Bundle of Duties: Property, Self-Perfection, and Providence

In his recent encyclical, Fratelli tutti, Pope Francis presents a ‘re-envisaging [of] the social role of property’. While the Pope restates and develops Catholic social teaching (CST) on this point, the fundamentals of this teaching are perennial. While affirming the right to private property, CST underscores divine purposes integral to this right. These purposes contextualize this right and place obligations upon owners. As this talk will argue, property within CST is not merely a ‘bundle of rights’ that owners possess, but more fundamentally a ‘bundle of duties’—duties to self and society, duties which the right to private property must safeguard, not subvert.

James Bergida is a Junior Research Fellow at Blackfriars and a Research Fellow in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Canterbury Institute. He has published on the Catholic approach to private property in the Journal of Markets & Morality and is currently conducting research on theories of distributive justice. He is a member of several academic societies, including the American Academy of Religion and the Society for Business Ethics.

This event is free and open to all.

 

Contact:
Las Casas Institute
lascasas@bfriars.ox.ac.uk