Catholic Social Thought and the Corpus Leoninum

Catholic Social Thought and the Corpus Leoninum

Recently, while researching an article on Augusto Del Noce, I came across a paragraph quoted from Etienne Gilson that struck me and led me down a train of thought that might interest others. The quote was preceded by Del Noce’s assertion that the international Catholic movement known as Christian Democracy had its roots in Leo XIII’s Aeterni Patris, but the recognition of this source had become extremely rare one hundred years later. His broader point was that the origins of what we commonly call Catholic Social Teaching was in fact Leo’s famous encyclical on philosophy, which itself did not directly treat the social order.¹ More specifically, citing Gilson, he noted the centrality of situating the landmark Rerum Novarum in a context of nine encyclicals, which Leo himself stated on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his pontificate, in Vigesimo Quinto Anno.² Gilson suggests that these nine encyclicals can be called “the Corpus Leoninum” of Christian philosophy.³ At the outset of Aeterni Patris, Gilson emphasizes:

The deep thought of Leo XIII is announced at the beginning of the encyclical and it is a social thought, given that the order of all societies rests on the knowledge of truth accepted by those who govern the body politic. The Christian religion. . . is alone able to teach the truth and nothing but the truth. Still, one should not neglect the natural aids that the divine wisdom has devised to facilitate the work of faith. The main one is the right use of philosophy. For, not in vain did God set the light of reason in the human mind; and so far is the super-added light of faith from extinguishing or lessening the power of the intelligence that it completes it rather, and by adding to its strength renders it capable of greater things.⁴

As Gilson puts it, “the problem at stake in Aeterni Patris is a time of social unrest, caused by intellectual confusion, to be resolved by an appeal to human learning to get nations back on the road to salvation. However one may feel about the notion of “Christian philosophy”. . . it should define an apostolic use of philosophy conceived as an auxiliary to the work of redemption.” ⁵ In other words, social disorder is rooted in bad ideas, which ultimately go back to errors in philosophy. The Church is there to correct the philosophical errors by rearticulating the true ones. This only occurs when the proposed philosophy is itself a preamble to the faith.⁶

The decline of the sense of there being a definitive and authoritative body of thought we can call “Catholic Social Teaching,” its disintegration into “liberal” and “conservative” camps, slavishly following the thought of the established political ideologies, is tied most intimately to the loss of any definitive philosophy of which it is a part. With that loss came the loss of any sense of the entirely organic nature of the thought as being of one body. The damage was heightened by the invasion of modern “analytic” and “scientific” trends which themselves encouraged the decomposition of the unity of the thinking. Social reality was to be broken into parts studied separately. Eventually, the parts are conceived in ways isolated from each other, so we can read “Catholic” disquisitions about “liberty,” “authority,” “the state,” “rights,” “democracy,” property, but often in such isolation that they wind up being in tension with one another, as they are in secular thought. At the same time, of course, we have had decades of secular thinking weighing heavily on the political world, to the point where Catholic politicians found it easy to refer to Catholic Social Teaching quite selectively, to the point where it became easier simply to drop the “Catholic” altogether, and assert that the goal of CST is simply to align Catholics with the trends of “modern democracy,” to guarantee the best conditions for the enjoyment of temporal goods. This led necessarily to the increasing tendency to declare “neutrality” with reference to the religious, cultural and moral spheres, a neutrality always benefitting secular interpretations. Ultimately, any sense of CST being a religious doctrine melts down completely and CST is simply a metaphor for a “social progress” largely undetermined but always interpreted by the progressive point of view. In the final stage of its decomposition, CST becomes part of the ideology for the post-Christian” age.⁷ The point to underline here is that this deterioration is the necessary path CST has to take once its link to a definitive philosophy is severed. Those seeking some kind of respite from political and social insanity in Catholic Social Thought are much like the “conservatives” who for many years sought the salvation of the United States in the Constitution. What both sides fail to recognize is that the appeals to Catholic Social Thought or the Constitution are rooted in the assumption that everyone understands the words contained therein in the same way. But they only do that when they share a common philosophy that guides the interpretation. When that goes, the original meanings are gone with it, and we find “conservatives” supporting the entire panoply of “transgender rights” and Catholics supporting gay marriage. There will be no recovery of Catholic Social Thought unaccompanied by the necessary intellectual context in which Catholic Social Thought was born.

