Word: progressio
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...last week, declared Paul VI in Populorum Progressio (On the Development of Peoples), the fifth encyclical of his 45-month pontificate. The fourth major document of the Roman Catholic Church in the past six years to deal with socioeconomic problems,* the 12,000-word encyclical was in some ways the Pope's most striking pronouncement. In it, he gave unexpected support to government-sponsored birth control programs (see cover story). Absent from the encyclical was the usual stream of hedging qualifiers that in France have earned him the nickname "the Pope of Buts." Instead, the document had a ringing...
Natural Right. Populorum Progressio shifts considerably to the left of previous papal encyclicals in its criticism of private property. In his celebrated Rerum Novarum of 1891, Pope Leo XIII argued that economic reform must take into account "the inviolability of private property"; Pope John's Mater et Magistra likewise termed private ownership "a natural right" of man. Paul, on the other hand, declared that property ownership "does not constitute for anyone an absolute and unconditional right. No one is justified in keeping for his exclusive use what he does not need when others lack necessities. The right to property...