The Universal Destination of Goods

The Church's social doctrine is not a political programme but a body of principles drawn from faith and reason. Among them, the universal destination of goods holds a singular place: it does not merely shed light on the question of property, it founds it and measures it. The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church likewise makes it the first principle ordering every use of goods^[7].

The "first principle of the whole ethical and social order"

To say that the universal destination is a first principle has a precise meaning. It means that, in the logical and moral order, it comes before property, the market, contract and the State. These are legitimate, necessary means of organising the use of goods; but they draw their justification from the end they serve, namely that goods should "benefit all in an equitable manner". John Paul II, in Laudato Si' as taken up by Francis, is quoted thus:

"The principle of the subordination of private property to the universal destination of goods, and thus the universal right to their use, is a 'golden rule' of social conduct, and 'the first principle of the whole ethical and social order'." — Pope Francis, Laudato Si', no. 93, 24 May 2015^[8]

This status as a golden rule explains why the Church refuses to treat the economy as a morally neutral domain, governed by its own laws alone. An organisation that produced wealth while durably depriving entire peoples of what is necessary would violate the first principle, whatever its output.

An "originary" right from which property is derived

Pope Francis drew from this status its sharpest consequence in Fratelli Tutti. Taking up the whole tradition, he recalls that the right of all to the use of goods is primary, and that the right of property derives from it:

"The right to private property can only be considered as a secondary and derived natural right, derived from the principle of the universal destination of created goods, and this has very concrete consequences which must be reflected in the functioning of society." — Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti, no. 120, 3 October 2020^[9]

Far from being a novelty, this hierarchy is constant: the "principle of the common use of goods created for all" is, Francis says again, "the first principle of the whole ethical and social order", "a natural, originary and prior right"^[10]. The danger he denounces is that of a society which places "secondary rights above prior and originary rights, depriving them of all practical force"^[11].

Neither collectivism nor absolutisation: the exact place of the principle

Affirming the universal destination is not advocating the forced pooling of goods. The Church condemned communism, which abolishes property, and socialism, which dissolves personal responsibility, as much as she refuses the liberal absolutisation of private property. The universal destination of goods is neither one nor the other: it is the criterion that orders property to its social end. This principle is a sibling of the dignity of the person, the common good, subsidiarity and solidarity; it is, on economic ground, their direct application — as the link John Paul II establishes between the interdependence of men and the fact that "the goods of creation are destined for all" recalls^[12].

The universal destination of goods is not first of all a philosophical thesis: the Church reads it in Scripture itself, from the creation account to the apostolic community. The Catechism explicitly attaches it to the first chapter of Genesis^[13].

In the beginning, the earth entrusted to all

The first foundation is the creative act. God entrusts the earth not to an individual nor to a caste, but to mankind as such:

"In the beginning God entrusted the earth and its resources to the common stewardship of mankind to take care of them, master them by labour, and enjoy their fruits. The goods of creation are destined for the whole human race." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2402^[14]

Man is therefore not the absolute owner of the earth, but its steward (administrator) of a gift received. The Genesis account — "Be fruitful […], fill the earth and subdue it" (Gen 1:28); "I give you every seed-bearing plant […]: they shall be yours for food" (Gen 1:29) — addresses the earth to all the living to come, with no privilege of origin^[15]. It is this original donation that the right of property, though legitimate, "does not abolish"^[16].

The jubilee and gleaning: an economy corrected by God

The Old Testament does not merely affirm the principle: it institutionalises it. The Law of Moses organises periodic mechanisms of redistribution to prevent the earth, a common gift, from becoming definitively concentrated in a few hands. The sabbatical year leaves the soil at rest and opens its spontaneous fruits to the poor (Ex 23:10-11); the gleaning laws forbid reaping to the very edges of the field or going over the vineyard a second time, so as to leave their share "to the poor and to the stranger" (Lev 19:9-10; Deut 24:19-21)^[17]. Above all, the jubilee year, every fifty years, prescribes the liberation of slaves and the restitution of alienated lands to their families of origin, with this explicit theological motive:

"The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine, and you are but strangers and sojourners with me." — Leviticus 25:23^[18]

The land belongs to God; man is only its temporary usufructuary. The jubilee is the juridical translation of the universal destination: no hoarding is definitive, because no man is the ultimate master of goods.