In the second part of this essay, I thought it apropos to review the intellectual context in which it was born in the thought of Leo XIII, that is, the Corpus Leoninum previously referenced. We must begin with Aeterni Patris, where Catholic Social Thought was truly born. To cut right to the heart of the matter, Leo saw naturalism as the philosophical root leading to all the social disorders since the French Revolution, and he condemns it resolutely. The naturalists teach that “human nature and human reason ought in all things be mistress and guide. . . {T]hey care little for duties to God, or pervert them by erroneous. . . opinions. For they deny that anything has been taught by God; they allow no dogma of religion or truth which cannot be understood by the human intelligence, nor any teacher who ought to be believed by reason of his authority.”⁸ From here, they proceed to negate any role for the Church in civil affairs and proclaim their commitment to complete disunity between church and state.⁹ Although they profess indifference toward religion¹⁰ under the guise of freedom of religion, they actually treat the Church with unmitigated contempt, attacking its very foundations, hindering its freedom of action when it interferes with their doctrines, imposing “onerous laws” upon the clergy and subjecting the Church’s possessions to “the strictest conditions.” ¹¹

Philosophically, the doctrine of “indifferentism” which undergirds most of contemporary thinking about church-state relations, must logically apply to nonbelief and atheism as well. If God’s existence becomes a matter of indifference, then all the truths related to God as ultimate foundation must fall as well – “namely, that all things were made by the free will of God the Creator, that the world is governed by Providence, that souls do not die, that to this life of man on earth there will succeed another and an everlasting life.”¹² From here, Pope Leo notes the necessary and corresponding decline of both private and public morality. For amongst the truths which surround the existence of God we find the eternal and natural laws which govern man. Without these, there is no firm basis for deciding what is just or unjust, or any moral foundation stone whatsoever beyond the vagaries of public opinion of the day.¹³ We end up with the denial of that most fundamental truth of man’s fallen state, original sin. Without this conviction, man quickly gives up the laborious struggle against his lower nature, which even the pagan moralists recognized as necessary in the pursuit of virtue. It is clear that what will prevail under such a philosophy is a society of moral license and vice, always in the pursuit of a comfortable life.¹⁴

The error in naturalism is that nature is claimed to be the final end and reason the ultimate arbiter of human affairs. The state is bound to the natural law, but the natural law finds its origin in the eternal law of God. God alone gives to nature both its finality and its intelligibility. There are truths of the metaphysical order but also of the moral order. Reason understood as a faculty not bound by natural or eternal law can never bring about the kind of moral and political unity that a society needs. Untethered from these higher laws, force alone remains to preserve public unity. Moreover, as Leo writes, “force is very feeble when the bulwark of religion is removed, and being more apt to beget slavery than obedience, it bears with itself the germs of ever-increasing troubles.”¹⁵ Neither reason untethered from God nor force can bring about social unity.

Leo is clear to distinguish the proper role of the people in government and the foundations of civil authority. He underlines that the ruling authority, no less than the society itself, has its source in nature and consequently has God for its Author. Hence it follows that public authority must proceed from God, “for God alone is the true and Supreme Lord of the world. Everything without exception must be subject to Him, and must serve him, so that whosoever holds the right to govern holds it from one sole and single source, namely, God, the sovereign Ruler over all.” ¹⁶

