THE CATHOLIC
CHURCH’S CONFUSED
IDEAS ABOUT
STEALING
By Mark R. Crovelli
Like
virtually all Christian denominations, the Roman Catholic Church derives
its moral philosophy in very large part from the Decalogue; that is,
the set of ten moral precepts handed down from God to Moses that lay
bare the moral responsibilities of man vis-à-vis God and other men.
The predominant position of the Decalogue in Catholic moral philosophy
was established by Jesus when he was asked “Teacher, what good deed
must I do, to have eternal life”:
To
the young man who asked this question, Jesus answers first by invoking
the necessity to recognize God as the ‘One there is who is good,’
as the supreme Good and the source of all good. Then Jesus tells
him: ‘If you would enter life, keep the commandments.’ And
he cites for his questioner the precepts that concern love of neighbor:
‘You shall not kill, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not
steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother.’
Finally Jesus sums up these commandments positively: ‘You shall love
your neighbor as yourself.’ [1]
As
the foundation upon which Catholic morality very heavily rests, the
Catechism of the Catholic Church (the official depository of Catholic
doctrine) unsurprisingly devotes a large amount of space and energy
to explicating each of the Ten Commandments. In this article,
I take issue with the Catechism of the Catholic Church’s treatment
of the 7th commandment: “You shall not steal.”
I argue that, insofar as the Catechism can be deemed to be representative
of the general Catholic position, the Catholic Church has developed
extremely confused, misleading, and often erroneous ideas about stealing.
I argue that the Church has sought to justify the taking of property
that directly contradicts the straightforward prohibition against stealing
delineated in the Decalogue. I make this argument in the hope
that Catholic thinkers and writers will A) take seriously the idea that
taking men’s justly-earned property without their consent is always
stealing, and B) stand up for the billions of people who are persecuted
by this villainous activity.
The Definition
of Stealing in the Catechism of the Catholic Church
In
order for Catholics, and Christians in general, to be able to abide
by the 7th commandment, it is necessary for them to know,
first and foremost, what the definition of stealing is. For, quite
obviously, in order to avoid stealing in one’s life, one must be able
to clearly discriminate between those actions that involve stealing
and those actions that do not. The Catechism of the Catholic
Church offers just such a definition of stealing for Catholics:
The
seventh commandment forbids theft; that is usurping another’s
property against the reasonable will of the owner. There is no
theft if consent can be presumed or if refusal is contrary to reason
and the universal destination of goods. This is the case in obvious
and urgent necessity when the only way to provide for immediate, essential
needs (food, shelter, clothing…) is to put at one’s disposal and
use the property of others. [2]
Although
it is not my primary intention to dissect and critique this definition
of stealing, it should be noted that this definition is extremely ambiguous
in a number of respects. It is unclear, for example, whether the
phrase “reasonable will” means simply the rational consent
of the owner, or whether it means what the property owner ought to
will. Similarly, the relevance of the phrase “universal
destination of goods” is unclear, given Pope Leo XIII’s clear admonition
that this idea cannot be used to deny the right to private property:
The
fact that God gave the whole human race the earth to use and enjoy cannot
indeed in any manner serve as an objection against private possessions.
For God is said to have given the earth to mankind in common, not because
He intended indiscriminate ownership of it by all, but because He assigned
no part to anyone in ownership, leaving the limits of private possessions
to be fixed by the industry of men and the institutions of peoples.
Yet, however the earth may be apportioned among private owners, it does
not cease to serve the common interest of all, inasmuch as no living
being is sustained except by what the fields bring forth. [3]
My
objection to the Catechism’s treatment of stealing goes much
deeper than mere quibbling over phraseology. Indeed, it is my
contention that there is an absolute failure to consistently apply the
standards for stealing as delineated in this definition throughout the
Catechism. Specifically, there is an utter failure to apply
the standards for stealing to those people who work for the State.
