Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical, Rerum Novarum, while not the first social encyclical, was still a revolutionary document, albeit within the bounds of natural law and the Magisterium. Previous social encyclicals, beginning with Mirari Vos in 1832, had offered correct principles but were otherwise limited to condemning the evils of modern society.
While positive in intent, earlier letters were negative in the sense they told people what not to do. Sound teaching was presented in the form of general guidelines, not specific programs or plans of action.
People most in need of correction and instruction were thereby given a way out. They were able to dismiss the social encyclicals as pointless theorizing, reactionary rhetoric, or ignore them altogether as irrelevant.
All that changed with Rerum Novarum. What did not change, however, was the tendency to misunderstand what the Church teaches, reinterpret it to fit an agenda, or use it to justify deeply held, if mistaken, beliefs. Much of this confusion was due to the pervasiveness of the very error the social encyclicals were intended to counter and correct, the “New Things” of socialism, modernism, and the New Age.
The New Things v. the Church
Promoters of the various socialist schemes that spread rapidly in the early nineteenth century often gave detailed solutions to the problems of everyday life. None of them ultimately turned out to be very sound or even remotely feasible in the few instances where they were put into practice. That, however, could always be explained away or blamed on reactionaries and conspirators.
In contrast, the Church’s social teachings came off as weak and vague, e.g., avoid sin, do good, ignore the socialists, modernists, and New Agers who say they are trying to help you, and you will be rewarded in Heaven. To people faced with overwhelming problems, often with their mere survival in question, the Church’s initial response as articulated by Gregory XVI seemed not merely inadequate but denigrating and insulting. The Church, especially in the person of the pope, seemed out of touch with reality.
Matters did not improve when Pius IX added political reform to the mix. Reactionaries and radicals alike were suspicious of his personalist, “American” type liberalism. Radicals sabotaged the pope’s reform efforts in 1848 and got him branded a reactionary for refusing to go along with their extreme and collectivist version of liberal democracy.
Leo XIII continued Pius IX’s efforts, but with limited success. Then in 1886, the situation changed. Henry George, the agrarian socialist who authored Progress and Poverty, ran for mayor of New York City. Although supported by Fr. Edward McGlynn, a noted dissident priest, George lost the election.
Both George and McGlynn blamed corrupt politicians and the Catholic Church’s stand against socialism for the defeat, even though there was no evidence to support the accusation. Leo ordered McGlynn to the Vatican to explain his activities. McGlynn refused, and after several warnings, was excommunicated for disobedience. Over the next four years attempts to reconcile McGlynn to the Church were thwarted by McGlynn’s continued intransigence and his insistence that socialism is authentic Catholic doctrine.
Strictly speaking, since McGlynn had been excommunicated for disobedience and not for adherence to socialism, his claim that he was being persecuted for being a socialist were irrelevant. It did, however, divert attention away from the conditions for lifting the excommunication. These were that he apologize to the people he had insulted and travel to Rome as originally ordered.
After Rerum Novarum
By 1891 matters had come to a virtual standstill, with the irresistible force of Catholic discipline and teaching having met the immoveable object of McGlynn’s ego and obstinacy. Then in mid-May of that year, Rerum Novarum came out.
That the pope had been planning on a new encyclical on private property and socialism was hardly news. Everyone had known as early as January 1887 that something was in the works. It had been widely discussed in newspapers around the world, and not just among Catholics. Given the publicity generated by the McGlynn affair, there had been a great deal of speculation as to how hard the pope would come down on socialism.
What took everyone off guard in the new encyclical was not, therefore, the condemnation of socialism. The real surprise was the expansion of Church teaching far beyond what was considered proper for religion, especially in the United States.
This, however, was fully consistent with the original purpose of issuing specifically social encyclicals. When he released Mirari Vos in 1832, Gregory XVI was in a sense even more revolutionary than Leo XIII. By proclaiming that the Church’s moral authority carries over into both civil and domestic society when it involves matters of natural law, Gregory outraged those who would limit the Church’s role exclusively to spiritual matters.
At the same time, Gregory drew a clear distinction between the Church’s obligation to interpret natural law and serve as a moral guide in civil and domestic matters, and the imprudence of the Church attempting to rule State and Family directly. This refuted those who, like Félicité de Lamannais before his apostasy, exaggerated the Church’s authority beyond all bounds by asserting that the Church is the supreme temporal as well as spiritual authority.
None of this was reflected in the initial reactions to the new encyclical. In general, capitalists missed the implied criticism in Leo’s call for expanded ownership of a system that concentrates ownership of productive wealth. They assumed that the measures intended to improve things during the shift from a wage system to an ownership system — better pay, benefits, conditions, unions, and so on — were the pope’s main point. Treat people better, they assumed, and their moral obligations would be met. Ownership was relegated to prudential matter.
Socialists split on the issue. Hotter heads, such as Henry George, were outraged at the condemnation of socialism and the demand for expanded capital ownership. An avid marketer, however, George seized the opportunity to get back in the public eye. He went to work immediately and published a pamphlet, On the Condition of Labor.i The booklet, more than twice the length of the encyclical itself, carefully explained that the pope did not understand Catholic social teaching.