It is within this context that we can see how two central concept of political philosophy, freedom and law, must be conceived. Leo discusses natural liberty first. This is man’s capacity to choose under the guidance of reason. Man is not determined to act by circumstances or by his own instincts. In this we discover man’s spiritual nature, his immortal soul, undetermined by material forces of any kind. The Church has always rejected any philosophy preaching determinism or fatalism.¹⁷ Liberty belongs only to those with reason. It is a property of the will but must be governed by reason. To choose good is to choose in accord with reason. To choose evil is to choose against reason and to lose our liberty. We begin then to be determined by circumstances or instincts. So freedom itself stands in need of a law to direct man to his good and thereby preserve his freedom.¹⁸ He emphasizes, “Nothing more foolish can be uttered or conceived than the notion that, because man is free by nature, he is therefore exempt from law. Were this the case, it would follow that to become free we must be deprived of reason; whereas the truth is we are bound to law precisely because we are free by our very nature.”¹⁹ From here, Leo reviews Saint Thomas’ teaching on law from the Summa Theologiae. Natural law is the part of God’s eternal law that we can understood though the gift of reason. Natural law is embedded in us, and reason recognizes that certain moral laws apply to us. This inherent understanding of the natural law permits us to distinguish good from evil and direct our free wills accordingly. Human law is still necessary because the natural law generally lacks the specifications that we need in society to direct our behaviors. The natural law tells us we should not drive our cars at speeds which endanger ourselves and our neighbors, but human law is needed to set the exact speed limit to give criteria of recognition to the general principles of natural law. Saint Thomas specifies that this human law must always be directed to the common good of all. Laws then are dictates of reason for the common good. Authority exists to promote the common good. Laws which do not, or which violate the natural and eternal laws, are really no law at all, as Augustine famously said. Authority exists only because the common good exists. The common good, for its part, depends on authority for its realization.²⁰

There is some confusion which arises related to the origins of political authority. In its primary sense, political authority comes from God. As this often was used to justify aberrant theories such as the divine right of kings, it was necessary to develop a Catholic theory of popular sovereignty which preserved God’s authority while allowing the people to speak for themselves on matters concerning the common good. The Jesuits played a key role in this development, particularly Francisco Suárez and Robert Bellarmine. Very briefly, they defended the idea of popular sovereignty against the divine right theory, arguing that the original repository of political authority as granted by God was the people as a whole, who were free to transmit this authority to a regime of their preference, always understood of course to be under the eternal and natural laws.²¹ It is quite opposed to theories of popular sovereignty emerging out of the French revolutionary tradition which are rooted in naturalism.

Leo reminds the world that the Church has both authority and sovereignty, reminding us of a fundamental truth which has fallen into desuetude. This truth is, “Jesus Christ gave to the Apostles unrestrained authority in regard to things sacred, together with the genuine and most true power of making laws, as also with the twofold right of judging and punishing which flow from this power. In Matthew 28, Jesus grants his own full authority to the apostles. . . It is to the Church that God has assigned the charge of all that concerns religion, teaching all nations, spreading the Christian faith, administering freely all matters that fall within its competence.²² Moreover, the Church has held from the beginning that it is God who must be obeyed rather than men. Even in matters such as making treaties, the transaction of business matters, in sending and receiving ambassadors, “princes and all invested with the power to rule. . . have been wont to treat with the Church as with a supreme and legitimate power. And, assuredly, all ought to hold that it was not without a singular disposition of God’s Providence that this power of the Church was provided with a civil sovereignty as the surest safeguard of her independence.”²³

Leo reminds us of another truth that has equally fallen into desuetude, and that is the almost immeasurable good that the Church has brought to the betterment of civil life. Among these goods, a short list would include the increased quality of civil leadership, informed by the Gospel, generally less cruel and overbearing, exceptions notwithstanding. We even have two saints who were kings, bringing kindness, benevolence, and mercy to the fore. Over the centuries, slavery declined wherever the Church was the dominant cultural force. Civil authority as a result came frequently to be more respected. The sense of citizenship brought people more together. The entire political philosophy of representative government accompanied by rights was first developed in Catholic countries, most notably Spain and pre-Reformation England. Augustine contended that the benefits of Christianity to civil life were so great that it is hard to see how they would have been greater if indeed the Church had been constituted solely for the purpose of “living well and happily.”²⁴

