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Dear catholic.com visitors: This Catholic Answers website, with all its free resources, is the world’s largest source of explanations for Catholic beliefs and practices. We receive no funding from the institutional Church and rely entirely on your generosity to sustain this website with trustworthy, accessible content. If every visitor this month donated $1, catholic.com would be fully funded for an entire year. If you’ve never made a gift, now is the time. Your donation will be matched dollar for dollar this week only. Thanks and God bless.
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Q&A

Is it unethical to enter an amusement park by a backwoods trail without paying the admission fee?

Catholic Answers Staff

Question:

Is it unethical to enter an amusement park by a backwoods trail without paying the admission fee? Shouldn’t the park block the path? If they don’t, doesn’t that give you permission to go in that way?

Answer:

To enter an amusement park without paying the admission fee knowingly (and/or stealthily) is a form of theft. To take another’s goods unjustly and against the owner’s will, when he has every reason and right to be unwilling to be deprived of them, is stealing. Such an injustice causes the owner to lose monies that are rightfully his. To take and use another’s property unjustly is contrary to the seventh commandment: You shall not steal (cf. Ex. 20:15; Deut. 5:19; Matt. 19:18; CCC 2454). The fact that the amusement park owners didn’t block access to the path doesn’t give anyone license to enter without paying.

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