"All things in common": the first community of Jerusalem

The New Testament carries the principle to its summit. The Acts of the Apostles describe the community of Jerusalem as the place where the common destination of goods becomes concrete life:

"The multitude of those who had become believers had but one heart and one soul; and no one claimed as his own what belonged to him, but all things were in common among them. […] There was no needy person among them." — Acts of the Apostles 4:32,34^[19]

The Church has never read this passage as the abolition of all property — Peter reminds Ananias that his field and its price remained at his disposal (Acts 5:4) — but as the ideal toward which charity tends: goods held as one's own, yet open, shared according to each one's needs. Saint Paul founds the great collection of the Churches of Greece for the poor of Jerusalem on a principle of equality and on the example of Christ: "He became poor for your sake […]. It is a question of equality: let your abundance now supply their want"^[20]. Conversely, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Lk 16:19-31) condemns not wealth in itself, but the rich man who closes his door to the beggar lying at his threshold: the refusal to share is presented as the root of his damnation^[21].

No doctrine was taught by the Fathers of the Church with sharper vigour than this one. For them, keeping one's superfluous goods while the poor go without is not a defect of generosity: it is theft, because that surplus already belongs, by right, to the one who is starving. This tradition, sometimes forgotten, is so central that the contemporary Magisterium still cites it as its own source.

Saint Ambrose: "you give back to him what belongs to him"

The most quoted text is that of Saint Ambrose of Milan (340-397), in his treatise De Nabuthe (on Naboth). Paul VI inserted it at the heart of Populorum Progressio, giving it magisterial authority:

"It is not from your own goods that you are generous to the poor; you give back to him what belongs to him. For what is given in common for the use of all, that is what you arrogate to yourself. The earth is given to all, and not only to the rich." — Saint Ambrose of Milan, De Nabuthe, quoted by Paul VI, Populorum Progressio, no. 23^[22]

Saint Basil: "to the hungry belongs the bread you keep"

Saint Basil of Caesarea (330-379), in his homily on avarice (Against the Rich), follows the logic to the end: what is accumulated beyond necessity is stolen from as many poor as one could have helped.

"To the hungry belongs the bread you keep; to the naked man, the cloak you store in your chests; to the barefoot, the shoe that rots in your house; to the needy, the money you hold buried. Thus you commit as many injustices as there are people to whom you could give." — Saint Basil of Caesarea, Homily on Avarice^[23]

Saint John Chrysostom: "they are not our goods, but theirs"

Saint John Chrysostom (c. 349-407) is quoted by the Catechism itself, in the section on love for the poor:

"Not to share our own goods with the poor is to rob them and to take away their life. What we hold, these are not our goods, but theirs." — Saint John Chrysostom, Homilies on Lazarus, quoted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2446^[24]

Saint Gregory the Great: a duty of justice, not of mere charity

Saint Gregory the Great (c. 540-604), in his Pastoral Rule, specifies the exact nature of this duty: giving the poor what they need belongs to justice before it belongs to mercy.

"When we give to the destitute what is necessary to them, we give back to them what is theirs; we do them no personal favour. It is a debt of justice that we discharge, rather than a work of mercy that we perform." — Saint Gregory the Great, Pastoral Rule^[25]

This patristic unanimity provides the background of the whole principle: the universal destination of goods is not a 19th-century invention, but the constant of Tradition, which the saints preached before the encyclicals formulated it.

The great intellectual synthesis of the principle is the work of Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). It is he who forged the distinction taken up word for word by the Catechism and by all the social encyclicals: between the power to manage goods, which may legitimately be private, and their use, which must remain ordered to the common good.

The right to possess as one's own is legitimate

In the Summa Theologiae (II-II, q. 66, a. 2), Thomas asks "whether it is lawful for a man to possess a thing as his own". His answer is positive: the "power to procure and dispense" external things (potestas procurandi et dispensandi) may be held as one's own, and this for three common-sense reasons — each takes better care of what concerns him; affairs are better ordered if each has his charge; peace is better kept when each is content with his lot^[26]. Against every collectivist utopia, Thomas thus recognises in private property a real usefulness and a foundation in man's rational nature.