This is nowhere more true than when we consider marriage, family life and human sexuality. Marriage is a natural institution, but from the beginning the institution was from God. It is incalculable to consider all the benefits divine revelation brought to lift up and ennoble this entire arena of life. Leo notes the sorry state of marriage and relations between the sexes in the absence of the Church’s influence. Marriage itself was defiled commonly by barbarities such as plural marriage, divorces, and an endless range of practices that degraded women and children. Men could indulge their lusts at houses of prostitution, while married women were frequently reduced to mere property, even bought and sold. Punishments could be meted out to women arbitrarily, even at times including capital punishment. I would add that such practices still exist in the world today.²⁵ To cite one example only, in Pakistan, there are 1,000 cases per year where women as young as thirteen are kidnapped from their homes, violated, forced to convert to Islam, and then married with no consent from the woman or her family. Jesus Christ condemned all of this and raised marriage to the level of a divine sacrament to be characterized by the most profound unity and perpetuity. He emphasized the unique intimacy of this relationship where the two become one flesh, raising it up to a bond of holiness meant to impart holiness to the spouses and the resulting family. All the aberrant practices were condemned from the beginning by the Church, as Jesus Christ commissioned the apostles to hand down in its entirety the new teaching concerning this sacrament. The natural bond was lifted to the level of heavenly love. A rich theology of marriage developed in the Church and continues to be developed in John Paul II’s theology of the body, for instance. Under the Church’s influence, women were honored as wives and mothers, children were lovingly raised to fulfill familial and civic duties. History demonstrates that the stable family founded by Christian marriage is the pillar of civilization itself. Without belaboring with endless detail, it can certainly be said that cultural practices in contradiction to the religious norms lead to vast negative results across almost every social indicator: family breakup, accompanied by poverty, delinquency, inability to adjust to adult responsibility, criminality, etc. Leo reminds us further that God, not the state, is the founder of this central institution, and Jesus Christ left its governance in the hands of the Church. He writes, “Christ, therefore, having renewed marriage to such and so great excellence, commended and entrusted all the discipline bearing upon these matters to His Church. [This power was] given divinely to her by the will of her Founder.” He goes on to note that since the earliest Council of Jerusalem until Leo’s time, the Church has zealously defended the sacrament of marriage and condemned all teaching which sought to undermine it, from the time of the Gnostics down to the Marxists in Leo’s time.²⁶

To conclude, the Corpus Leoninum of Leo XIII is a stark reminder that Catholic Social teaching initiated by Rerum Novarum was never understood to be a stand-alone doctrine, but always integrally connected to the philosophy which is the preamble to the faith, and ultimately to the faith itself. Catholic Social teaching was never intended to be articulated as a kind of middle alternative to the ideologies of the day, much less to compete with them on their own terms. It was certainly never intended in any sense to initiate political conversations in which the current state of religion, culture and morals in society would be considered a kind of given that need not be addressed. Catholic Social Teaching was never intended to bring about “justice and peace” in contexts where sound philosophy and morality were regularly flouted and ignored. The truth is that Catholic Social teaching taken in these aberrant senses has no chance of accomplishing much of anything. A society that will not convert its corrupted morality is doomed. Any interpretation of Catholic Social Thought that does not underline this imperative of conversion is unfaithful to its meaning. Leo XIII was quite clear on these points, always understanding the Church’s Social teaching in its proper philosophical and theological context, without which it becomes meaningless.

On a closing note, I would add that there are some significant differences in the Corpus Leoninum from the present time, only one of which I will mention. Leo XIII was more willing to openly proclaim the authority of God and the authority of the Church with reference to relevant matters. I fear that a damaging misunderstanding may take hold in the Church. The Church today seems less willing to refer to its own authority and even God’s authority in its pronouncements. I understand that the Church does not want to be understood as attempting to impose solutions by force, so it says that the Church proposes but does not impose. Yet, my fear is that in the cultural context of today that is taken to mean mistakenly that the Church merely takes its place alongside all the other interest groups and offers its proposals, which the governments and the people are completely free to dismiss. The Church cannot allow this interpretation and be faithful to its commission from Christ. When the Church teaches authoritatively, it fulfills the mission Christ gave it in the only way it can be fulfilled, because the teaching is from God and therefore is authoritative. The world has been misunderstanding authority for some centuries now because it has lost the sense of God. It is the Church’s mission to teach precisely this.

Dr. Thomas Rourke

Professor Emeritus

Penn West University