Wiser or craftier socialists, such as Marie-Eugène-Melchior, vicomte de Vogüé, acknowledged head of the Neo-Catholic/modernist movement, took the position that the pope was not condemning good socialism in Rerum Novarum, only bad socialism.ii This allowed de Vogüé to distance himself from the horrors of the Paris Commune of the previous generation and remain socialist and Catholic, at least in name. G.K. Chesterton characterized this as the worst sort of treachery, enemies of the Faith making it look as if the Church agreed with them.iii
Mercurial McGlynn
Although the McGlynn affair probably triggered the issuance of Rerum Novarum, comment on George’s program was limited to a few brief allusions. Despite that, McGlynn at first followed George’s lead and took the position that the encyclical was a direct and personal attack on “the priest and the prophet.”iv
This greatly increased the pressure to reconcile McGlynn at the same time it made it vastly more difficult. Giovanni Cardinal Simeoni, who had worked with Cardinal McCloskey and Archbishop Corrigan dealing with the troublesome priest, added submission to Rerum Novarum to the other conditions for lifting McGlynn’s excommunication.
This played into McGlynn’s hands. He called a public meeting at the Cooper Union in New York City on the evening of Monday, November 27, 1891.
Before an audience that “greeted him with the wildest demonstration of enthusiasm,”v McGlynn asserted he had never insulted Corrigan or the pope and had never taught false doctrine. He then lashed out at Corrigan, Simeoni, and the pope, and —
. . . denied the infallibility of the Pope; criticised the policy of the Holy See, and said that the Pope was the arch-conspirator against the liberty and freedom of his country. He called the Propaganda a lot of “ecclesiastical shoemakers,” and said if bishops, archbishops, cardinals and popes would mind their own business the cause of Christianity and Catholicity would be the better subserved.vi
Later, McGlynn reversed himself. He claimed Leo had always supported his, McGlynn’s, opinion.vii In a speech during another mass meeting at the Cooper Union he “frequently quoted the pope’s Novarum Rerum [sic] encyclical in support of his positions, and virtually declared that the acts for which he incurred Archbishop Corrigan’s censure were done in the spirit enjoined by the head of the church.”viii
McGlynn’s form of modernism became known as Americanism for its chauvinistic insistence that the Church must adapt to the special conditions in the United States, even at the doctrinal level. As a leading Americanist, McGlynn larded his speeches with grandiose claims of his own patriotism and declared no true American would ever put religion above country.
Politics and Religion in America
What may have encouraged McGlynn in his stand was his egregious misreading of the actions of leading American churchmen like James Cardinal Gibbons and Archbishop John Ireland. Both appeared at times to put politics before religion, but only if one ignored the facts.
Gibbons, for example, as Archbishop of Baltimore and de facto head of the Catholic Church in the United States, was a southerner who had sympathized with the Confederacy but sided with the Union.ix He had the challenging task of reconciling Catholics in a country where they were often regarded with deep suspicion and open hostility, and who only a few years before had been on opposite sides in the war. His bestselling The Faith of Our Fathers, published in the centennial year of 1876, was in part intended to prove that his co-religionists were good citizens as well as good Catholics.
For his part, Ireland was faced with integrating different groups of immigrants into the American Church as well as into the surrounding culture. Making this difficult was the fact that native-born Catholics often resented all immigrants, while the different groups of immigrants were often at odds. Usually this was between “Irish” (English speaking) and “Germans” (non-English speaking), the latter demanding separate parishes and priests who spoke their languages. Ireland tried to avoid commenting on anything, such as the McGlynn case, that could make it look as if he was taking sides between immigrants and native-born Americans.
Gibbons had protested McGlynn’s excommunication, which along with Ireland’s silence McGlynn took as an endorsement. He was badly mistaken. Both Ireland and Gibbons believed McGlynn richly deserved excommunication.x Gibbons, however, given the political situation in the United States and the general animus against Catholics, thought it was not prudent.xi
McGlynn and George also misinterpreted Gibbons’s successful effort to prevent George’s Progress and Poverty from being put on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (“List of Prohibited Books”).xii Although McGlynn and George took this, too, as an endorsement, Gibbons stated in an interview: “So far as Mr. George proposes to carry his theory into immediate practice . . . he is a mere visionary and the practical sense of the American people can be relied upon to reject his proposals. It is therefore prudent to let such absurdities die a natural death and not incur the risk of giving them an artificial importance by the intervention of church tribunals.”xiii
Reconciliation of a Sort
After Rerum Novarum matters again reached an impasse. McGlynn had insulted Archbishop Corrigan and the late Cardinal Simeoni, Prefect of the Congregation for Propagation of the Faith, too many times for any progress to be made. Leo XIII therefore sent Francesco Cardinal Satolli to the United States with explicit orders to reconcile McGlynn to the Church if at all possible.
This put Satolli in a difficult position. Corrigan insisted that McGlynn renounce socialism as a condition for lifting the excommunication. As he argued, if McGlynn was restored without disavowing socialism, it would be taken as a change in Church teaching and a de facto endorsement.
McGlynn, however, had been excommunicated not for socialism, but for disobedience and insulting behavior. Satolli agreed with Corrigan, but it would be unjust to insist on McGlynn’s abandoning socialism when it had nothing directly to do with the case. Satolli’s orders were to reconcile McGlynn. Adding new conditions would likely render that impossible.
Fortunately, Satolli was an experienced diplomat and had not been personally insulted or attacked by George or McGlynn. He was able to position himself as a moderating influence to calm things down and get the matter resolved as quickly as possible.
