Under their regulative ideas all human beings, not
a selected number, had, not in themselves but because of the Divine
Sacrifice, divine significance; reverence was had, not for supermen or
captains of industry, but for every one of those for whom Christ died.
There were no human institutions which were ends in themselves or
more important than the men which created and served them. The Holy
Catholic Church was the only institution which was so conceived; all
others, social, political, economic, were means toward the end of the
preservation and expression of human personality. Hence, the interest
of the mediaeval church in social ethics and corporate values; hence,
the axiom of the church's control of, the believers' responsibility
for, the economic relations of society. An unjust distribution of
goods, the withholding from the producer of his fair share of the
wealth which he creates, profiteering, predatory riches--these were
ranked under one term as avarice, and they were counted not among
the venial offenses, like aberrations of the flesh, but avarice was
considered one of the seven deadly sins of the spirit. The application
of the ethics of Jesus to social control began to die out as
humanism individualized Christian morals and as, under its influence,
nationalism tended to supplant the international ecclesiastical order.
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