While the Catechism applies the criteria for stealing quite consistently
to ordinary people, it does not apply those criteria to presidents,
prime ministers, congressmen, police officers, tax collectors, bureaucrats
and every other person who lives off of tax money.
It’s Not
Stealing if the State Does It
When
discussing with the actions of people who are not employed by the state,
the Catechism of the Catholic Church applies its definition of
stealing quite consistently. Thus, we find a condemnation of “any
form of unjustly taking and keeping the property of others” as a violation
of the 7th commandment. [4] Similarly, the Catechism
admonishes those who have stolen goods to make restitution to the goods’
rightful owner: “In virtue of commutative justice, reparation for
injustice committed requires the restitution of stolen goods to
their owner.” [5]
When
it comes to discuss the actions of people employed by the state, however,
the Catechism makes a variety of excuses for state employees
to take property without the consent of the owner. In fact, the
idea advanced in the Catechism is that when the people employed
by the state take private property without the consent of the owners,
(e.g., tax them), they are not stealing. Though
the Catechism does not explicitly state that taxation is not
stealing, it does nevertheless state that
Submission
to authority and co-responsibility for the common good make it
morally obligatory to pay taxes... . [6]
And
It
is unjust not to pay the social security contributions required
by legitimate authority. [7]
Taken alone,
these admonishments do not necessarily imply that taxation is not stealing.
They do have this necessary implication, however, when they are
coupled with another central tenet of Catholic, and indeed all Christian,
morality; namely, the duty to disobey the state when its laws are contrary
to those of God: “We must obey God rather than Men” (Acts
5:29). With respect to this tenet of Catholic morality, the
Catechism explicitly enjoins Catholics to refuse to obey the state
when its actions are contrary to the laws of God:
The citizen is obliged in conscience not to follow the directives of
civil authorities when they are contrary to the demands of the moral
order, to the fundamental rights of persons or the teachings of the
Gospel. Refusing obedience to civil authorities, when their
demands are contrary to those of an upright conscience, finds its justification
in the distinction between serving God and serving the political community.
‘Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to
God the things that are God’s.’ ‘We must obey God rather
than men.’ [8]
(Note here
that the Catechism does not say that citizens are merely permitted
to disobey the civil authority when its demands are contrary to the
moral code; rather, it states plainly that citizens are “obliged
in conscience” to disobey.)
Putting
these two ideas together, we see that the Catechism commands
Catholics to disobey the state when its laws run counter to those of
God, but it also explicitly commands Catholics to pay their taxes and
social security “contributions.” The necessary implication
here is that when the state takes money away from people against their
will, this is not a violation of God’s law--specifically, the 7th
commandment. For, if taxation was deemed to be a form of stealing,
(and, thus, a violation of the 7th commandment), Catholics
would be conscience-bound to oppose them on principle and refuse to
pay them whenever possible. The unavoidable conclusion to be drawn
here is that, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church,
it’s not stealing if the state does it.
Theft is
Theft--Even if the State Does It
As
was just seen, the Catechism of the Catholic Church takes the
position that when people employed by the state take property without
the consent of the owner, this is not a form of stealing. I would
like to suggest that this is not the position that should be taken by
a Christian church that takes the Decalogue as the foundation for its
moral code. The 7th commandment is explicit in its
prohibition of theft, and it does not make exceptions for people who
work for the state.
In
order to see why taxation is indeed a form of stealing, all that is
necessary is to recognize that all people pay their taxes to
the state involuntarily. This is true, quite simply, because all
people pay their taxes only in order to avoid the punishments that are
put in place by the state for those who refuse to obey. I will
have several more observations to make about the fact that taxation
is theft, but what is truly morally relevant is simply that taxes are
paid to the state involuntarily. The involuntary nature
of taxation can be seen in the very meaning of the word. As Charles
Adams has noted in this regard:
The
similarity between tax collectors and robbers is also found in the basic
meaning behind the word ‘taxation,’ which means forced exaction.