But use must remain common

At once, Thomas adds the decisive distinction: "As for use, man ought not to hold external things as his own, but as common, so that he readily shares them in the necessity of others."^[27] To possess as one's own, yes; to use as an absolute owner, no. The Catechism takes up this insight almost word for word when it quotes the Second Vatican Council:

"In the use of goods, man must never hold the things he legitimately possesses as belonging to him alone, but must also regard them as common: in the sense that they may benefit not only him, but others." — Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes, no. 69, quoted in the Catechism, no. 2404^[28]

The limit case: extreme necessity

Thomas draws from this principle a radical consequence (II-II, q. 66, a. 7): in case of extreme necessity, taking another's goods is not theft, since need has made those goods common. "In necessity, all things are common (in necessitate sunt omnia communia)"^[29]. This is no licence for covetousness: the necessity must be real, present and imminent, and no other help must be possible. But the principle is clear, and the Second Vatican Council takes it up in its own terms: "He who finds himself in extreme necessity has the right to procure for himself what is indispensable from the riches of others"^[30]. The universal destination of goods then regains the upper hand over the ordinary distribution — not by arbitrary exception, but because it is the primary right, veiled in normal times by the order of property, but reappearing as soon as a man's survival is at stake.

The principle runs through the whole modern social magisterium, from Leo XIII to Francis, never varying in substance, but applied to new situations. The following chronology marks its decisive stages.

Leo XIII: property defended, but common use maintained

It is often forgotten that Rerum Novarum (1891), the founding text which so firmly defends private property against nascent socialism, maintains the universal destination at the same time. Leo XIII explicitly takes up the Thomist distinction there: possessing goods as one's own is necessary to human life; but, as for use, man must not consider them as exclusively his, and must readily let others share in them in case of need^[31]. The pope adds, on the superfluous, a teaching that remained famous: once the necessary and the becoming have been provided for, giving what remains to the destitute is a duty — not of strict legal justice, but of charity, the fulfilment of which no human law can demand^[32]. The Church will always maintain this tension: property is a true right, but it is never an absolute.

Pius XI: the "twofold character" of property

In 1931, in Quadragesimo Anno, Pius XI condenses the doctrine in the notion of the twofold character of property, "individual and social". To deny the social aspect leads to individualism; to deny the individual aspect leads to collectivism. The function of authority is precisely to define, with a view to the common good, "what is permitted and what is not permitted to owners in the use of their goods"^[33]. This is what the Catechism confirms: "The political authority has the right and duty to regulate, with a view to the common good, the legitimate exercise of the right of property"^[34].

John Paul II: the "social mortgage"

The most striking contribution of the 20th century is the image forged by John Paul II in Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (1987). After recalling that the universal destination of goods is a "characteristic principle of Christian social doctrine" and that "the goods of this world are originally destined for all", he writes:

"Private property, in fact, is burdened with a social mortgage, that is to say, it bears as an intrinsic quality a social function, founded and justified precisely by the principle of the universal destination of goods." — Saint John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, no. 42, 30 December 1987^[35]

The juridical image is exact: a mortgage does not abolish ownership, but it burdens it with a charge that follows it into whatever hands it passes. Likewise, every possessed good remains charged with a debt toward the common destiny: one owns it on condition that it also serve others.

The most delicate point is to hold together two affirmations which modern ideologies oppose: private property is a genuine right, and goods are destined for all. The Church refuses to sacrifice one to the other. It is this refusal that defines her own position, at equal distance from liberalism and collectivism.

Why private property remains legitimate and necessary

The principle of the universal destination does not devalue private property: it founds it better than any other doctrine. The Catechism teaches that "the appropriation of goods is legitimate in order to guarantee the freedom and dignity of persons, to help each to supply his fundamental needs"^[36]. Without property, no responsibility, no initiative, no protection of the family against the arbitrariness of the State — this is the argument Leo XIII opposed to socialism and which the article on private property develops. The universal destination therefore does not contradict property: it indicates its finality. One possesses so that goods may serve — first oneself and one's own, then, through the superfluous, others.

The table of the three positions

The following table contrasts the Church's doctrine with the two symmetrical errors she has combated.

A social function, not mere generosity

The great difference between Catholic doctrine and a mere appeal to private charity lies in this word: social function. The universal destination does not only ask the rich to be generous; it inscribes in the very nature of property a debt toward the community. That is why the Church can legitimise public regulation: just taxation, agrarian reform where land is monopolised, limits on speculation, supervision of world trade. "All other rights, whatever they may be, including those of property and free trade, are subordinate to it," writes Paul VI^[37]. Property is not denied; it is ordered.

The principle reaches its most concrete point in the question of extreme necessity. What is to be done with a man who is about to die of hunger and finds no one to give to him? The Church's answer, inherited from Thomas and confirmed by the Council, is clear: he has the right to take from another's goods what is indispensable to him, and this taking is not theft^[38].

