate beings, are by nature destined for the common good of past, present, and
future humanity.[194] Use of the mineral, vegetable, and animal resources of the universe
cannot be divorced from respect for moral imperatives. Man's dominion over inanimate and
other living beings granted by the Creator is not absolute; it is limited by concern for the quality
of life of his neighbor, including generations to come; it requires a religious respect for the
integrity of creation.[195]

2416 Animals are God's creatures. He surrounds them with his providential care. By their
mere existence they bless him and give him glory.[196] Thus men owe them kindness. We
should recall the gentleness with which saints like St. Francis of Assisi or St. Philip Neri treated
animals.

2417 God entrusted animals to the stewardship of those whom he created in his own
image.[197] Hence it is legitimate to use animals for food and clothing. They may be
domesticated to help man in his work and leisure. Medical and scientific experimentation on
animals is a morally acceptable practice, if it remains within reasonable limits and contributes to
caring for or saving human lives.

2418 It is contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly. It is likewise
unworthy to spend money on them that should as a priority go to the relief of human misery.
One can love animals; one should not direct to them the affection due only to persons.

III. THE SOCIAL DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH

2419 "Christian revelation . . . promotes deeper understanding of the laws of social
living."[198] The Church receives from the Gospel the full revelation of the truth about man.
When she fulfills her mission of proclaiming the Gospel, she bears witness to man, in the name
of Christ, to his dignity and his vocation to the communion of persons. She teaches him the
demands of justice and peace in conformity with divine wisdom.

2420 The Church makes a moral judgment about economic and social matters, "when the
fundamental rights of the person or the salvation of souls requires it."[199] In the moral order
she bears a mission distinct from that of political authorities: the Church is concerned with the
temporal aspects of the common good because they are ordered to the sovereign Good, our
ultimate end. She strives to inspire right attitudes with respect to earthly goods and in
socio-economic relationships.

2421 The social doctrine of the Church developed in the nineteenth century when the Gospel
encountered modern industrial society with its new structures for the production of consumer
goods, its new concept of society, the state and authority, and its new forms of labor and
ownership. The development of the doctrine of the Church on economic and social matters
attests the permanent value of the Church's teaching at the same time as it attests the true
meaning of her Tradition, always living and active.[200]

2422 The Church's social teaching comprises a body of doctrine, which is articulated as the
Church interprets events in the course of history, with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, in the
light of the whole of what has been revealed by Jesus Christ.[201] This teaching can be more
easily accepted by men of good will, the more the faithful let themselves be guided by it.

2423 The Church's social teaching proposes principles for reflection; it provides criteria for
judgment; it gives guidelines for action:
Any system in which social relationships are determined entirely by economic factors is
contrary to the nature of the human person and his acts.[202]

2424 A theory that makes profit the exclusive norm and ultimate end of economic activity is
morally unacceptable. The disordered desire for money cannot but produce perverse effects.
It is one of the causes of the many conflicts which disturb the social order.[203]
A system that "subordinates the basic rights of individuals and of groups to the collective
organization of production" is contrary to human dignity.[204] Every practice that reduces
persons to nothing more than a means of profit enslaves man, leads to idolizing money, and
contributes to the spread of atheism. "You cannot serve God and mammon."[205]

2425 The Church has rejected the totalitarian and atheistic ideologies associated in modem
times with "communism" or "socialism." She has likewise refused to accept, in the practice of
"capitalism," individualism and the absolute primacy of the law of the marketplace over human
labor.[206] Regulating the economy solely by centralized planning perverts the basis of social
bonds; regulating it solely by the law of the marketplace fails social justice, for "there are many
human needs which cannot be satisfied by the market."[207] Reasonable regulation of the
marketplace and economic initiatives, in keeping with a just hierarchy of values and a view to
the common good, is to be commended.

VI. LOVE FOR THE POOR

2443 God blesses those who come to the aid of the poor and rebukes those who turn away
from them: "Give to him who begs from you, do not refuse him who would borrow from you";
"you received without pay, give without pay."[231] It is by what they have done for the poor
that Jesus Christ will recognize his chosen ones.[232] When "the poor have the good news
preached to them," it is the sign of Christ's presence.[233]

2444 "The Church's love for the poor . . . is a part of her constant tradition." This love is
inspired by the Gospel of the Beatitudes, of the poverty of Jesus, and of his concern for the
poor.[234] Love for the poor is even one of the motives for the duty of working so as to "be
able to give to those in need."[235] It extends not only to material poverty but also to the many
forms of cultural and religious poverty.[236]

2445 Love for the poor is incompatible with immoderate love of riches or their selfish use:
Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches
have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust
will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the
last days. Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by
fraud, cry out; and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You
have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of
slaughter. You have condemned, you have killed the righteous man; he does not resist
you.[237]