Taxes are not debts, despite the fact that we carelessly refer to them
as such. The principle of fair value received--which is the basis
for a legally enforceable debt--has no place in a tax dispute.
A tax is owed because a government orders it to be paid. Nothing
else is required. [9]
It
matters not, moreover, that the state claims to provide “services”
in exchange for the money it extracts from its subjects. This
is true, quite simply, because if the state must threaten its subjects
with severe penalties in order to get its subjects to fork over their
money for its “services,” the subjects clearly don’t value those
services very much. Sony does not have to threaten its customers
with long jail sentences in the company of rapists and murderers in
order to sell its newest hi-definition televisions, because it provides
a product that at least some people are voluntarily willing to purchase.
The state, on the other hand, does literally threaten to incarcerate
its subjects if they refuse to hand over their money--and indeed
does incarcerate them if they fail to pay; a measure that would
be unnecessary if the so-called “services” it claims to provide
were actually valued by its subjects. It is simply not the case, in
short, that subjects of a government pay their taxes in an attempt to
purchase “services” that they either want or need. As H.L.
Mencken has sardonically observed in this respect, the intelligent man
does pay his taxes believing that he has thereby purchased a valuable
service:
The
intelligent man, when he pays his taxes, certainly does not believe
that he is making a prudent and productive investment of his money;
on the contrary, he feels that he is being mulcted in an excessive amount
for services that, in the main, are useless to him, and that, in substantial
part, are downright inimical to him. He may be convinced that
a police force, say, is necessary for the protection of his life and
property, and that an army and navy safeguard him from being reduced
to slavery by some vague foreign kaiser, but even so he views these
things as extravagantly expensive--he sees in even the most essential
of them an agency for making it easier for the exploiters constituting
the government to rob him. In those exploiters themselves he has
no confidence whatever. He sees them as purely predatory and useless;
he believes that he gets no more net benefit from their vast and costly
operations than he gets from the money he lends to his wife’s brother.
They constitute a power that stands over him constantly, ever alert
for new chances to squeeze him. If they could do so safely they
would strip him to his hide. If they leave him anything at all,
it is simply prudentially, as a farmer leaves a hen some of her eggs.
[10]
Just
as taxes are not voluntary payments in return for services rendered,
they are also not voluntary “contributions” intended to help “the
common good.” This is a critical point, because, as was seen
above, the Catechism carelessly refers to social security taxes
as “contributions.” It is appropriate to use the term “contribution”
when referring to a voluntary donation to, say, a Boy Scout candy drive.
It is, however, completely inappropriate to use the term to describe
social security taxes--or any other tax. In the first place, as
was just seen, subjects are not given a choice about whether to make
this so-called “contribution.” On the contrary, they are simply
ordered to pay a certain amount or face a stint in jail. More
often than not, moreover, the money the state desires is simply deducted
from the subject’s paycheck before he has a chance to even hold his
own hard-earned money in his hands. The subject can hardly be
said to have made a “contribution,” when his money is extracted
even before it makes its way into his hands. This is to say nothing
of the rather large number of people who view government social security
schemes as nothing more than inherently bankrupt Ponzi schemes on a
massive scale. It would be completely disingenuous to claim that
those people would be making “contributions” to a program they despise
and view as criminally insolvent. In like manner, we would hardly
use the word “contribution” to describe tax money that is forcefully
extracted from American Catholics to be used for state-funded abortions.
Catholics do not want to voluntarily fund abortions, but, because taxes
(and, yes, social security payments as well) are compulsory and thus
involuntary, they have no choice in the matter.
