So I'm going to speak about what is distributism, where it came from, and what can we do with it.

I will, I'll warn you that I've been reading and thinking about distributism and writing a little bit

about it now on and off for about 25 years.

And I still don't have a definitive opinion about it.

So I'll just kind of say that up front. So what follows

is more like a series of reflections than a carefully worded argument either for or against it.

So distributism itself, to start out, is an economic system, the main characteristic of which

is property is widely distributed in society.

And it's a system that was advocated, promoted by Hilare Belloc and G. K. Chesterton,

English Catholic authors from the early 20th century.

Issues with distributism begin with the word distributism itself. But when we talk about widely distributed property, you have to understand that what is meant is distributed as an adjective, not as a past participant.

In other words, property that is spread out in many, many hands, not property that has been taken and distributed to others.

It's a very, very important distinction.

People who know nothing about distributism and only the name often assume it's the latter,

that it means redistributism, if you will, which is false.

It's the condition of being widely spread out.

Where did it come from?

There are sort of deep roots, and they are the deep roots of the encyclical letter,

Rerum Navarum, which Pope Leo issued in 1891,

and the antecedents of that are after a couple of centuries of enlightenment.

By the late 19th century, we had the Western society undergoing huge changes in society as a result of industrialization.

And what was on everybody's mind is what was called the social question.

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