This book takes its origin from a seminar which several representatives of the ecumenical Center for Economic and Social Justice (CESJ) gave in Rome in November of 1991 for members of religious communities having missionaries in the Third World. The reactions of those who attended our seminar are exemplified by a beautiful letter sent to our President, Norman Kurland, by the Rev. Harry Reusch, C.P. In it, among other things, Fr. Reusch remarks: "I found your CESJ seminar to be one of the most meaningful and thought-provoking of any I have recently attended."

Much of Fr. Reusch's time is spent traveling through the mission fields of the Passionist Fathers, and he sees all too clearly that, "while there is much economic and social injustice in the U.S. and other First World nations, the problem is compounded beyond belief in our Third World nations. With Communism on the downgrade, some people may be tempted to believe that Capitalism has been thoroughly justified and should now move ahead with full vigor. You and I know that is wrong. Some center road between Communism and Capitalism must be found. And this is what I believe you are trying very valiantly to do."

We in CESJ find capital necessary, but so do the communists, socialists and laissez-faire capitalists. What a difference, however, there is among our understanding and uses of it. In communism, capital is used, but it is owned entirely by the State. Socialism indeed requires capital, but it is completely controlled by the State. Laissez-faire capitalism uses capital solely for the personal profit of a few. Even "democratic capitalism" is a well-intentioned but unworkable attempt to harmonize political democracy with economic plutocracy.

In CESJ's proposal of expanded ownership of the means of production, we also retain the use of capital. Yet we insist that every worker -- that is, everyone who works -- has the God-given natural right to have the opportunity to own the most technologically advanced forms of capital, the means of production, exercise his right in deciding how that capital is to be used, and earn profits from what that capital produces.

After our seminar in Rome, I insisted that we must not lose what we had just done, not stop there. We simply had to go forward and complete what we had started and publish in book form CESJ's "center road" solutions to world poverty. It was thus that I was gently asked to "put my money where my mouth is," to edit and publish the book. All too gladly I acquiesced. This proposal, as a Catholic priest, I believe to be the solution to what the Vicars of Christ have been pleading for society to do: extend ownership to the worker. For me, their pleadings have the ring of the Good News of the Gospel Applied. This Gospel of social and economic justice for all would not add another bureaucracy to the already top-heavy nation-states of the world, but would sound a clarion call to entrepreneurs, bankers, labor leaders and workers in the United States and other countries to apply in practical ways the Church's doctrine that the goods of the earth are destined for all to possess and enjoy.

As editor I am especially privileged to call attention to a work promoting what has been, for over a century, an intimate part of Papal social doctrine, namely, the wider distribution of private ownership of property.

The very title of this work -- Curing World Poverty: The New Role of Property -- is itself intriguing. Our approaches to caring for the world's poor and needy have been, so far, merely temporary and superficial reactions. The in-depth causes of poverty -- apart from unwillingness to work and certain unavoidable personal tragedies -- are clearly the concentration of the world's wealth in the hands of so few and the exclusion of the less well-off from the means, particularly productive credit, by which they can acquire property and proportionately augment their material and social well-being.

To think of ownership of the means of production itself as the cure for poverty seems, at first, almost novel. And yet, besides making eminently good sense, the idea was first proposed a century ago by the illustrious world spiritual leader, Pope Leo XIII, in his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum. Subsequently, the concrete proposal was developed in the 1950s by Louis 0. Kelso and Mortimer J. Adler in their monumental contribution to economics, published under the possibly misleading title of The Capitalist Manifesto (1958). This book promotes, not ownership in common (through the State or collective), but ownership by each person as a sacred and inalienable natural right. It insists that, as members of the human family, each one of us is entitled to equal access to institutions, laws, and other "social goods" that will empower everyone directly to acquire and share in the productive wealth of society.

Starting in 1965 when CESJ's president Norman Kurland joined Louis Kelso as his Washington counsel and political strategist, Kelso's ideas began to take root in Washington. Then in late 1973, these two soldiers of justice found a powerful champion in Senator Russell Long, who single-handedly orchestrated the first of over 20 laws in America encouraging one of Kelso's innovations -- the employee stock ownership plan (ESOP). Today, United Airlines, AVIS, and Weirton Steel are among the most celebrated of the 10,000 U.S. companies with ESOPs covering over 10 million workers. This new "social technology" -- a mere first step in the rehumanization of the world's major economic institutions and laws envisioned in Kelso's radical breakthrough in economic theory -- is catching on today in over twenty countries.

