Second, free exchange based on secure private property rights leads to specialization in labor and ownership. Increased specialization of labor and ownership, as Adam Smith so elegantly pointed out in the eighteenth century, increases wealth production and accumulation because individuals can concentrate their efforts on a relatively few tasks. Specialists can incorporate more thorough knowledge in their work and can spot entrepreneurial opportunities more quickly and efficiently. The creation and accumulation of wealth is only the first step toward fulfillment of the universal destination of material goods. First, secure private property rights open the door to charity.
Charity is impossible in the absence of privately owned property.
Aquinas teaches that charity is not only the fundamental and most important virtue but that it is the form of all other virtue. Charity is love. And the two greatest biblical commandments are to love God and to love one's neighbor as oneself. Consider, in this context, Christ's parable of the widow's two mites. It was precisely because the widow's gift came from her own relative poverty that Christ exalts it over that of the wealthy.