A reappearance of the primary right, not an arbitrary exception

This right is not a breach in the principle: it is its purest manifestation. In ordinary times, the universal destination of goods passes through the mediation of property and distributive justice; but when these mediations fail to the point that a man is about to perish, the originary right of all to use goods directly regains the upper hand. The good becomes again, for this case, what it was in the beginning: common. This is the existential application of Saint Thomas's "in necessitate omnia communia"^[39].

The strict conditions

Yet the Church strictly frames this right, lest it become a pretext for theft or revolutionary agitation. The necessity must be extreme (survival, not comfort), present (actual, not eventual), and without any other way out (no possible help being offered). One may take only what is indispensable, not help oneself beyond it. And this right, which holds for the threatened individual, cannot found a general expropriation decided by oneself: it rather calls upon public authority to organise, upstream, a distribution that makes such cases impossible. The universal destination of goods is thus both a right of the starving and a duty of society.

Far from being a relic of the agrarian economy, the universal destination of goods sheds light on the most current economic debates. Pope Francis made it, in his teaching, one of the keys for reading contemporary crises^[40].

Hunger and the development of peoples

The first application remains the most urgent: no one must lack what is necessary when the earth produces enough for all. This is the central argument of Populorum Progressio: the development of poor peoples is not an optional alms of rich nations, but a demand of justice founded on the common destination of goods. This theme, which touches on poverty and globalisation, receives its foundation here: if goods belong to all, the abyssal gap between the abundance of a few and the misery of billions of others is a structural injustice, not a mere fatality.

Ecology and future generations

Benedict XVI and Francis extended the principle in time: the earth is destined not only for all the living, but also for those who will come. Benedict XVI recalls that creation "was given to all by God" and that its use involves "a responsibility toward the poor, future generations and mankind as a whole"^[41]. This is the doctrinal root of integral ecology and the safeguarding of creation, the objects of their own articles: to squander common resources is to deprive future generations of their share of the original gift.

The new common goods

The principle applies, finally, to realities Antiquity did not know: water, of which Francis affirms that it is an "essential, fundamental and universal" right^[42]; knowledge and immaterial goods; digital resources. The Catechism had already extended the notion to "goods of production — material or immaterial — such as lands or factories, skills or arts", which "require the care of their owners so that their fruitfulness may benefit the greatest number"^[43]. The universal destination of goods thus becomes a criterion for judging access to health, education, information — wherever a necessary good risks being confiscated to the detriment of the common destiny.

The preferential option for the poor

All these applications converge toward a consequence the Magisterium names the preferential option for the poor. Since goods are destined for all and the poor are the first deprived of them, charity and justice turn first toward them. The Catechism directly draws this consequence from the principle^[44], and it is developed in the article on poverty. The universal destination of goods is therefore not neutral: it has a direction, which is to fill first the one who lacks.

The spirituality of the Divine Will transmitted to Luisa Piccarreta (1865-1947) offers an interior light on this social principle. If all goods are destined for all, it is because they proceed from a single gift: creation is not a property wrested from God, but an inheritance received from His hand and entrusted to the common stewardship of mankind^[45]. To live in the divine Will is precisely to receive everything as a gift to be passed on, and not as a possession to be retained: the soul that acts in the Fiat appropriates nothing for itself alone, but gives back to God and restores to others what it has received, "in the name of the whole of creation"^[46]. The interior detachment the Gospels ask for — "You cannot serve God and mammon" (Mt 6:24) — thus joins, in the spiritual order, what social doctrine states in the order of structures: goods are truly ours only when they serve God's common design. The universal destination of goods finds there its deepest root: not first a rule of organisation, but a truth about man's place, steward and not master, before the Creator who "gave the earth to the whole human race"^[47].

• Private Property according to the Church — the "secondary and derived" right which the universal destination founds and limits.
• The Common Good — the social end to which the use of goods is ordered.
• Solidarity — the virtue that turns interdependence into effective sharing.
• Subsidiarity — the principle that guarantees that the regulation of goods respects persons and intermediate bodies.
• The Dignity of the Human Person — the foundation of all principles: one possesses in order to serve persons.
• Poverty and the preferential option for the poor — toward whom the destination of goods turns first.
• Integral Ecology and the Safeguarding of Creation — the destination of goods extended to future generations.
• Communism, socialism, economic liberalism and capitalism — the ideologies which social doctrine surpasses.
• Globalisation — economic interdependence to be ordered to the common destiny of goods.