Sermon to Capitalists

POLICIES & PRINCIPLES

In Rome last week, 400 Roman Catholic employers from Western Europe and Canada prepared to go home, carrying with them some memorable advice from Pope Pius XII. Delegates to the first international congress of UNIAPAC (International Union of Catholic Employers' Associations), they had heard the Pope deliver one of his clearest and most important statements to date on economic and social affairs:

". . . There is . . . between employers and workers a reciprocal bond . . . which only blind and unreasonable despotism would attempt to break. Employers and employees are not irreconcilable antagonists . . . They eat at the same table because . . . they eat and live out of the net national profit . . ."

While "the general good imposes obligation on owners more than on others to contribute with their savings to the increase of national capital," workers should be allowed to participate more actively in the building of their nation's economy.

"For the moment, statism and nationalization of enterprises are favored. There is no doubt that the Church also admits nationalization within justified limits ... But to make this nationalization the normal rule of public economy would be to reverse the order of things. It is public authority's function to serve private rights, not to absorb them . . ."

Before adjourning, the congress called for creation of profit-sharing systems, to give the workers a greater stake in their society. It also condemned absentee ownership, which, more & more, tends to leave the running of industry to hired managers.

Concluded Congress President Louis Harmel of France: "Let all owners and workers be known as Christians by the way they abandon class struggle egotism so that men will say, 'Look how they love each other.'"

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