“I do not offer such advice because I think that stealing is a good thing, or because I think it is harmless, for it is neither. I would ask that they do not steal from small, family businesses but from national businesses, knowing that the costs are ultimately passed on to the rest of us in the form of higher prices.”
With those words, [Tim] Jones set off a firestorm of criticism on both sides of the Atlantic.
Lord Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, rebuked Jones, saying the priest ought to know right from wrong.
“His concern for the least well-off is admirable, but his remedy is both misguided and foolish.”
Jones’ words bring to mind a different time when Victor Hugo wrote “Les Miserables” in 1862. The main character, Jean Valjean, was pursued by a police inspector for stealing a loaf of bread for his starving family. Hugo’s contemporary, Charles Dickens, wrote about his disgust of poverty in such works as “Oliver Twist.” Dealing with wretched poverty and breaking the law to alleviate it seemed to be characteristics of the Victorian age.
But as Carey points out, that time is not now.
The bishop in Les Miserables gave Valjean the candlesticks.
We should not forget that throughout the Christian Middle Ages there was a distinction between stealing and taking. If you were truly desperate and could not feed your family and asked someone with plenty for assistance that was denied, then taking for that reason was not considered stealing. It did not violate the commandment for the person who refused charity was the one who actually denied the commandment. Anyone who ‘takes’ from our plenty when they are truly in need (and that is the key question) does not violate Christian morality. People have a moral obligation to make sure their family has sufficient provisions.
A business that requires heavy overtime without extra compensation is stealing its employees’ time. And huge corporations that take money from the government while paying their executives huge bonuses are stealing from us all.
The editorial seems to undermine its own headline — if it’s never right, then what does “that time is not now” mean, and why is it relevant that, as it says immediately after, “We aren’t in a Dickensian era when people were driven to picking a pocket or two in order to survive.” Their argument seems to suggest it’s a judgment call after all — we’re not there yet, they say, but maybe it’s not “never right”.
Sounds like a lot of rationalization going on here. #2, You seem to know more about it than I do, but I’d be very surprised if the church in the Middle Ages made such a distinction as you suggest. #3, hogwash.
Stealing is a sin. Period. If it is necessary for survival, it still remains a sin and he who steals must seek forgiveness. Just as there are occassions where lying can be justified, it remains a sin and forgiveness must be sought. To say that such actions, however justified by circumstances, are not sins is wrongheaded.
#5 — here is the traditional teaching found in Aquinas Summa II-II q. 66 art. 7. I think it shows a very different account of property rights than arose in the modern era where they were held to be nearly inviolable. Aquinas, “Things which are of human right cannot derogate from natural right or Divine right. Now according to the natural order established by Divine Providence, inferior things are ordained for the purpose of succoring man’s needs by their means. Wherefore the division and appropriation of things which are based on human law, do not preclude the fact that man’s needs have to be remedied by means of these very things. Hence whatever certain people have in superabundance is due, by natural law, to the purpose of succoring the poor. For this reason Ambrose says, and his words are embodied in the Decretals (Dist. xlvii, can. Sicut ii): “It is the hungry man’s bread that you withhold, the naked man’s cloak that you store away, the money that you bury in the earth is the price of the poor man’s ransom and freedom. Since, however, there are many who are in need, while it is impossible for all to be succored by means of the same thing, each one is entrusted with the stewardship of his own things, so that out of them he may come to the aid of those who are in need. Nevertheless, if the need be so manifest and urgent, that it is evident that the present need must be remedied by whatever means be at hand (for instance when a person is in some imminent danger, and there is no other possible remedy), then it is lawful for a man to succor his own need by means of another’s property, by taking it either openly or secretly: nor is this properly speaking theft or robbery.”