A Writer was recently rebuked in the Catholic Press for asking the question: What would have happened if every pulpit in the land had thundered against the factory conditions of the early industrial revolution; supposing the Church had said, ‘We care not one jot or title for your iron laws of Economics, we care nothing about the alleged financial ruin of the country; these are not our concern’? And the same writer withal is again reproved for his belief that de facto economic forces are more powerful than moral ones, that we are driven daily to greater and greater completeness of monopoly control, that private interest would have it so, that government supports the process, and that war speeds up its tempo. It is of course understandable that to authors and journalists, recendy busied in boosting a highly moral war, and looking for another, any doctrine of economic supremacy should be repugnant. For it must be granted that the economic argument, however true, gives a shaky moral basis for planning—whether of wars or the peace. Habitaculum quamquam miserum quomodo non palatium aequiparantur coelestium ipsimet enim aedifcaverunt....

It is not quibble but objective fact that communism and capitalism cannot be regarded as mutually exclusive. Even Lenin admitted as much when he introduced the N.E.P. Capitalism postulates distribution (however unequal) and co-operation (however unwilling). And the world has yet to witness a communism that has dispensed with capital. There have been communists and communists, Essenes, monks and nuns as well as Bolsheviks. So much for its practice. As for the theory of it, it has had other prophets than Marx.