Rome’s Evil Doctrine of the Universal Destination of Goods

Immigration, Citizenship, and the Bible Part 12: Rome’s Evil Doctrine of the Universal Destination of Goods



Ruth and Naomi Leave Moab, 1860, by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1794-1872).

Due to time demands at work, it has been some time since the previous installment of my series Immigration, Citizenship and the Bible. Those circumstances now ended, it is my hope, Lord willing, to complete the final postings this spring.

But before moving on to break new ground, it seems good to me to circle back and review the topic of the Roman Church-State (RCS) and immigration. I say this in the first place, because an honest inquiry into the current problems surrounding immigrants and refugees in the United States finds their source in the theory and practice of the RCS..

In the second place, the RCS has conducted its immigration campaign, a campaign with the ultimate goal of furthering its globalist agenda by undermining the sovereignty of the United States, with almost no scrutiny from the press or from Protestants. It is high time someone pointed out the treachery of the her prelates.

Third, a recent speech by San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy laid bare the corrupt theory that lies behind Rome’s immigration policy. This post is a critique of McElroy’s speech.


Rome, Immigration, and the Universal Destination of Goods

Details of the speech by Robert McElroy were related in a story that appeared in the National Catholic Register on February 19, 2017 titled “In a powerful speech, San Diego bishop challenges organizers to disrupt, rebuild.”

It is not my intent to comment on the many anti-Christian statements made by the bishop in this short article. To do so would take more time than is available to me. My aim today is to focus on the polluted theoretical source of Rome’s teaching on immigration, the unbiblical doctrine of the Universal Destination of Goods (UDG).

First, let’s look at what the bishop himself said.

The San Diego bishop said that “the fundamental political question of our age” was whether current U.S. economic structures will receive greater freedom or be directed in a way “to safeguard the dignity of the human person and the common good of our nation” [note well that McElroy contrasts freedom with the “common good,” a Romanist buzzword which serves as a catchall excuse for governmental interference in the economy].

“In that battle, the tradition of Catholic social teaching is unequivocally on the side of strong governmental and societal protections for the powerless, the worker, the homeless, the hungry, those without decent medical care, the unemployed,” [in other words, RCS is unequivocally socialist and opposed to the Bible, which teaches assigns civil magistrates the limited roles of punishing evil doers and praising those who do good] McElroy said to rolling applause.

“This stance of the church’s teaching flows from teaching of the Book of Genesis, that creation is the gift of God to all humanity. Thus in the most fundamental way, there is a universal destination for all the material goods that exist in this world. Wealth is a common heritage, not at its core a right of lineage or of acquisition” [that is to say, the RCS has a communistic theory of property].

It is important to keep in mind that McElroy does not speak for himself. Rather, his comments reflect the social teaching of the RCS as expressed in numerous papal encyclicals.

The big takeaway from McElroy’s comments is that the theoretical foundation of Rome’s Marxist social teaching – and this directly bears on Rome’s teaching on immigration as well – is the UDG.

The Universal Destination of Goods, What is It?

It likely would come as a surprise to most Americans, including, one suspects, to most American Roman Catholics, that the official teaching of the RCS on property is communistic.

Most Americans, whether they have spent much time thinking about it or not, assume that to own something means to have exclusive right to use and to dispose of it as they please. This is the Bible’s definition of ownership, one example of which can be seen in Jesus parable of the workers in the vineyard found in Matthew 20:1-16.

When some the workers challenge the vineyard owner’s fairness in paying all of them the same wage, the owner replies, “Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with my own things?” This rhetorical question requires that answer “yes” and presupposes the owners right to use and to dispose of his property as he sees fit.

But this is not Rome’s view of property.

Doubtless had Bishop McElroy been present, he would have challenged the vineyard owners commitment to Social Justice on the grounds that the workers who began early in the morning had a right to a larger paycheck than those who started work late in the afternoon. In other words, the bishop would have disputed the vineyard owners exclusive control of his own property. And the ultimate basis for the bishop’s objection would be the UDG.

The UDG can be traced back to Thomas Aquinas, who believed that in the original state of creation all goods were held in common. That is to say, Aquinas believed in original communism, original collective ownership, not original capitalism, which is the economic system based on private property.

For Aquinas, private property was a matter of mere human convention, which at times might prove convenient, and at other times might not.

John Robbins describes the UDG this way,

The Thomistic notion of original communism – the denial that private property is part of the natural law, but that common property is both natural and divine – is foundational to all the Roman Catholic arguments for various forms of collectivism, from medieval feudalism and guild socialism to twentieth century fascism and liberation theology. The popes refer to this original communism as the “universal destination of goods…

This principle – the universal destination of goods – is so important in Catholic social thought that all rights are to be subordinated to it…

In Roman Catholic economic thought, there is a hierarchy of principles, and the most important of these principles, to which all others are subordinate, is the principle of the universal destination of goods. This is the economic corollary of the principle of solidarity (Ecclesiastical Megalomania, 38, 39).

In the social teaching of the RCS, ownership is never absolute, it is conditioned upon the subjectively felt needs of the members of the community.

