Guns for sale are seen inside of Dick’s Sporting Goods store in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, February 28, 2018. (Eduardo Munoz/Reuters) (National Review) The stores stopped selling firearms to people under 21 after the Parkland shooting.A 20-year-old is hitting Dick’s Sporting Goods and Walmart with lawsuits accusing them of discriminating against him based on age. The stores stated they would no longer sell …
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Sometimes in our zeal to defend the poor and oppressed and to include those on the margins of society, we overlook the importance of property right and economic liberty. We don’t help the poor by curtailing the rights of the middle class or wealthy.
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Another benefit of private property, not so clearly economic, is that it diffuses power. When one entity, such as the government, owns all property, individuals have little protection from the will of the government. The institution of private property gives many individuals a place to call their own, a place where they are safe from depredation by others and by …
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Historically at least diocesan control over parochial property is typically aspirational rather than actual. For example, in traditionally Orthodox countries, the Orthodox Church is an established Church and, as such, the ultimate control of Church property belongs to the State.
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Though the dioceses and monastic communities had by the end 6th century in the aggregate amassed a great deal of wealth, what mattered most was the ability of Church leaders—clerical and lay—to use that wealth in a manner consonant (or sadly not) with the Gospel. Or what today we call “property rights.”
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Property rights in the social realm fulfill a similar function as does asceticism in the personal realm. In both, human desire and ingenuity are progressively conformed to the divine will and so transfigured without loss of what is truly unique to the person.
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A right that can’t be enforced isn’t particularly valuable. As we’ve seen, the canons of the Church assume a basic right to property. The question now is whether Orthodox Social Thought (OST) offer more than merely theoretical support to property.
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The canons of the Church affirm the fundamental moral goodness of property. That doesn’t mean that all uses of property are equally virtuous (or sinful).
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Given its status as local and not ecumenical, we ought not to make too much of the council’s comments on property which are, at best, tangential to the primary concern of reconciling apostates. Nevertheless, the off handed way in which property is mentioned suggests the moral importance of property.
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Canons of the Holy Apostles Canon XL: Let the private goods of the bishop, if he have any such, and those of the Lord, be clearly distinguished, that the bishop may have the power of leaving his own goods, when he dies, to whom he will, and how he will, and that the bishop’s own property may not be lost …
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