No but Jesus did. Even if we infer hyperbole, he still said it - and on numerous occasions.
As the doctrine developed, it became less stringent than the earliest idealistic phase in the Jerusalem church, when the magisterium did seem to expect every believer to live like those in religious orders do today by sharing property in common.
Later on, this was designated a vocation for those committed to the “counsels of perfection”…and that’s a legitimate development of doctrine but Jesus would appear to have been far more hardline and uncompromising.
The admonition to renounce one’s possessions is about looking at one’s use of goods and land in a different way, from that which is conventionally the case. Jesus also referred to it in Matthew 5:3 as being “poor in spirit”. The question is this: do we view property - realty, chattel, whatever - beyond what we truly need to survive as an “absolute”, unconditioned personal right without any concomitant social obligations to others?
Jesus and the traditional doctrine of the Church gives an affirmative “no”. The fact that we have income, corporation and in some countries land value taxation also indicates that only the most extreme kind of libertarian capitalists today would see property in this absolute way. But even those of us who don’t, and who gladly pay our taxes to be used for the public good, can still fall victim to selfish use of our personal wealth.
One part of it, is about living without being inordinately attached to material objects. This is the “spiritual” or “mystical” dimension emphasized by the Gospel of Matthew.
The other element, is the one stressed by Luke 6:2 and in the verse we are discussing, which has to do with an actual social issue about the hoarding of goods and resources, as reflected in the communitarian church economics reflected in Acts 2:44-45.
Behind all of this lies a theological concept which regards the goods of the earth as destined for the succour humankind as a whole, rather than just for privileged individuals.
While the verse in question may not refer solely to physical possessions (you can possess, or cling, to outmoded ways of thought and intangible things as well), the early church understood this as an injunction to relinquish private ownership of property in favour of a communalized ecclesiastical ownership dependent upon need.
Church doctrine in later years, while adapting it pragmatically to fit changed circumstances and prevailing social structures, retained this fundamental idea in its natural law doctrine through preaching that in time of grave need, superabundant property becomes in principle, if not in secular law, common again; such that if the poor succour their needs from the superabundance of the rich, it isn’t considered to be the sin of theft because its owed to them by divine law.
The church has always, therefore, denied that private property is an absolute, unconditional right.
And we as laity, even if we don’t and can’t go the full-hog like monks and nuns, are nevertheless bound by a grave obligation and enormously high ethical standard owing to this.
