urch in
Canada, is most emphatic in its recommendation of our separated
brethren to the zeal of all Catholics. (No. 331)

The obligation of conscience to come to the help of our non-Catholic
neighbour is moreover founded on the precepts of Christian charity. If
Christ will condemn to Hell those who did not give Him to eat and to
drink in the person of the needy, what will He not say to those who
neglect the spiritual works of mercy. The activities of Christian
zeal, to one who rightly understands the spirit of the gospel and the
economy of the redemption, have the same binding force as alms-giving,
and fulfill in the spiritual world the part charity has to play in the
scheme of Christian economics.

The obligation of alms-giving is complementary to the right of
property. For, as St. Thomas says, "It is one thing to have a right to
possess money and another to have a right to use money as one pleases."
(II. _a_, II. _ae_, Q. XXXII., art. 5, ad 2.) This duty when
conscientiously performed re-establishes that economic and social
equilibrium which strict justice alone is not able to create. For, the
inequitable distribution of wealth greatly depends on the inequality of
power of production. This inequality of natural gifts in man remains
an unchangeable fact which faith alone in a Divine Providence can
explain, an ever renascent problem which Christian charity only can
solve.

This mystery of Christian solidarity reveals itself also in the
spiritual world. We may say of each Catholic what St. Ambrose said of
the priesthood: "_Nemo Catholicus sibi_,"--no one is a Catholic for
himself alone. By a mysterious law of Divine Providence the
conservation and propagation of the faith are, after Divine Grace,
largely dependent on the influence of man on man. We are all verily
"Our brothers' keepers." We are commissioned by Christ not only to
keep the faith but also to hand it down to others, not only to keep its
fire burning in our hearts but to spread it, and to fan it into a
conflagration. The gift of faith implies the charitable obligation of
weaving our belief into our every day life and, through that life and
its influence, into the lives of others. The plenitude of some make up
for the penury of others. If St. John, to urge the precept of
alms-giving, said: "He that hath the substance of this world and shall
see his brother in need, and shall shut up his bowels from him: how
doth the charity of God abide in him