MAN HAS A RIGHT TO PROPERTY
BY A STAFF REPORTER
on Friday last the Pope again stressed the fundamental nature of the right to private property, and the debt which Western civilisation owes to the Church.
He was receiving in private audience the members of the International Institute for the Unification of the Rights of the Individual (Institut International pour L'Unification du Droit Prive) in Rome for the 20th anniversary of the founding of the institute.
Among the distinguished lawyers and professors present was Dr, Angus Hamby and Professor B. A. Wortley, of the Faculty of Law of Manchester University.
THE DARK SHADOW
Referring to the "dark shadow" which threatened " western civilise don in general " and " the domain of law " in particular the Pope said:
" No one feels it, you can rest assured, more deeply than the Church, which regards herself, with good reason, as the mother of that western civilisation, from whom the peoples not only of Europe and America, but of the whole world, have received and receive its inspiration."
The Pope went on to say that he welcomed the opportunity to state his own conviction in that sense of right and justice deeply anchored in human nature, his own conviction of the fact of this rich fount of law common to all peoples. " I hope you may find this declaration of the head of the universal Church an encouragement and a stimulus in your work," added the Pope.
VAIN ILLUSION
" Only those who want to sec in the intlivdual, only a simple unity, one among an infinite number of such anonymous unities, only a simple element in an amorphous mass a conglomeration, which is dtogether opposed to any kind of society, can nourish the vain illusion of regulating the relations betweeri men solely on the basis of Public Law," went on the Pope.
These reflections are true above all in the question of the rights of the indivduat in the matter of pro perty. This is the central point. and the focus round which, in the nature of things, your labours move, The recognition of this right holds firm or founders with the recognition of the personal dignity of man, with the recognition of the. unprescriptible rights and duties inseparably belonging to the free personality which he has received from Clod. " Only those who refuse man the dignity of a free person can allow the possibility of substituting for the right to private property (and consequently private property itself) some kind of system of assurances or legal guarantees in public law," said the Pope.