Even so, Satolli’s task was not easy, although this was due to McGlynn’s habit of grandstanding, not to alleged interference by Corrigan. Although the newspapers presented him as hostile to Satolli, Corrigan was both cooperative and helpful.xiv On the other hand, “[McGlynn] intimated that if he should be restored it would be his triumph and the downfall of Archbishop Corrigan, who was not a patriotic American.”xv
As the negotiations dragged on, McGlynn shifted from attacking Corrigan, to condemning the presumed evils of parochial schools. He only alluded indirectly to matters related to Georgism.xvi Finally, however, McGlynn submitted a written statement to Satolli agreeing to the conditions for reinstatement.xvii
Still, McGlynn’s compliance was far from straightforward. He appended a lengthy codicil to his submission explaining his views on land ownership. This again put Satolli in a difficult position. He had no authority to judge McGlynn and was required under canon law to presume him innocent of anything not specifically mentioned in the excommunication. He could only demand that the priest apologize, agree to travel to Rome, and submit to Rerum Novarum. Satolli therefore disregarded McGlynn’s additional statement.
Finally, after due consideration, Satolli declared that McGlynn’s statement of submission “was judged not contrary to the doctrine constantly taught by the church and as recently confirmed in the encyclical rerum novarum.”xviii McGlynn was therefore reinstated Saturday, December 24, 1892.xix This, however, implied nothing about the orthodoxy of McGlynn’s Georgist views, judgment of which Leo XIII had reserved to himself.
Rome and Recantation
Succeeding generations have not appreciated either Satolli’s delicate position or his extremely nuanced diplomacy that finally reconciled McGlynn to the Church. McGlynn’s submission and the extraneous material he added gave the erroneous impression that Satolli’s acceptance constituted a reversal of Church teaching on socialism and a de facto endorsement of Georgism when it was nothing of the sort.
McGlynn’s subsequent behavior suggests that he was himself unsure of his position, exhibiting an offensive bravado more defiant than convincing, and more than a little misleading, not to say untruthful. Two weeks after his reinstatement he held another mass meeting in which he declared Satolli’s acceptance of his submission was a capitulation by the Church and a vindication of socialism as authentic Catholic teaching.xx Just before leaving for Rome, he reiterated his position in yet another blustering diatribe — “The highest authority next to the Pope has said our teachings were not antagonistic to the doctrines of our holy religion, and we need not retract. [Applause.] And we have not retracted. . . . We do not repent. . . . I will go to Rome if I want to. If I don’t want to I won’t.”xxi
Despite his bombastic posturing, the meeting at the Vatican with the pope was not the triumph McGlynn predicted. As Archbishop-Bishop of Perugia, Leo XIII’s manner of dealing with erring seminarians and priests was to ask them leading questions to induce them to recognize and admit their faults without his having to point them out; “he was careful not to use toward them anything like harsh words or bitter reproofs.”xxii
McGlynn was not prepared for Leo’s methods. He not only expected an aggressive and confrontational interrogation, but he was also utterly incapable of admitting a mistake.
By his own account, McGlynn gave evasive answers to every one of the pope’s questions.xxiii
Quickly realizing he would get nowhere with McGlynn, His Holiness dismissed him as having met the letter of the conditions for reinstatement and without rendering judgment. Effectively admitting defeat, Leo told him, “Well, you may abound in your own sense,” i.e., do as you wish.xxiv
Suggesting that Leo ordered McGlynn not to present socialism as authentic Catholic teaching, on his return to New York McGlynn carefully refrained from saying anything that implied the pope had endorsed socialism. Even after Corrigan refused to give him an assignment, McGlynn only made vague statements that Corrigan opposed him while Satolli supported him. He seemed at loose ends; “To every question as to his future movements Dr. McGlynn has given evasive answers.”xxv
Although the media took little notice of him,xxvi McGlynn continued to attack the parochial school system.xxvii Still laboring under the misimpression that Satolli supported him, he did his best to drive a wedge between Corrigan and the Cardinal.xxviii Finally, after years of declaring that he would never recant, McGlynn made a full public retraction on Wednesday, December 19, 1894:
The Rev. Dr. Edward McGlynn has made a complete recantation. He is no longer an apostle of the doctrines for preaching which he brought on himself the ban of excommunication from the Roman Catholic church. . . . Archbishop Corrigan will soon put him in charge of a parish.xxix
Almost immediately, however, McGlynn began issuing statements to the effect that he both had, and had not, recanted.xxx He also agitated for a parish closer to the action instead of one in the outer reaches of the diocese. Corrigan sought Satolli’s counsel, and was advised, “Do not let him be a Rector in New York [City]. In that I will sustain you in Rome.”xxxi
McGlynn never surrendered his allegiance to socialism. In his last letter, dictated the day before he died, he declared that his views on Georgism were the same as they had always been.xxxii
• Related at CWR:
• “The Story of the First Social Encyclical” (July 19, 2022) by Michael D. Greaney
• “The road to Rerum Novarum and the evolution of Catholic social teaching” (August 24, 2022) by Michael D. Greaney
Endnotes
i Henry George, The Condition of Labor: An Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII. New York: Doubleday & McClure Co., 1891.
ii Vicomte Eugène Melchior de Vogüé, “The Neo-Christian Movement in France,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, January 1892.
iii G.K. Chesterton, Saint Thomas Aquinas: The “Dumb Ox”. New York: Image Books, 1956, 93.
iv Stephen Bell, Rebel, Priest and Prophet: A Biography of Dr. Edward McGlynn. New York: The Devin-Adair Company, 1937, 29.
v “Mr. M’Glynn Refuses to Comply,” The Hartford Weekly Times, November 29, 1891, 3.
vi Ibid.
