Pestilence or Free Initiative?

Aging, portly Count Giuseppe Dalla Torre, editor of the Vatican's semi-official L'Osservatore Romano, chose a sensational moment to write an editorial against capitalism. Assembled in Rome last week for a four-day meeting were delegations of Roman Catholic employers from France, Canada, Belgium, The Netherlands, England and Italy.

In the eyes of the church, Editor Dalla Torre wrote, "capitalism is a social disease and a pestilence . . . Faithfully following divine teaching, the church has fought throughout the centuries against this human passion [for wealth], which together with ambition and the abuse of force represents the trio of humanity's greatest social demons . . ."

But the Pope, in his speech to the employers, laid quite a different emphasis. "Why not," he asked, "while there is still time, put things in order ... in a way to secure the . . . [employer] against unjust suspicion and the . . . [workers] against illusions which will not be long in becoming social perils?

"The proprietor of the means of production . . . must always . . . remain the master of his economic decisions. It flows from that that his revenue is greater than that of his collaborators . . . The economy is not by nature an institution of the state; it is, to the contrary, the living product of the free initiative of individuals and of groups freely constituted."

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