This anti-Christian line of thinking is the theoretical basis for Rome’s push for mass taxpayer subsidized immigration/migration, both legal and illegal. If someone from Mexico, Honduras or Somalia has a felt need for food, clothing, shelter or medical care, it is the obligation of Americans, who have conditional, not absolute, right to their property to supply that felt need, through taxation if necessary. And the RCS stands ready to make this happen through acts of “disruption” according to McElroy.

Said the bishop,

We must disrupt those who would seek to send troops into our streets to deport the undocumented, to rip mothers and fathers from their families. We must disrupt those who portray refugees as enemies, rather than our brothers and sisters in terrible need [in the economics of the RCS, need, not ownership, is the ultimate basis for claims on property] . We must disrupt those who train us to see Muslim men and women and children as sources of fear rather than as children of God [Muslims are not children of God, the Bible reserves that name for those who believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which Muslims by virtue of their being Muslim deny].
We must disrupt those who seek to rob our medical care, especially from the poor [note the collectivist “our,” medical care becomes “our” medical care because we need it, not because we’ve paid for it through our own labor; McElroy claims taking medical care from those who have not earned it is “robbery”]. We must disrupt those who would take even food stamps and nutrition from the mouths of children [in contradiction to the Bible’s teaching about private property, limited government, and the requirement for families to provide for their own, the bishop advocates stealing money from American taxpayers and giving it to immigrants, migrants or others, who “need” it more ].

If the audience showed any skepticism about McElroy’s remarks, none was noted in the National Catholic Reporters account of his speech.

One man said of McElroy’s comments, “I thought it really powerful…It made me so excited to be Catholic.”

This Economy Kills

McElroy continues his assault on private property by exhorting his listeners to, “Let all the world know that this economy [by which, apparently, he means what little remains of the free market in the US] kills.”

So just how does this economy kill. McElroy provides some examples. “A senior who can’t afford medicine or rent. A mother or father who are dying working two and three jobs, and really dying because even then they can’t provide for their kids. You people who can’t find their way in the world in which there is no job for them, and they turn to drugs and gangs and suicide.”

It never seems to occur to McElroy that, to the extent that people do struggle to make ends meet, much of the blame for that can be laid directly at the feet of the Roman prelates who have spent the past 100 years or more lobbying day and night to push their incompetent, unbiblical views of politics and economics on the American public.

But while McElroy is quick to blame “this economy” for deaths of innocent men, women and children, he has nothing to say about the tens upon tens of millions who have died at the hands of various socialist dictators who share his contempt for private property and the rule of law.

Here’s a question to ponder. Why, if this economy kills, do so many people come to the US, both legally and illegally, from nations such as Mexico that have spent centuries under the domination of the Roman Church-State? If Roman Catholic economics and politics were capable of building a prosperous society, why do millions of people feel the need to risk life and limb to flee those nations for the historically, if not presently, capitalist US?

Co-Creators Wanted, Pay Starting at $15 an Hour

McElroy demagogues for a minimum wage hike as well and in the process shows himself just as ignorant of the Biblical doctrine of creation as he is about economics. He describes those who labor as “co-creators with God,” but provides no Scriptural basis for this.

McElroy then asserts that this co-creatorship is worth the princely sum of at least $15 an hour. My goodness! Is not a co-creator with God worth far more than that?!

It seems to me that is able to rise to such an exalted position should be able to pull down at least $150 dollars per hour, if not a lot more. Why does McElroy show so little regard for co-creatorship by putting such a low price on it?

In addition to a higher minimum wage, the good bishop claims that the American taxpayer must provide housing and basic needs to the poor “rebuild the earth damaged by our own industries.” Apparently it has not dawned on the bishop that the industries that he so contemptuously derides are the means by which people, whom he claims to want to help, actually earn a living.

Conclusion

As noted above, Bishop McElroy pitted freedom and Catholic social teaching against one another. He is quite right to do so, and I thank him for his honesty. For the social teaching of the RCS is, in fact, incompatible with a free society, but it is rare to hear a Roman prelate say so in such stark terms.

When analyzing any statement by Rome about immigration, it is important to understand that, lurking in the background, is the Romanist doctrine of the Universal Destination of Goods (UDG).

The UDG teaches that collective ownership, sometimes called original communism, was the economic order at the time of creation. Capitalism, based as it is on private ownership, especially private ownership of the means of production, is a mere legal convention, an artificial construct. Private property is tolerable up to a point, says Rome, but need is the ultimate determinate of who has a right to use the goods of the earth.

It is on the foundation of the UDG that Rome erects its entire body of social teaching, including its assertion that people have the right to immigrate and that the taxpayers of the host countries have the concomitant obligation to bear the costs of this right.

In truth, the UDG is an enormous lie concocted by blind theorists of the Antichrist Roman Church-State and promulgated by con artists in clerical garb such as Bishop McElroy. To the extent that any nation enacts laws based upon this evil doctrine, so far will the people of that nation suffer a loss of life, liberty and happiness.

There is no Scriptural basis for the UDG. As John Robbins has argued, “God, holding ultimate ownership of the Earth, gave it to men severally [individually], not collectively” (Ronald Sider Contra Deum).

Next week, Lord willing, I will discuss the Bible’s teaching about the origin of private property in more detail.

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