Morals of the Church
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point — Wouters, Manual of Moral Theology

Point I. On Occupation

789.

I. Notion. Occupation, taken generally, is the apprehension of a thing with the intention of making it one's own; if you add: of a thing which belongs to no one, you have the notion of occupation insofar as it is a mode of acquiring ownership.1 It is said:

  1. Apprehension of a thing; by this is understood an external act by which someone subjects a thing to himself; and this can occur in different ways for different things.

  2. Which belongs to no one, that is, of a thing which either has not had an owner up to now, or is destitute of its owner, for example because the owner has abandoned ownership. Note, however, that goods of shipwrecked persons taken from the sea or cast by the waves onto the shores are not things belonging to no one;2 nor are the goods of soldiers who have been killed.

1 Code of one's country.

2 Bull In Coena Domini. Civil laws everywhere establish that shipwrecked goods found on the shore are to be handed over to the official constituted for this purpose.

Occupation

790.

II. Force of occupation. Occupation is a mode of acquiring ownership.1 For the individual has the right of having private ownership, as was proved in n. 762. But unless you admit that occupation is a mode of acquiring ownership, originally, that is, when things were undivided, that right could not have been exercised by the individual, or private ownership acquired by the individual. For, if occupation as a mode of acquiring ownership is excluded, that right would have had to be exercised through labor. But several things can serve our use which require no labor, or even exclude it, such as animals, metals found on land belonging to no one, and many fruits. But that such things should be excluded from private ownership is asserted irrationally. It remains, therefore, that - if they belong to no one - they are acquired by occupation.

With these things noted generally, we shall speak specifically about the occupation of animals, about found treasure, and about lost things.

1 Encyclical Quadragesimo anno (Acta Apostolicae Sedis 1931, p. 194).

Occupation

Within this division