Private property is the ownership of goods “acquired by work or received from others by inheritance or gift”, and the Church teaches a right to it. It and other forms of private ownership “assure a person a highly necessary sphere for the exercise of his personal and family autonomy”, and are to be considered “an extension of human freedom”. The right “does not do away with the original gift of the earth to the whole of mankind”, and “the universal destination of goods remains primordial”. “Christian tradition has never recognized the right to private property as absolute and untouchable”, and such property is in the end “not an end but a means”. This teaching “diverges radically from the programme of collectivism”, and it “differs from the programme of capitalism” in the way the right is understood.
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