05/27/2026
While it might seem presumptuous to summarize “Magnifica Humanitas,” a 42,000+ word encyclical, in a brief blog posting, we’re going to do just that, at least for the small portion of the document that piqued our interest — and concern. We were, of course, not expecting to see anything revolutionary and we didn’t. It’s what we didn’t see that raised questions, three items in particular: 1) the “Act of Social Justice” as defined by Pope Pius XI and analyzed by Father William Ferree, S.M., Ph.D. as the means of restructuring the social order, 2) the importance of private property to empower people to carry out acts of social justice, and 3) the principles of economic justice and financial techniques developed by Louis O. Kelso as a means by which people without private property in capital can become owners without redistributing existing wealth or redefining private property. Instead, what we saw was language which, if taken out of context and twisted, could justify undermining the natural law and admit redistribution and redefinition of inalienable rights to life, liberty, and private property:
We have been saying for years that many people get fundamental principles wrong. This is understandable given the state of education today...