So, there is nothing new about either the idea or the working out of a specific implementation. The tragic fact, however, is that both Kelso's overall solution to world poverty and his practical ways of implementing it have been only superficially studied, grossly misunderstood, but mainly ignored by economists and policy-makers wedded to traditional schools of economic thought.

There is no need for me to go into the reasons why so simple an idea and such realistic programs, so much in accord with consistent Catholic social teaching, have been ignored. For what is the use of perhaps giving offense? What is important, indeed necessary, is to show mankind that widespread poverty is unnecessary. There is a workable means of effectively combatting poverty, and this is not through a redistribution of past wealth accumulations, but through the expansion of future ownership and profit sharing opportunities among working people, and their educated participation in management and shareholder decisions.

No one claims, least of all I, that this solution will offset the manufacture of a non-marketable or even harmful product, or will prevent a poorly-managed enterprise from failing, or will bring some form of utopia to the workplaces of the world. But the new solution honors well the dignity of the working man and woman. It gives them added impetus to contribute worthily to any enterprise, and indeed challenges them to rise above a given status and job. And it is a way of providing workers with a supplemental and independent income from profits, beyond wages alone.

Additionally, this new approach to economic development would provide a genuine preferential option for the poor, based on the principle of equality of opportunity, not equality of results. Through programs which equalize access among all persons to the means for becoming capital owners -- including access to such uniquely "social goods" as monetary credit -- these ideas and applications would systematically lift unjust historic barriers between those at the top of the social ladder and those most affected by the lack of equal opportunities, privilege, status and personal sovereignty. Distributive justice would then follow naturally from full and equal justice in participation.

We believe there is room for the State in our proposal, but it must always remain a strictly limited one: limited by the principle of subsidiarity. Despite what certain parties say, we are among the few economic and political proponents of the requirement of reduced government. Chief among our reasons is that the more the State interferes in the lives of its citizens, the bigger it gets and the more wasteful it becomes. It must, even in theory, be restricted by the very dignity of the human beings who compose its citizenry. Let human beings resolve their own problems. Let us stop worshipping the Golden Calf of the State's infallible omniscience. It is almost self-evident to most informed people that their rights are NOT granted by the State.

Yes, we do look to government for some help, but only the minimum required to protect fundamental human rights and to correct unjust imbalances, particularly in the distribution of opportunities to share in the ownership and profits from newly created assets. Yes, we do need the State to reform its monetary machinery to provide universal access to bank credit for workers at low, nonsubsidized interest rates (so long as the funds are prudently invested in the private sector for productive purposes only) and to encourage private insurance to spread the risk of bad bank loans. And yes, we also look to the State to correct an unjust imbalance that is already in place; that is, the crushing impact of excessive taxes taken from the wage earner and taxes on businesses which, in the name of redistribution, make the rich richer and the poor poorer, as we explain later in this book.

While willingly taking the blame for asking you to read this volume, I gladly and cheerfully extend a friendly challenge to other religious bodies to provide society with their response to the problems of economic and social injustice. Humbly I acknowledge that they may well com forward with differently nuanced principles, but rather immodestly I truly believe they will embrace something rather close to this application of the Papal requests for expanded ownership.

To all men and women of good will -- I address a heartfelt entreaty to give a fair hearing to a more equitable extension of private property, a serious analysis of the proposals contained in this book, and earnest consideration of their relevance toward curing world poverty.

So many good and thoughtful people, when confronted by "the system," have thrown up their hands in despair. They have given up hope that what Pope John Paul II calls "structures of sin" can be transformed into "structures of justice." Such hopelessness is a festering sore on our moral order. It is a debilitating point-of-view that starts when people become dissatisfied with the dissolution of moral order in society and cannot see how universal principles can help guide them in dealing with everyday realities of life. They somehow do not appreciate that social structures are human artifacts. As such, these structures can be re-designed only by people inspired by what is right and willing to work together with others to bring about change for the common good.

This book aims to restore hope and inspire good people to take the future in their own hands, to help them pose new questions, new possibilities and new visions to today's leaders and to defenders of the status quo. In the final analysis, this book is offered to challenge good people who are troubled by the decline in moral standards and the economic aspects of that decline. Some look at the world as it is and merely ask, "Why?" Each reader who finds the vision of this book compelling and wonders what he can do, can take the first step by challenging others with the question, "Why not?"