2446 St. John Chrysostom vigorously recalls this: "Not to enable the poor to share in our
goods is to steal from them and deprive them of life. The goods we possess are not ours, but
theirs."[238] "The demands of justice must be satisfied first of all; that which is already due in
justice is not to be offered as a gift of charity":[239]
When we attend to the needs of those in want, we give them what is theirs, not ours. More
than performing works of mercy, we are paying a debt of justice.[240]

2447 The works of mercy are charitable actions by which we come to the aid of our neighbor
in his spiritual and bodily necessities.[241] Instructing, advising, consoling, comforting are
spiritual works of mercy, as are forgiving and bearing wrongs patiently. The corporal works of
mercy consist especially in feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, clothing the naked,
visiting the sick and imprisoned, and burying the dead.[242] Among all these, giving alms to
the poor is one of the chief witnesses to fraternal charity: it is also a work of justice pleasing to
God:[243]
He who has two coats, let him share with him who has none and he who has food must do
likewise.[244] But give for alms those things which are within; and behold, everything is clean
for you.[245] If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to
them, "Go in peace, be warmed and filled," without giving them the things needed for the body,
what does it profit?[246]

2448 "In its various forms - material deprivation, unjust oppression, physical and psychological
illness and death - human misery is the obvious sign of the inherited condition of frailty and
need for salvation in which man finds himself as a consequence of original sin. This misery
elicited the compassion of Christ the Savior, who willingly took it upon himself and identified
himself with the least of his brethren. Hence, those who are oppressed by poverty are the
object of a preferential love on the part of the Church which, since her origin and in spite of the
failings of many of her members, has not ceased to work for their relief, defense, and liberation
through numerous works of charity which remain indispensable always and everywhere."[247]

2449 Beginning with the Old Testament, all kinds of juridical measures (the jubilee year of
forgiveness of debts, prohibition of loans at interest and the keeping of collateral, the obligation
to tithe, the daily payment of the day-laborer, the right to glean vines and fields) answer the
exhortation of Deuteronomy: "For the poor will never cease out of the land; therefore I
command you, 'You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor
in the land.'"[248] Jesus makes these words his own: "The poor you always have with you, but
you do not always have me."[249] In so doing he does not soften the vehemence of former
oracles against "buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals . . .," but invites
us to recognize his own presence in the poor who are his brethren:[250]
When her mother reproached her for caring for the poor and the sick at home, St. Rose of
Lima said to her: "When we serve the poor and the sick, we serve Jesus. We must not fail to
help our neighbors, because in them we serve Jesus.[251]

IN BRIEF

2450 "You shall not steal" (Ex 20:15; Deut 5:19). "Neither thieves, nor the greedy . . ., nor
robbers will inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Cor 6:10).

2451 The seventh commandment enjoins the practice of justice and charity in the
administration of earthly goods and the fruits of men's labor.

2452 The goods of creation are destined for the entire human race. The right to private
property does not abolish the universal destination of goods.

2453 The seventh commandment forbids theft. Theft is the usurpation of another's goods
against the reasonable will of the owner.

2454 Every manner of taking and using another's property unjustly is contrary to the seventh
commandment. The injustice committed requires reparation. Commutative justice requires the
restitution of stolen goods.

2455 The moral law forbids acts which, for commercial or totalitarian purposes, lead to the
enslavement of human beings, or to their being bought, sold or exchanged like merchandise.

2456 The dominion granted by the Creator over the mineral, vegetable, and animal resources
of the universe cannot be separated from respect for moral obligations, including those toward
generations to come.

2457 Animals are entrusted to man's stewardship; he must show them kindness. They may be
used to serve the just satisfaction of man's needs.

2458 The Church makes a judgment about economic and social matters when the fundamental
rights of the person or the salvation of souls requires *. She is concerned with the temporal
common good of men because they are ordered to the sovereign Good, their ultimate end.

2459 Man is himself the author, center, and goal of all economic and social life. The decisive
point of the social question is that goods created by God for everyone should in fact reach
everyone in accordance with justice and with the help of charity.

2460 The primordial value of labor stems from man himself, its author and beneficiary. By
means of his labor man participates in the work of creation. Work united to Christ can be
redemptive.

2461 True development concerns the whole man. It is concerned with increasing each
person's ability to respond to his vocation and hence to God's call (cf. CA 29).

2462 Giving alms to the poor is a witness to fraternal charity: it is also a work of justice
pleasing to God.

2463 How can we not recognize Lazarus, the hungry beggar in the parable (cf. Lk 17:19-31),
in the multitude of human beings without bread, a roof or a place to stay? How can we fail to
hear Jesus: "As you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me" (Mt 25:45)?