The Light of the East September 1942

But we of the churches have exactly the same reason to protest against the verdict of the anticlerical and the anti-Christian press that the Churches are the goats which have to be sent into the wilderness duly loaded with the sins of commission and omission which are now universally acknoledged to have caused the war. [...] Which of us in the countries now at war or threatened by the war can now read without a pang of sorrow pehaps not unmixed with remorse the words which Benedict XV addressed to the rulers of the nations two months after Italy joined the first Great War in the holy name of God in the name of our heavenly Father and Lord through the Blessed Blood of Jesus the price of man's redemption" ? "Let [...] Hence also the disorder and inequality which accompany the accumulation of the wealth of nations in the hands of a small group of individuals who manipulate the market of the world according to their own wishes to the immense harm of the multitude." The Pope goes deeper still. [...] The Capitalist seeks to concentrate property in the hands of the minority the Communist in the hands of a few State officials but the Christian desires a wider distribution of properly and the policy of a Christian society is 'to induce as many as possible of the people to become owners'. [...] The essential task of all political and economic activity is the promotion of the common welfare the good of the people of all the people the whole people and nothing but the whole people.