The Demands of Justice
The BBC is reporting that Italy’s highest court of appeals has ruled that stealing food in a situation of dire need is not a criminal act. The court, in its overturning the conviction of a homeless man charged with stealing some cheese and sausages, declared that “the right to survival prevails over property.”
Roman Ostriakov had been convicted of trying to steal cheese and sausages from a supermarket. The court determined that he had acted “in the face of immediate and essential need for nourishment,” and thus did not constitute a criminal act. The fact that the stolen merchandise came to less than five lira ($4.50 in American currency) was a factor in the ruling.
The court said that “the condition of the defendant and the circumstances in which the seizure of merchandise took place prove that he took possession of that small amount of food in the face of an immediate and essential need for nourishment, acting therefore in a state of necessity.” The ruling calls to mind the statement by St. Thomas Aquinas:
If, however, there is so urgent and blatant a necessity that the immediate needs must be met out of whatever is available, as when a person is in imminent danger and he cannot be helped in any other way, then a person may legitimately supply his own needs out of another’s property, whether he does so secretly or flagrantly.
Summa Theologica, Question 66, Article 7
The Italian website Italiaglobale, as cited in the BBC article, says the decision is drawn out of “a concept that ‘informed the Western world for centuries – it is called humanity.'” But the roots of that humane idea come straight out of the long-standing principles of Catholic Social Teaching — that of the Preferential Option for the Poor.
The obligation to provide for the poor has its roots in ancient Jewish Law, which provided for mandated debt-forgiveness, prohibited usury, and allowed for gleaning from vines and fields. Jesus built upon this concept in the famous pronouncement of Matthew 25: 40: “whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.” And by the Fourth Century we see this concept expressed in the extreme and radical notion of theft, not by the Poor but from the Poor.
Saint John Chrysostom (349 – 407) said that “not to enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them and deprive them of life. The goods we possess are not ours, but theirs.” And Saint Basil the Great (329 – 379) says:
When someone steals another’s clothes, we call them a thief. Should we not give the same name to one who could clothe the naked and does not? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat unused in your closet belongs to the one who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the one who has no shoes; the money which you hoard up belongs to the poor.
Chrysostom says that “the demands of justice must be satisfied first of all; that which is already due in justice is not to be offered as a gift of charity.” Our modern world, too often steeped in Capitalist Individualism, has mostly forgotten our moral obligation to one another and to serve the Common Good. Hopefully this court decision reflects a larger societal shift, toward meeting our obligations to the demands of justice.
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