art, or humanity;—in the name of this imaginary good work they liberate themselves from the consecutive attainment of the qualities necessary for a right life, and are satisfied with pretending, like men on the stage, to be living a righteous life.
Those people that fell away from heathenism, without embracing Christianity in its true significance, began to preach love for God and man apart from self-renunciation and justice, and without temperance, i.e. to preach the higher virtues without the attainment of the lower ones, i.e. not the virtues themselves, but their semblance.
Some preach love to God and man without self-renunciation, and others humaneness, the service of humanity without temperance. And, as this teaching, while pretending to introduce him into higher moral regions, encourages the animal nature of man by liberating him from the most elementary demands of morality long ago laid down by the heathens, and not only not rejected, but strengthened, by true Christianity, it was readily accepted both by believers and unbelievers.
Only the other day the Pope's encyclical about socialism was published, in which, after a supposed refutation of the socialists' views as to the wrongfulness of private property, it was plainly stated that "certainly no one is obliged to help his neighbors by giving what he or his family needs, nor even to diminish anything of that which is required by him for decency. No one, indeed, need live contrary to custom."[1] "But after needful attention has been given to necessity and decency," continues the encyclical, "the duty of every one is to give the surplus to the poor."
Thus preaches the head of the most widely accepted Church of our time. Thus have preached all the Church teachers regarding salvation by works as insufficient. And, together with this teaching of selfishness, which prescribes that you shall give to your neighbors only that which you do not want yourself, they preach love and recall with pathos the celebrated words of Paul in the
- ↑ This passage is from St. Thomas: Nullus enim inconvenienter debet vivere.
