Article II: The Procuring of Bodily and Temporal Goods

Principles. — 1. From the order of charity, each one can prefer himself to an individual neighbor in an equal cause of necessity. But when there is question of bodily and exterior goods, it is also lawful, as we said above, nn. 81, 84, to give the first place to neighbor from charity, which at the same time promises us the compensation of a better good.

2. But as long as there is question of individuals, he must prefer persons more joined to him to others toward whom he has no peculiar office of piety. The order to be observed among those persons was indicated above, n. 85.

3. The republic or perfect society can require from private persons that they postpone their temporal utility to the public cause. And it is also lawful to place the public cause before the private cause, even of neighbors, if elsewhere proportion of utility or necessity is had.

4. Never, for helping an individual neighbor in need, must anyone sustain that inconvenience or make that expense which, without sin against charity toward himself, he is permitted to deny to his own bodily or temporal safety.

5. Except for necessity morally extreme, no one is bound to succor the temporal need of neighbor with notable inconvenience of his own. To this pertains that saying: "Charity does not oblige with grave inconvenience."

Hence these responses are understood:

— 1. To neglect one's bodily safety without cause and with grave harm (of death or grave illness) is per se a grave sin; yet often an excuse of ignorance is had: for in that cause, from self-love, we rather incline to excessive care. Yet the case occurs where someone, warned by a doctor concerning imminent danger, does not renounce a certain pleasure or recreation that is almost fatal.

The present life is not esteemed of such value that someone ought by long care, great expense, or extraordinary remedy to recover health.

— 2. We never owe that help to an individual neighbor which would cast us into the same necessity from which we wish to rescue the neighbor. Nor must we give a great sum of money to a poor man for buying costly medicine or for rescuing him from danger of death. Yet this must be received temperately where there is question not of a neighbor who is a stranger but of one closely joined.

On the Precept of Alms. — Already Aristotle (Politics, 2, c. 2) preferred to communism a regime of temporal goods by which, not indeed ownership, but the use of possessions would be made common by law or benevolence. By this opinion he so defended private property that at the same time he denied the power of fully withdrawing temporal things from the human race in general, to which, from the first intention of God, they have been assigned and must remain assigned. But riches already procure common utility by the very conveniences which they offer to possessors to be enjoyed: for thus they stimulate more intense and ingenious industriousness ¹, and permit more persons to serve the community by nobler studies; they also promote common utility by parsimony, by which, excessive consumption having been avoided, treasures are preserved for society, capital is prepared; finally, they benefit the common utility more immediately by the distribution among many of necessaries which accompanies and follows the expenses of riches and fruitful industries.

There remains then gratuitous distribution, which can be directed to temporal ends and also to moral and spiritual ends. Hence the twofold character of alms: one narrower, by which material want is succored; the other fuller, by which every genus of needs is succored.

The precept of alms by which the poor are fed is already inculcated in the open pages of both Testaments and in no few places of the Holy Fathers; today, however, it is especially to be urged that temporal riches effectively contribute to diminishing or removing the spiritual necessities of very many.

That precept seems able to be explained thus.

a) Distinction of goods. Goods are called necessary or superfluous; and this either with respect to someone's own life and that of his dependents (with whom he is morally held as one person), or with respect to state or condition. Those things are called simply necessary to one's state without which a man would be cast down from his condition: as if he would have to diminish notably his retinue of servants, his reception of guests, his manner of educating children, or would not have that from which he could provide for unexpected cases of infirmity, etc. Those things are called necessary to the decency of state, both goods without which, within the limits of honorable liberality, he could not continue the same in the accustomed way, and other goods which pertain to caring for a moderate ascent.