vii Cf. Rev. Edward J. Cahill, S.J., The Framework of a Christian State. Dublin, Éire: M.H. Gill and Son, Ltd., 1932, 301-306, 534-535.
viii “Still a Single Tax Man: Dr. McGlynn Reiterates the Views that Unfrocked Him,” The Day, January 2, 1893, 1.
ix Allen S. Will, Life of James Cardinal Gibbons. New York: John Murphy Company, 1911, 11-12.
x Marvin R. O’Connell, John Ireland and the American Catholic Church. St. Paul, Minnesota: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1988, 244.
xi John Tracy Ellis, The Life of James Cardinal Gibbons. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1952, I.570-571.
xii Bluffington Chronicle, May 24, 1888, 1.
xiii “Henry George: Cardinal Gibbons Does Not Believe His Writings Call for Any Action on the Part of the Catholic Church,” The Lewiston Wednesday Journal, February 1, 1888, 1.
xiv Michael A. Corrigan, Private Record of the Case of Rev. Edward McGlynn, ms. cir. 1895, 417-418.
xv “McGlynn Assails Parochial Schools at New York,” Meriden Daily Republican, December 19, 1892, 3.
xvi Ibid.
xvii Submitted by McGlynn December 1892, reprinted in the New York Freeman’s Journal, February 6, 1904.
xviii “United States Nuncio: Monsignor Satolli Made Permanent Delegate,” Baltimore Sunday Herald, January 15, 1893, 1.
xix “M’Glynn Makes His Peace: The Noted Recalcitrant Priest Has His Authority Restored,” Aurora Daily Express, December 24, 1892.
xx “Still a Single Tax Man: Dr. McGlynn Reiterates the Views that Unfrocked Him,” The Day, January 2, 1893, 1.
xxi “Dr. McGlynn Sails Out on the Stormy Atlantic and is Given a Rousing Reception in Which Archbishop Corrigan is Hissed,” Lewiston Evening Journal, February 9, 1893, 6.
xxii Rev. Bernard O’Reilly, Life of Leo XIII, From an Authentic Memoir Furnished by His Order. London: Sampson Low, Marston and Co., 1903, 155-156.
xxiii Bell, Rebel, Priest and Prophet, op. cit., 249-254.
xxiv Ibid.
xxv “Archdiocese to be Divided,” Argus Daily News, July 3, 1893, 1.
xxvi Bell, Rebel, Priest and Prophet, op. cit., 254.
xxvii “The Toppling Parochial School System,” The Boston Evening Transcript, September 12, 1893, 4.
xxviii “Another Setback for Corrigan,” The Boston Evening Transcript, April 10, 1894, 4.
xxix “Parish for M’Glynn: He Recants and Will Soon Be Completely Forgiven,” Meriden Daily Republican, December 19, 1894, 3.
xxx “M’Glynn’s Restoration: Rev. Dr. Burtsell Makes a Statement Regarding the Matter,” Indianapolis Journal, December 21, 1894, 1; cf. Alexandria Gazette and Advertiser, December 20, 1894, 2; Boston Evening Transcript, December 24, 1894, 4; “Dr. M’Glynn in His New Parish,” The New York Sun, January 7, 1895, 7; “Dr. McGlynn Indorses George,” The New York Times, October 28, 1897.
xxxi Corrigan, Private Record, op. cit., 462.
xxxii Sylvester L. Malone, Dr. Edward McGlynn. New York: Dr. McGlynn Monument Association, 1918, 53.
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Excellent piece. I appreciate this background to Rerum Novarum that I had not even the slightest knowledge of. Thank you.
In today’s Gospel on the Rich man and Lazarus, we have to ask, was Jesus burning a Roman Emperor in hell for an improper welfare program, or a disobedient Christian follower of His, who did not love his neighbor as himself, through proper tithing to the poor. I believe it was a disobedient, non properly tithing to the poor, Christian follower of Jesus, that Jesus was burning in hell in the parable.
In Matthew 18 Fraternal Correction, Jesus tells us that if we have a legal dispute, we are to first, ‘take one or two others along with you, so that ‘every fact may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses’, which sounds like a civil court of law. Then if that does not work, Jesus instructs us to take our dispute to the Church. Then if that does not work, Jesus brings up the Church’s power of binding and loosting sins, which is indicating that Jesus wants His Apostolic Successors to anathematize the unrepentant perpetrator, till he repents.
Matthew 18:15 Fraternal Correction
If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that ‘every fact may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ “If he ignores them, refer it to the church . If he ignores even the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector. I assure you, whatever you declare bound on earth shall be held bound in heaven, and whatever you declare loosed on earth shall be held loosed in heaven.”
“By proclaiming that the Church’s moral authority carries over into both civil and domestic society when it involves matters of natural law, Gregory outraged those who would limit the Church’s role exclusively to spiritual matters.” Quoted from the article.
So I would say that, if the secular world leaders cannot get the job done in getting citizens to ‘love their neighbor as themselves’ through civil welfare and civil justice programs, have Apostolic Successors put an anathema on the issue. Simply put out a worldwide, binding on all people, auto-anathema on anyone who is not properly tithing to care for the poor out of love for God. Then let the Pope get back to the important business of leading people to God and salvation through Jesus Christ.
I really do not see any good coming out of Apostolic Successors trying to talk to Hitler, Stalin or Putin. Jesus never talked to Caesar about his crucifixions, wars or welfare programs.
