Archbishop Georges Darboy and other hostages at La Roquette prison on May 24, 1871

[H/T: Conservative Sun Ray Treatment 1929 – People's History of the NHS]

Coronation Day

Pierre Joubert

Teutonic Order, Battle of Lake Peipus

The Battle of Lake Peipus (the so-called “Battle on the Ice”) was between the German Catholic Livonian Order and the assembled Russian forces of Alexander Nevsky, who was retrospectively honoured by the Soviets. This painting is by the Polish artist Mariusz Kozik.

[H/T: ArtStation - Teutonic Order, Battle of Lake Peipus]

What is the difference between the legal and theological definitions of ownership?

English law of course makes a distinction between ownership and possession. In English law, ownership is the right of exclusive use and enjoyment of property. Ownership is the most extensive legal right (proprietary right) one can have. Owners can do with their property what they please: use, sell, gift or lease it, or offer it as security for a loan. Possession on the other hand is the exercise (or power of exercising) physical control over an object.

The theology is very similar. In moral theology, ownership is the juridical faculty freely to dispose of something as one's own unless otherwise hindered. An owner may sell, exchange, give away, destroy, etc., his property without thereby violating commutative justice. And possession is the actual corporeal holding of a thing with the intention of keeping it as one's own. 

One distinction that theology makes though is that ownership may be perfect or imperfect. The former is the right to the possession and the complete use and disposal of a thing. The latter is the right to the mere possession of a thing (direct ownership) or merely to its use (indirect ownership). In other words one may be said to own something but not be able to do with it whatever one feels like.

Reversing this out, of course, it's a good question whether the secular law or the spiritual law is more/less likely to admit the legality (let alone legitimacy) of chattel slavery...