The remaining goods are held as relatively superfluous. Absolutely superfluous goods today morally are not had in our regions, where money is no longer accustomed to be laid away idly, but all things are usefully spent (excessive expenses of luxury excepted) in works and businesses by which public riches and even the resources of humble persons increase. But we can call superfluous those moderate goods which, whether they are present or not, morally do not affect the accustomed cultivation of life or increase of prosperity. Hence this proposition 12 was rightly condemned by Innocent XI: "You will scarcely find among secular persons, even kings, anything superfluous to their state. And thus scarcely anyone is bound to alms, when he is bound only from what is superfluous to his state" (Denz. 1162).

b) Obligation according to varied necessity. We must help a poor person in extreme or quasi-extreme need even from goods which in some way are necessary to state. But the case concerning an individual poor person will scarcely occur, since we are not bound by a great force of money to relieve the temporal need of neighbor. But the obligation of succoring a neighbor in extreme or nearly extreme need is grave.

c) If a poor person is gravely in need, this is controverted: whether you must relieve that necessity from superfluous goods, when no other will probably do it, or whether you can reserve your alms for another good work when you cannot conveniently do both. Many permit this option, because they judge it a grave inconvenience to be deprived of it. This seems consonant with the very mind of St. Thomas, 2, 2, q. 32, art. 5.

Therefore you will be held under grave obligation if you propose no other pious use to yourself; if you can conveniently satisfy each intention; if there is question of help which has no other utility. Thus, for example, under grave obligation you must warn him whose house begins to burn, because your warning cannot per se, like money, be deputed to another good work.

He also sins gravely more probably who, having relatively superfluous goods, frequently repels poor persons laboring under grave want. For it seems little consonant with the Scriptures that we restrict their grave admonitions to the rare case of extreme necessity. Add scandal and social harm.

d) In common necessity, a grave obligation is not proved, although it is affirmed by many. Cf. St. Alphonsus, l. 2, n. 32. And it is less established today, since by public subsidies to which all citizens contribute, temporal needs are provided for rather richly, and money fruitfully invested has a use which is not useless to the less fortunate. No one doubts that there is at least a venial obligation of sometimes giving alms, if you have goods superfluous to nature and state.

e) Private men are not bound to seek out the poor. Yet if they have a serious doubt concerning someone's extreme need, they must make themselves more certain about the matter. The usual assertions of beggars that they are fasting, without bread, are seen per se not to suffice for making a doubt.

¹ Cf. our Principes de morale sociale, n. 148 ff.

— Concerning the quantity of alms to be distributed in common necessity of the poor, there is no better and more expedient rule than that each one should accommodate himself to the uses of pious persons of his own condition. Writers propose this formal rule: that there is to be given that by which, once the alms of other rich persons have been brought together, the poor are not destitute of help. St. Alphonsus, l. 2, n. 32, judged reasonable that more certain assessment, that someone should give the fiftieth part of his revenues, if that fiftieth part belongs to superfluous goods. (Some declare that one abounding in revenues can be content with a smaller proportional part.) Thus we explain, from the authors whom the Holy Doctor, l. c., seems to approve, the rather ambiguous place of Homo Apostolicus, Tr. 4, c. 2, n. 19: "It suffices if the fiftieth part of annual revenues which are left over is given." Several, for example, Aertnijs-Damen, I, 364, Q. 2, understand this place concerning the fiftieth part of the annual surplus. It is clear that here there is question only of alms more strictly so called, by which food is furnished. What seems to have to be said today, cf. below, n. 108.

Alms from the Goods of Others. — He who has his own goods must give alms from these, not from another's goods. Except the express or tacit consent of the owner. Thus faithful servants, especially those who, because of long-standing services, are shown as pertaining almost to the family properly so called, do not seem to be prohibited from presuming consent of this kind, and from helping the master honestly, prudently, and moderately in distributing an offering.

That goods taken by theft are not matter of alms but of restitution is manifest per se. But he who is burdened with debt is forbidden to make the condition of creditors worse by his gifts: yet he ought not for that reason abstain from moderate alms.

A wife, as such, can, in our regions, give moderate alms. For notable alms, unless she freely administers her own goods, she per se needs the consent of the husband. Yet she can presume that consent more easily than a son, and the latter more easily than a servant.