ANATHEMA
the formula of anathema which ends with these words: Wherefore in the name of God the All-powerful, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, of the Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and of all the saints, in virtue of the power which has been given us of binding and loosing in Heaven and on earth, we deprive N– himself and all his accomplices and all his abettors of the Communion of the Body and Blood of our Lord, we separate him from the society of all Christians, we exclude him from the bosom of our Holy Mother the Church in Heaven and on earth, we declare him excommunicated and anathematized and we judge him condemned to eternal fire with Satan and his angels and all the reprobate, so long as he will not burst the fetters of the demon, do penance and satisfy the Church; we deliver him to Satan to mortify his body, that his soul may be saved on the day of judgment.” Whereupon all the assistants respond: “Fiat, fiat, fiat.” The pontiff and the twelve priests then cast to the ground the lighted candles they have been carrying, and notice is sent in writing to the priests and neighboring bishops of the name of the one who has been excommunicated and the cause of his excommunication, in order that they may have no communication with him. Although he is delivered to Satan and his angels, he can still, and is even bound to repent. The Pontifical gives the form for absolving him and reconciling him with the Church. The promulgation of the anathema with such solemnity is well calculated to strike terror to the criminal and bring him to a state of repentance, especially if the Church adds to it the ceremony of the Maranatha…
…He who dares to despise our decision, let him be stricken with anathema maranatha, i.e. may he be damned at the coming of the Lord, may he have his place with Judas Iscariot, he and his companions.
Quoted from: https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01455e.htm
I have studied, informally, socialism for many years. The studies have led me for formulate a number hypotheses. The essence of socialism is not the distribution of wealth, rather it is the “social construction of reality.” Socialism represents the government or the state as the ultimate in temporal and spiritual authority. It tells us what reality is. So, if a judge, for example, decides that Bruce Jenner is a woman, well, then he is a woman. Government and private documents have to reflect that “reality.” Biology does not matter, because biology also falls under the jurisdiction of the state. Socialism represents the regime of the lie. As Vlad Lenin, dictator, commie and philosopher explained, “A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth.” This system cannot work without censorship, harassment, intimidation, defamation, the Goolag and other methods of mind-control. None of this is compatible with Catholic doctrine.
It sounds as if we’re on the same page. My research suggests that the “New Things” of socialism, modernism, and the New Age all shift sovereignty in human affairs away from the human person created by God, and to some abstraction created by man, such as the State, the community, some invented god, and so on, ad nauseam. Some forms of socialism, for example, permit private property, but do not recognize it as a God-given natural right.
Similarly, some forms of modernism hold doctrines identical to what the Church teaches, but accept them based on personal opinion instead of the authority of the Church supported by reason. As for the New Age . . . I’m sure there must be some points of agreement with Catholic teaching, but not because the Church teaches it or because it has the assent of human reason, which the Church teaches is the foundation of faith (i.e., faith cannot contradict reason, although human reason can be mistaken). This was the thesis of Ven. Fulton Sheen’s doctoral thesis, “God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy” (1925, and — after their conversions — the life’s work of Orestes Brownson and G.K. Chesterton.
Concerning politics and religion in America, one sideshow of the Rerum Novarum history, within the Church itself, was that of “trusteeism,” or lay control of Church stuff other than the sacraments.
Resonating with the socialist thing and on the big screen, today, do we have one part of Praedicate Evangelium? That barely understood part enabling appointment of yet unnamed dicastery governance positions to laity: https://www.ncregister.com/news/pope-francis-embrace-of-lay-governance-stirs-alarm
We also read: “The Pillar newsletter recently noted unconfirmed reports that Cardinal Wilton Gregory of Washington, D.C., had already ‘asked the Holy See to allow him to appoint a layman as moderator of the curia, a role overseeing the administration of the archdiocese which canon law says should ordinarily be a vicar general and must always be a priest [above ncregister link].’”
Surely the American Cardinal Gregory coincidentally thought of this all by himself, or, is this the camel’s nose under the tent? Or, much possible good in this reform of the curia? With no expertise from yours truly on the complex potentiality—but just wondering hypothetically about the long view:
…First, the fraudulent “Donation of Constantine” (invented probably in the 8th century); Second, the secular capture of the donated Papal States in the mid-19th century (whose guns suspended the First Vatican Council); Third, today, the possible deformation of the Second Vatican Council’s Lumen Gentium (re “hierarchical communion”), with ordained bishop/Successors of the Apostles more as isolated lay-“facilitators” (Vademecum); Fourth, the threat of full institutionalization in post-Catholic Germania, under mongrelized and permanent synodal governance (with individual bishops reduced to chaplaincies?); and Fifth, pandemically, under Hollerich’s 2023 worldwide Synod on Synodality? We might even ask, as a participant at the United Nations, who now might be the face of the perennial Catholic Church founded by Jesus Christ? Or, does the flat-earth new world order even have faces?
Just wondering, but who am I to wonder?
Essays on the Catholic Social Teaching like this insinuate and perpetuate the wrong notion that this body of Church teaching is socialist leading to the continuing neglect of this teaching in corporate church and personal believer reception and application. This situation prolongs the status of the CST as the “Church’s best kept secret.” This has unfortunately led to many Catholics’ social engagement limited to one of the either polarities of anti-abortion advocacy on one side or the social (economic inequality, immigration, climate change, racism, gun violence, etc.) advocacy on the other. This focus on just one of the two sides is severely impaired and does not take the full spectrum of social issues that the Church taking up scriptures and church tradition through the CST wants the community of believers to take up. This does not mean only in the active care and action given to incarnate these social concerns which obviously is limited by time and resources on the part of individuals and organizations, but most especially in the manner of voting parties, platforms, and politicians. When it comes to elections, most Catholics because of this divide and handicap we highlight here become single issue voters and neglect to take up and consider in prudential judgment the full range of social issues encompassing life from conception to natural death and the matrix of life, our planetary home. The Church through her social teachings wants Catholics to take up this full range of issues as the big picture of their faith driven social engagement and take these as a gauge to measure political initiatives and candidates in voting while focusing on one or more dedicated active care and action as one’s concrete commitment to apply and embody the social teaching of the church as communities or believers.