It
would be useless to object at this point that people do ultimately consent
to taxation, at least in democracies, because they are given the right
to vote. To view voting as an act of consent to the state’s
taxing powers would be to radically misinterpret what actually happens
when people vote. As A. John Simmons has pointed out, voting is
only and action that expresses preference--it by no means can
be assumed to imply consent to taxation, or even to the existence
of the state:
[W]e
would do well to remember that voting is often a way not of consenting
to something, but only of expressing a preference. If the
state gives a group of condemned prisoners the choice of being executed
by firing squad or by lethal injection, and all of them vote for firing
squad, we cannot conclude from this that the prisoners thereby consent
to being executed by firing squad. They do, of course, choose
this option; they approve of it, but only in the sense that they prefer
it to the other option. They consent to neither option, despising
both. Voting for a candidate in a democratic election sometimes
has a depressingly similar structure. The state offers you a choice
among candidates (or perhaps it is “the people” who make the offer),
and you choose one, hoping to make the best of a bad situation.
You thereby express a preference, approve of that candidate (over the
others), but consent to the authority of no one. [11]
These
considerations bring us back to the definition of stealing contained
in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Recall that the
Catechism defines as stealing, (and thus proscribes as violations
of the 7th commandment), those actions that usurp “another’s
property against the reasonable will of the owner.” I have thus
far argued that taxation is necessarily nothing more than the usurpation
of people’s property without their consent on a massive scale, because
taxpayers hand over their money only in order to avoid being sent to
prison--or worse, in some cases. I have put forth evidence in
support of St. Augustine’s famous rhetorical question, "what
are kingdoms but gangs of criminals on a large scale? What are
criminal gangs but petty kingdoms?” I have argued, in short,
that taxation is stealing, and is thus proscribed by the 7th
commandment. The remainder of this section will be devoted to
two objections to the idea that taxation is theft that could be made
using the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Objection
1: People Ought to Want to Pay Taxes for
“the Common Good”
The
first objection that could be raised is that taxation is not stealing
because people ought to want to support “the common good” by paying
money to the state. This objection asks us to make a gigantic
leap of faith with regard to the state; namely, that the state is an
institution that actually acts for “the common good.” Unfortunately,
there is not a shred of truth to this idea. In fact, we would
probably be closer to the mark if we were to argue the reverse; namely,
that the state is an institution inexorably opposed to “the
common good” of mankind.
In
order to see why this is the case, let us take a closer look at how
effective the tax-funded state has been at protecting and promoting
“the common good” of mankind over just the past hundred years.
During just the last hundred years the various states of the world have
managed to accomplish the following, (and, mind you, this is a very
partial list):
? Fight
two World Wars funded through taxation that resulted in millions of
deaths, the destruction of scores of cities in Europe and Japan, and
the total impoverishment of many millions of other people
? Fight
scores of other, bloody inter-state and civil wars funded through taxation
? Murder,
in cold blood, approximately 170 million of their own innocent subjects,
as R.J. Rummel has documented [12]
? Engineer,
utilizing tax money, atomic weapons that threaten the very existence
of human beings on Earth, and even go so far as to use them on innocent
civilians
? Incarcerate
tens of millions of people for either slave labor (e.g., in the U.S.S.R.),
or for other trivial reasons (e.g., drugs, in the U.S.)
? Enter
into a murderous agreements to limit trade (e.g., Iraq) and banned the
use of DDT in malaria stricken parts of the world, costing millions
of lives. The enforcement of the bans being funded through taxation,
of course
It
would take either a truly utopian or truly historically blind mind to
think that the tax-funded state has been an instrument for “the common
good” over the last hundred years. The Catechism defines
“the common good” as “the sum total of social conditions which
allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment
more fully and more easily.” [13] Unless the Catholic Church thinks
man finds his fulfillment in murder, it is hard to fathom that the state
could be blindly presumed to be an instrument of “the common good.”
Moreover, it seems hard to condemn those who, recognizing these colossal
historical facts about states in the twentieth century, might refuse
to pay the taxes that fund these crimes.
Even
if it were true, moreover, that people ought to want to pay money to
the state in order to promote “the common good,” this would by no
means imply that the people employed by the state have a right
to take money from people by force if they do not want to pay.
