Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1550

Carbon of letter from Heath to His Holiness Pope Pius XIII, State of Vatican City, Italy

July 6, 1955

 

 

Your Holiness:

     Your Holiness is of course aware that the first and foremost plank in the Communist platform of action, as set out in the notorious Manifesto of 1848, calls for the abolition of property in land and the seizure of the rent for “public purposes.”

     It was fitting that this destruction of private property in land should be the number one item of Com­munist procedure. For when access to the bounties of nature can be had only under terms prescribed by the secular state, then the state lacks nothing for the full exercise of its Godless, totalitarian power.

     Realizing that land communism is the fundamental pre-requisite of total communism, this organization had the honor last September of communicating to Your Holiness some of the religious and other grounds upon which we conceive it as a grave menace to human freedom, both spiritual and secular. Receiving no acknowledgement from or by authority of your High Office, we are led to suppose that our communication was not duly received. We are therefore enclosing a copy of our letter of Sep­tember 12, 1954, and of the enclosure, entitled, “The Trojan Horse of Land Reform,” which it contained.

     We also enclose a definitive review of Henry George’s widely influential Progress & Poverty, which we believe justifies, on secular grounds, the opposition to land communism so long carried on by the Church as in the encyclical promulgated by His Holiness, Pope Leo XIII, on The Condition of Labor.

     In our abiding faith that the Church will stand steadfast in its condemnation of land communism, and in prayerful expectation that our efforts may have divine guidance, we remain,

                               Most reverently yours,

SH/m

Enc:   Trojan Horse

Letter of 11/12/54

P & P Reviewed