“Essays on the Catholic Social Teaching like this insinuate and perpetuate the wrong notion that this body of Church teaching is socialist…”
Is that really what this essay insinuates and perpetuates? I don’t think we read the same essay.
Thank you, Mr. Olson. With all due respect to Meadlee Z, I could not follow the argument, and so could not respond. If, as I think, Z’s concern is that an article focused on a small part of the history of the development of Catholic social teaching doesn’t cover everything, that is correct, but then a class in geometry doesn’t get too much into differential calculus, either.
If it’s any help, Z might want to go to the website of the interfaith Center for Economic and Social Justice (http://www.cesj.org) and download some of the free materials in the free ebooks section explaining my approach to Catholic social teaching in much more detail and far more comprehensively. I recommend “The Act of Social Justice” (1942) and “Introduction to Social Justice” (1948), both by CESJ co-founder Father William J. Ferree, S.M., Ph.D., although “The Act of Social Justice” is not exactly the easiest read. It was Father Ferree’s doctoral thesis at the Catholic University of America. “Introduction to Social Justice” is a longish pamphlet written for high school students, and might be more accessible, although still not a quick and easy read.
With all due modesty, I also recommend “Economic Personalism: Property, Power and Justice for Every Person” (2020) by me and Dawn K. Brohawn, the precursor to “The Greater Reset” (2022) currently available from TAN Books. “Economic Personalism” was written at the behest of some Vatican officials, and is considered a fairly good presentation of these ideas from a Catholic viewpoint.
I should mention that, among others, President Ronald Reagan endorsed these ideas (his speech is on the CESJ website), while His Holiness Pope St. John Paul II gave them his personal encouragement during a private audience with CESJ delegates and members of Polish Solidarity.
From Meadlee Z we read about our: “neglect to take up and consider in prudential judgment the full range of social issues encompassing life from conception to natural death and the matrix of life, our planetary home.”
An unfortunately parsed point, still, since some moral issues are absolute (more than prudential), while others involve a range of prudential approaches to best understand and balance the discerned common good.
In the former case (e.g., abortion) the only prudential judgment is how much abuse must be tolerated to at least reduce politically the direct destruction of individual human lives. In the second instance, one can agree with an exhortation on our “planetary home” (Laudato si), which sets the stage for balancing competing goods much more wisely (growing economies, and preservation of the ecological life-support system). I would agree that to derail or prolong forever this epochal dilemma is a collective and indirect sin of omission (i.e., sober attention to short-term vs long-term actions, preservation of tropical forests or corking smokestacks, or both, and when, and where as in India and China as well as the West, and how, technical innovations, belt tightening, and what else, etc.?)
Summary: the recent UN resolution to brand direct abortion as a “human right” is a lie, and not any part of the present common good, nor of any prudential “matrix” attending to our vulnerable future generations from whom we hold this planet and our institutions in trust.
Ananias and wife Sapphira drop dead at Peter’s feet because they held back what today is considered a safety reserve in case investment in a socialist agenda doesn’t workout. Socialism, the strict kind, had room in the early Church. At least Peter and God thought so. As it turned out a commune bound by strict social equanimity was, in a world of non believers with dissimilar views impractical. The answer: religious orders.
A wonderful account for the reader; a tutorial on the issue of socialism and Catholicism in America. Henry George and Fr McGlynn’s saga with Leo XIII seemed doomed [for the socialist minded protagonist]. Even if Leo should have been an ally opposition to the Church, casting blame on it for George’s mayoral defeat put dissenter Fr McGlynn in a losing effort, whereas the real issue of the efficacy of social concern [rather than use the term socialism with its immediate Marxist connotation] wasn’t well addressed by essayist Michael Greaney. But then, that wasn’t the purpose of the essay. As a historical background piece [Greaney’s field of expertise] that’s quite fine.
What nonetheless is of interest is the bad press social concern [socialism] has on Catholic websites. As it does with a Republican Party, I believe, that has lost elections exactly because of this identification with Marxist socialism. Example. The perennial platform to reduce or extinguish Social Security [FDR 1935] and Medicare/Medicaid [LBJ 1965] two important, in this writer’s conviction most benevolent, beneficial safety nets for an average American with lower scale or no retirement benefits. It seems only wealthy Republicans, and those become wealthy by investment in the Stock Market, are determined to strip these programs away. A little bit of Petrine socialism [absent of the Sapphira Ananias drop dead proviso] would be both beneficial. And realistic.
In the context alluded to John Paul II cites Man’s morally benign, social responsibility:
Cain’s answer to the Lord’s question: ‘Where is Abel your brother?’ can be interpreted: ‘I do not know, am I my brother’s keeper?’ [Gen. 4:9]. Yes, every man is his ‘brother’s keeper,’ because God entrusts us to one another. And it is also in view of this entrusting that God gives everyone freedom, a freedom which possesses an inherently relational dimension (Evangelium Vitae 19).