Those who by office care for the goods of others, such as tutors and curators, can make from the goods administered by them those alms which it would per se be becoming for the owner to make. In this matter, as in administration, they supply for the owner. The same is to be said of those who govern a community of persons.

General Conclusion on the Office of Alms. — 1. If you consider the controversies of moralists, you will be persuaded of this: that the positive precept of charity resists accurate definition; it is to be exercised not by perturbation of fear but by a freer and more generous impulse: "God loveth a cheerful giver" (2 Cor. 9, 7).

2. If you turn your mind to human customs, it will go well for the cause of the poor and of good works that the rich determine beforehand what proportional part they wish to distribute for pious ends. Even if it is very small, they will for the most part give more than if, when an occasion is given, they pay this or that liberal contribution. How many there are who think themselves to have been ample benefactors who, if they should calculate the annual sum liberally spent by them, would blush at their own parsimony!

3. If you look to our times, the form of manual alms given to street beggars, this intimate and more blind demonstration of mercy, is esteemed less day by day. But at the same time there succeed, as if in its place, many works of common and more prudent beneficence, which everywhere call forth the charity of the good: more spiritual necessities especially must be relieved by Catholic institutes; and from distant regions evangelical workers and the newspapers themselves, which narrate the sad fates of many peoples, implore mercy, so that there is no one who can think himself released from the office of temporal beneficence.

Material Estimation of Alms Understood in the Fuller Sense. If a man to whom all necessary or useful things are abundantly available is at the same time relieved of every family burden, no reason is seen why he should not assign all, at least, of the revenues which are left over to pious works. This must be said with stronger reason of sacred ministers, especially if revenues have proceeded from the sacred ministries themselves. Did not Ecclesiastes, 4, 7, already mock him who, without son and brother, bore eyes never satisfied with riches, and did not consider for whom he labored? Yet because "not all take this," as a reasonable norm, if no peculiar general necessity demands more, we propose this norm of acting: that from annual revenues which remain after all expenses, a proportional part be deputed to pious works; which proportional part could be:

But a norm more positively proved by ecclesiastical writers was this: that those who could do so without detriment to the family should divide their resources (annual resources, as we think) into three parts, so that the first be deputed to the poor; the second to religious worship; but the third be assigned to supporting the family. (Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, Rules to be observed in distributing alms.)

You will observe that by us the proportion itself is increased for a greater sum of revenues; whereas in the age of St. Alphonsus they rather diminished the same proportion for the same ratio. But, unless we are deceived, they established this concerning alms alone strictly understood and which then was more circumscribed by place: satisfaction was easily given to the common necessities of the poor by an absolutely greater sum. But if, as today we must, we take alms in a broader sense and extension, since the necessities are inexhaustible, there seems to us to be no reason why the rules of charity should be set forth according to another reason than the rules of taxes, that is, according to capacity, which, the greater the revenues are, does not decrease but relatively increases.

Scholion. On Alms by Word and Action. — Although, less than exterior things, the inborn and acquired endowments of talent are common in first origin, since from the beginning and from their very nature they are joined with the person, nevertheless they are not ordered by divine Providence to the utility of the learned or skillful man alone; but the law is to be observed which Leo XIII expressed in these magnificent words: "The summary is: whoever has received a greater abundance of goods by the gift of God, whether they are of the body and external, or of the soul, has received them for this cause, that he should use them for the perfection of himself, and likewise, as a minister of divine Providence, for the utilities of others" (Enc. Rerum Novarum, 15 May 1891).

Therefore the alms of counsel and of any beneficent action is laudable and commanded. Thus advocates, physicians, and surgeons must help poor persons in need by their art even gratuitously, by an obligation which is to be estimated from the necessity of the one in need and the inconvenience of the one succoring, and sometimes from the office assumed. All works of mercy, both corporal and spiritual, contain the character of alms.