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Where private enterprise makes it possible, Pope John urged that workers acquire shares in the firms that employ them. A onetime farm boy himself, John dug deep into the problems of ailing agriculture, especially critical in Italy, offering various solutions, including state aid, tax reform, cheap capital, social security and price protection.
Population Explosion. Probably the most difficult problem of the modern world, he said, is the inequality between rich and poor nations. In a remark clearly applicable to the U.S., he said that countries with more than enough food must share it with those that have too little—"to destroy or squander goods that other people need in order to live is to offend against justice and humanity." But while lending such assistance, the economically advanced countries must "overcome the temptation to impose themselves by means of these works . . . a new form of colonialism." On the other hand, the population explosion, "at least for the moment and in the near future," did not seem to create a "difficulty" on a world scale, and even in critical local situations the use of contraceptives was never justified.
The Fundamental Error. Pope John did not designate Communism by name, but he pointed out, "Experience has shown that where the personal initiative of citizens is missing, there is political tyranny." He then skillfully thrust through to Communism's most vulnerable spots—its promise of a temporal paradise, its scoffing at man's deeply felt religious needs, its persecution of Christian believers: "In the modern era, different ideologies have been devised and spread abroad . . . Some have been dissolved as clouds by the sun; others . . . have waned much and are losing still more their attraction on the minds of men. The reason is that they are ideologies which consider only certain and less profound aspects of man. And this because they do not take into consideration certain inevitable human imperfections, such as sickness and suffering, imperfections which even the most advanced economic-social system cannot eliminate. Then there is the profound and imperishable religious exigence which constantly expresses itself everywhere, even though trampled down by violence or skillfully smothered.
"In fact the most fundamental modern error is that of considering the religious demands of the human soul as an expression of feeling or of fantasy, or a product of some contingent event and should be thus eliminated as an anachronism and as an obstacle to human progress. Whereas by this exigency human beings reveal themselves for what they really are.
"It is true that the persecution of so many of our dearly beloved brothers and sons, which has been raging for decades in many countries, even those of an ancient Christian civilization, makes ever clearer to us the dignified superiority of the persecuted and the refined barbarity of the persecutors, so that, if it does not give visible signs of repentance, it induces many to think.
"But it is always true that the most perniciously typical aspect of the modern era consists in the absurd attempt to reconstruct a solid and fruitful temporal order prescinding from God . . . and, if possible, extinguishing man's sighing for God."