The poorer countries, on the other hand, generally have a high rate of population growth, difficult to sustain in the context of low economic and social development, and especially where there is extreme underdevelopment. In the face of over- population in the poorer countries, instead of forms of global intervention at the international level-serious family and social policies, programmes of cultural development and of fair production and distribution of resources-anti-birth policies continue to be enacted (Evangelium Vitae 16).
Leo XIII Rerum Novarum offers general principles of justice for workmen in a world having become unjust, wealth accrued by the few virtual poverty for the many. He advocated a natural right to property, a means for uplifting his status. To that end he praised the organizations of unions modeled after the guilds, and all that the guilds accomplished culturally.
Leo also references subsidiarity in the right to form independent societies commercial and otherwise:
51. These lesser societies and the larger society differ in many respects, because their immediate purpose and aim are different. Civil society exists for the common good, and hence is concerned with the interests of all in general, albeit with individual interests also in their due place and degree. It is therefore called a public society, because by its agency, as St. Thomas of Aquinas says, ‘Men establish relations in common with one another in the setting up of a commonwealth.’ [36] But societies which are formed in the bosom of the commonwealth are styled private, and rightly so, since their immediate purpose is the private advantage of the associates. ‘Now, a private society,’ says St. Thomas again, ‘is one which is formed for the purpose of carrying out private objects; as when two or three enter into partnership with the view of trading in common.’ [37] Private societies, then, although they exist within the body politic, and are severally part of the commonwealth, cannot nevertheless be absolutely, and as such, prohibited by public authority. For, to enter into a ‘society’ of this kind is the natural right of man; and the State has for its office to protect natural rights, not to destroy them; and, if it forbid its citizens to form associations, it contradicts the very principle of its own existence, for both they and it exist in virtue of the like principle, namely, the natural tendency of man to dwell in society (Rerum Novarum).
My opinion is Rerum Novarum is enlightened social politics.
They did not drop dead because they withheld the money; they did so because they lied about it–pretending they were giving everything, but in reality only, say 80%. (The Bible does not say how much they kept back.)
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As for social security (and presumably medicare, etc): what if it could be shown Soc Security is far from benign, and could be linked to population decline by “making kids worthless” (https://mises.org/library/making-kids-worthless-social-securitys-contribution-fertility-crisis), although I think public school may be the bigger culprit.
You think the Republicans are losing elections because of, in your words, the “perennial platform to reduce or extinguish Social Security [FDR 1935] and Medicare/Medicaid [LBJ 1965]”? I’m not what you’d call pro-Republican, but this hasn’t been major issues for decades, unless you count the Democrats trying to make them into issues based on Republican-led (but bipartisan) bills to reduce waste, graft, and corruption in these programs. Those were attempts by Republicans to fix broken programs and preserve them as useful, not attacks on the programs themselves.
I thought that this article was going to be about Rerum Novarum, and it ended up as a history about the controversy of Father McGlynn.
“By proclaiming that the Church’s moral authority carries over into both civil and domestic society when it involves matters of natural law, Gregory outraged those who would limit the Church’s role exclusively to spiritual matters.”
Who did Gregory outrage? I don’t see any evidence.
“None of this was reflected in the initial reactions to the new encyclical. In general, capitalists missed the implied criticism in Leo’s call for expanded ownership of a system that concentrates ownership of productive wealth. They assumed that the measures intended to improve things during the shift from a wage system to an ownership system — better pay, benefits, conditions, unions, and so on — were the pope’s main point. Treat people better, they assumed, and their moral obligations would be met. Ownership was relegated to prudential matter.”
Today, we have “employee-owners” – who can be fired (AFAIK) just as easily as before.
The fact is that over time employers have likely NOT treated people better. They care about one thing – the bottom line.
The most important part of Rerum Novarum was explicitly recognizing that a person had a natural right to a job. If THAT was put into legislation – along with a minimum family wage – it is likely that many problems would be solved. My understanding is that the minimum wage should be $21.
Along these lines there is this good video to consider. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th3KE_H27bs
“Twenty-one dollars?” And what about entry-level opportunities for those without skills and just entering the labor market, and who are not responsible for supporting a family? No jobs for them at that price. And, why a one-size-fits-all $21 when the cost of living varies markedly from region to region? And, from whence the golden touch in a boundary-free world of offshoring?
Individuals, families, and the modern world are in a real pickle. And as possible forums for figuring these things out within the Catholic Social Teaching, Catholic academia abdicated when it opted for secularist peer approval by hoisting the Land O’ Lakes Declaration up the flagpole.
You bring up points worth considering, but they aren’t – AFAIK – “deal-breakers.” $21 is – or was – the inflation + increased productivity adjusted minimum wage.
You know how the minimum wage works? If you have a different minimum wage for – for instance – students then what do companies do? All of the “sudden” there are advertisements for internship/co-op positions. (A trend that I have noticed over time.) The students get the jobs, and those who might be supporting a family don’t.
One of my nephews who is attending a university has (had?) a flexible hours programming job at $12/hour. As a person who maintains his own residence (I might be losing it soon.), I haven’t been employed – for various evil reasons which I haven’t been able to resolve even with the UNJUST courts – since 2020, I need at least probably $18/hr and I have historically done as “well” as around $31/hr. Over $30/hr is consistent with my experience and education (BSEE + BAPHY).