Indeed, it would be a gigantic non sequitur to conclude that
the state has a right to usurp people’s property without their consent
merely because “they ought to want to.” As was just seen,
the claim that people ought to want to support these murderous institutions
is itself extremely dubious, but even if it were true that the state
was an instrument solely for supporting “the common good,” how could
this be a coherent moral justification for threatening to jail people
who chose not to pay? As Carl Watner incisively points out in
this regard:
Instead of threatening
recalcitrant citizens with jail, educate them to their civic duties.
Demonstrate why they ought to contribute to their government. Threatening
them with force is not a way to convince them. They ought to be left
alone and denied whatever government services they are unwilling to
pay for. And if the supporters of government are still unable to collect
enough in taxes to support the amount of government they deem necessary,
then they ought to dig deeper into their own pockets. The fact that
government is a "good cause" is no justification for stealing
from or killing those who refuse to support it. This is what I call
the Christian way of dealing with those who refuse to pay. [14]
The
claim that people ought to want to support the state by no means offers
a cogent moral exception to the Decalogue’s explicit and simple proscription:
“You shall not steal.”
Objection
2: Only Some States are Evil
The
second objection I wish to consider to the idea that taxation is stealing
(and is thus proscribed by the 7th commandment), has to do
with the idea that only some states act in ways that are evil, while
others do not. This objection arises in the Catechism from
the idea that authority comes from God, and can be exercised either
legitimately or illegitimately:
Authority
is exercised legitimately only when it seeks the common good of the
group concerned and if it employs morally licit means to attain it.
If rulers were to enact unjust laws or take measures contrary to the
moral order, such arrangements would not be binding in conscience. [15]
An appeal to
so-called “legitimate authority” cannot, however, offer a cogent
argument against the idea that taxation is stealing. On the contrary,
as I have argued elsewhere, the appeal to authority is actually question
begging if it is used to justify taxation:
The
fallback position of Catholic social teaching, when confronted with
these sobering facts about the state as a necessarily coercive institution,
has been to affirm that there exists a difference between so-called
‘proper’ or ‘legitimate’ authority and wrongfully employed authority…
The problem with this sort of argument is that it is almost stupefyingly
question begging. It would be one thing to assert that God has bestowed
different gifts on people, and that some men are blessed by God with
the gift of leadership, while others are not; it is quite another thing,
however, to deduce from this that some men are given the right by God
to impress their will on their less-fortunate neighbors, take a portion
of their neighbors' income by threatening to jail or kill them if they
refuse to obey, and impress their neighbors into military service, jury
duty, or any other service for that matter. [16]
It
is important to note, moreover, that the Catechism explicitly
asserts that authorities may only employ “morally licit means” to
attain the common good. Given this, and the fact that stealing
is not a morally licit means for Christians, any reference to legitimate
authority as a justification for taxation is baldly question begging.
[17]
The
simple fact of the matter is that all modern states derive their funding
by threatening people with harm if they refuse to pay. And, as
Murray Rothbard observed, since taxation is definitionally synonymous
with stealing, it is hard to fathom that any tax-funded, self-proclaimed
ruler could be said to be “legitimate”:
All
other persons and groups in society (except for acknowledged and
sporadic criminals such as thieves and bank robbers) obtain their income
voluntarily: either by selling goods or services to the consuming
public, or by voluntary gift (e.g., membership in a club or association,
bequest, or inheritance). Only the State obtains its revenue
by coercion, by threatening dire penalties should the income not be
forthcoming. That coercion is known as ‘taxation,’ although
in less regularized epochs it was often known as ‘tribute.’
Taxation is theft, purely and simply, even though it is theft on a grand
and colossal scale which no acknowledged criminals could hope to match.
