2. Quadragesimo Anno
English title: The Reconstruction of the Social Order
Encyclical Letter of Pope Pius XI, May 1931
The function of the rulers of the State is to watch over the 
community and its parts; but in protecting private individuals
in their rights, chief consideration ought to be given to the
weak and the poor. (#25)
Every effort must therefore be made that fathers of families
receive a wage large enough to meet ordinary family needs
adequately. But if this cannot always be done under existing
circumstances, social justice demands that changes be
introduced as soon as possible whereby such a wage will be
assured to every adult workingman. (#71)
Twin rocks of shipwreck must be carefully avoided. For, as
one is wrecked upon, or comes close to, what is known as
"individualism" by denying or minimizing the social and public
character of the right of property, so by rejecting or minimizing
the private and individual character of this same right, one
inevitably runs into "collectivism." (#46)
Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they
can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give
it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same
time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a
greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate
organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its
very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social,
and never destroy and absorb them. (#79)
...the right ordering of economic life cannot be left to a free
competition of forces. For from this source, as from a poisoned
spring, have originated and spread all the errors of individualist
economic teaching. ... it held that economic life must be
considered and treated as altogether free from and independent
of public authority, because in the market, i.e., in the free struggle
of competitors, it would have a principle of self direction which
governs it much more perfectly than would the intervention of
any created intellect. But free competition, while justified and
certainly useful provided it is kept within certain limits, clearly
cannot direct economic life.... (#88)
...the riches that economic-social developments constantly
increase ought to be so distributed among individual persons
and classes that ... the common good of all society will be
kept inviolate. (#57)
It follows from the twofold character of ownership, which we
have termed individual and social, that men must take into
account in this matter not only their own advantage but also
the common good. (#49)
This concentration of power and might, the characteristic
mark of contemporary economic life, is the fruit that the
unlimited freedom of struggle among competitors has of its
own nature produced, and which lets only the strongest survive;
and this is often the same as saying, those who fight the most
violently, those who give least heed to their conscience. (#107)
Unbridled ambition for power has succeeded greed for gain;
all economic life has become tragically hard, inexorable, and
cruel. (#109)
How completely deceived, therefore, are those rash reformers
who concern themselves with the enforcement of justice alone
--and this, commutative justice--and in their pride reject the
assistance of charity! Admittedly, no vicarious charity can
substitute for justice which is due as an obligation and is
wrongfully denied. (#137)