The minimum wage should be set for a 1 person household, but it isn’t good enough. Notice how I used the term “minimum family wage.” A family of a husband, a wife, and 5 children are going to need a different minimum wage than a single man. The legislatively recognized right to a job makes almost sure that the family mentioned won’t be in dire need.
Offshoring should be recognized for the veiled treason that it is – and prosecuted with a punishment of the death penalty.
I am a true Catholic. Although I am not officially in academia, I don’t look for the approval of the world. No Catholic should.
A very moral true Catholic would be persecuted like Jesus Christ. I am being persecuted by TPTB. They haven’t managed to murder me, yet. God has protected me.
Shawn, if I may correct a misimpression on your part, the article is not about Rerum Novarum, per se — that is in the previous article — but the interpretation of Rerum Novarum, and how some commentators turned it to their own purposes. Some of the concerns you raise are answered in the previous article, “The Road to Rerum Novarum and the Evolution of Catholic Social Teaching.”
To respond to a couple of of your comments, Gregory XVI outraged both reactionaries (such as Prince Metternich) and radicals (such as de Lammenais) by his stand on Church doctrine, attempting to take a middle road between their opposing demands to conform Catholic doctrine to the needs of the world . . . and for his trouble being himself branded a reactionary and an enemy of progress. You don’t see any evidence of this, I assume, because it is not the point of the article, and word length constraints precluded my adding to the already voluminous footnotes.
Regarding your claim that Rerum Novarum explicitly recognized a natural right to a job, the only natural rights explicitly mentioned in the encyclical are marriage, life, the right to enter society, and private property. Even Msgr. John A. Ryan, despite his errors, did not claim that a right to a job and a “living wage” are natural rights, but derived rights, as he explained in “A Living Wage” (1906). The idea that there is a natural right to employment comes from Fabian socialism, and was refuted by Hilaire Belloc in “The Servile State” (1912).
Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin were even more adamant than Belloc, Day ridiculing the idea of job creation and minimum wage laws as increasing the power of “Holy Mother, the State,” and often reiterating the dictum that “Property is proper to man.” As she made clear in her autobiography, “The Long Loneliness”, she was extremely suspicious of the New Deal and its vast expansion of State power. This, and not the issue of armed resistance to Hitler, was what probably caused the breach between Day and the Catholic Radical Alliance of Pittsburgh, organized by students of Ryan and reflecting his enthusiasm for Democratic politics — hence his nickname, “The Right Reverend New Dealer” (which also caused a split between Fr. Edward Coughlin and Ryan when Coughlin threw his support to Huey Long against FDR).
Some of this is covered in “The Greater Reset: Reclaiming Personal Sovereignty Under Natural Law” now available from TAN BooksL
https://tanbooks.com/contemporary-issues/social-issues/the-greater-reset-reclaiming-human-sovereignty-under-natural-law/
“Res novae” (literally “new things”) was an ancient Roman expression meaning “revolution”–the overthrow or attempted overthrow of the government through force and/or violence. If Cicero or Ceasar were to describe you as “studiosus rerum novarum,” they’d be calling you a seditionist–a traitor–a rebel–an enemy of the state. That is exactly the sense meant in Pope Leo’s encyclical, which was written to denounce socialist and Marxist doctrines calling for overthrow of governments.
Strictly speaking, Leo XIII was alluding to Gregory XVI’s 1834 encyclical Singulari Nos, which referred to what would later be called socialism, modernism, and the New Age as rerum novarum, having referred to them in Mirari Vos as novelties. Both were world class scholars, Gregory was more academic while Leo was more pragmatic, being the last pope to be elected having experience in civil government. Gregory had no previous experience in politics.
This accounts for their different approaches to the same problem. Gregory thought the Thomist revival and logical argument would work, evidently not appreciating that the New Things are based on a shift to faith alone, meaning personal opinion, and what Msgr. Ronald Knox called a rejection of “man’s miserable intellect.”
Leo was the first pope to offer a specific alternative to the New Things in the form of a practical application of natural law to the problem of making a living to expand on Gregory’s intellectual approach and Pius IX’s political reforms. Unfortunately, as with the two previous popes, Leo came up against people who confused justice with charity, faith with reason, and principle with application of principle, to say nothing of shifting sovereignty in temporal matters from the human person created by God to an abstraction created by man. This, as Ven. Fulton Sheen pointed out, inverts the order of creation, and turns God into man’s servant.
Well, Lewis & Short defines “res novae” as “political changes” or “revolution.” Sallust, in his The War With Cataline states “Interea Manlius in Etruria plebem sollicitare, egestate simul ac dolore iniuriae novarum rerum cupidam,” which is translated “Meanwhile Manlius in Etruria was rousing the common folk already eager for revolution as a result of poverty and resentment over wrongs…” Caesar, in his “The Gallic Wars” writes at one point, “Cupiditate regni adductus novis rebus studebat et quam plurimas civitates suo beneficio habēre obstrictas volebat,” which according to one translation goes “having been influenced by the desire of a kingdom, he was eager for a radical change in government and wished to have the greatest amount of states possible under obligations because of his kindness.” I might be tempted to render it “driven by the lust for power, he favored revolution…” but then I’m a mere amateur not an expert. In view of the fact that Marxists in the 19th century and today preach(ed) revolution, and the fact that Leo was a Latin scholar who had to have known what the Romans meant by “res novae,” it seems more than clear that the encyclical is aimed at the calls for popular uprising.
I wasn’t disagreeing with you — the whole point of the “New Things” was to overthrow traditional forms of Church, State and Family, as most of the popes since Gregory XVI have observed.
Got it.