[18]
Conclusion
The
purpose of this article is simply to remind the Catholic Church that
the foundations for its ethical system lie in the Decalogue. The
seventh commandment in the Decalogue offers a straightforward condemnation
of the taking of people’s property without their consent. The
commandment does not offer exceptions, such as “You shall not steal,
except for old age Ponzi schemes,” or “You shall not steal, unless
you work for a group that has an anthem and a flag.”
The
question of taxation is of profound moral importance in the modern world.
The people who work for modern states have enriched themselves and armed
themselves to the point where they have become a profound menace to
the very existence of the Earth and the people who occupy it.
Their riches are acquired by taking money and property away from ordinary
people, without their consent, and by threatening to jail them if they
refuse to pay. It is of no value to either Catholics or people
generally, for the Catholic Church to turn a romantic eye toward the
state wishing and hoping that it will become an agent for “the common
good,” while modern states continue to rob and murder their way into
the history books. The Christian virtue of prudence in fact
demands that we view the world for what it is, with clear vision
and hopeful resolve.
It
is also of no value to the world for the Catholic Church to try to trivialize
the moral question of taxation by comparing it to abortion, and concluding
that, since murder is worse than stealing, we must first deal with abortion
before turning to taxation. As Saint Bernardino of Sienna noted
in a story about St. Francis of Assisi, the sheer magnitude of theft
in this world makes it a paramount concern of Christians:
One
day, as Saint Francis was traveling through a city, a demon-possessed
person appeared in front of him and asked: “What is the worst sin
in the world?” Saint Francis answered that homicide is the worst.
But the demon replied that there was one sin still worse that homicide.
Saint Francis then commanded: “By God’s virtue, tell me which sin
is worse than homicide!” And the devil answered that having goods
that belong to someone else is a sin worse than homicide because it
is this sin which sends more people to hell than any other. [19]
Taxation
occurs on such a massive magnitude in the modern world that it is perhaps
the most consequential moral question of our time. And the Catholic
Church, if it wishes to remain faithful to Jesus’ admonishment that
we obey the commandments, must come to recognize that taxation is
stealing, and is thus proscribed by the 7th commandment.
End Notes
.
[1]
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, (United States Catholic
Conference Inc., Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1994). Sec. 2052.
[2] Ibid.,
Sec. 2408.
[3] Leo XIII,
Rerum Novarum (Boston: Pauline Books, 2000), Par 14.
[4] The
Catechism of the Catholic Church,
op. cit., Sec. 2409.
[5] Ibid.,
Sec. 2412.
[6] Ibid.,
Sec. 2240.
[7] Ibid.,
Sec. 2436.
[8] Ibid.,
Sec. 2242.
[9] Charles
Adams, For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization
(New York: Madison Books, 1993), p. 1.
[10] H. L.
Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy
(New York: Vintage, 1982), pp. 147-148.
[11] A. John
Simmons, One the Edge of Anarchy: Locke, Consent, and the Limits
of Society, in Marshall Cohen, ed., Studies in Moral, Political
and Legal Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993),
pp. 222-223.
[12] R. J.
Rummel, Death by Government
(New Brunswick: Transaction, 1994).
[13] The
Catechism of the Catholic Church,
op. cit., Sec. 1924.
[14]
I would like to thank Carl Watner for many helpful comments and suggestions
on an earlier draft of this article. See his articles in The Voluntaryist:
"A Moral Challenge," Whole Number 138 (3rd Quarter 2008),
and "Moral Challenge II," Whole Number 141 (2nd Quarter 2009).
[15] The
Catechism of the Catholic Church, op. cit., Sec. 1903.
[16] Mark R.
Crovelli, "What Belongs to Caesar?" Mises Daily Article,
http://mises.org.stpru/3081 (September 2, 2008).
[17]
I am grateful to Carl Watner for this point.
[18] Murray
Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty
(New York: New York University Press, 1998), p. 162.
[19] Quoted
in Alejandro A. Chafuen, Faith and Liberty: The Economic Thought
of the Late Scholastics (New York: Lexington Books, 2003),
p. 31.
