“The sound and rational principles of it have been proclaimed obligatory for Christians in the well-known modern Encyclicals of the Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI,
“‘Christian socialism’ as a doctrine of social reform was preached by St. John Chrysostom in the fourth century and has been present in a general form in Christian thought from the moment when the so-called ‘social question’ began to trouble human conscience.
“it might seem that ‘Christian socialism’ is, in principle, not a problem at all, And indeed, so far as by socialism we mean nothing other than an attitude of active love for one’s neighbors, a serious sense of responsibility for their material fate, every Christian, insofar as he wishes to be a true Christian, must in this sense be a ‘socialist.’