Rerum Novarum – 120 Years

This 15^th of May will be the 120^th anniversary of the release of the Encyclical Rerum Novarum by Pope Leo XIII on the “condition of Labour”. In anticipation of this anniversary I have read the Encyclical and have to admit to being impressed beyond my expectations by the wisdom it contains. I was afraid before reading Rerum Novarum that the conclusions would be out of date and/or else blatantly obvious to our society where, in Australia at least, trade unions are most certainly not banned and the almost every worker (and for that matter the unemployed) receive, at the very least, a living wage. Certainly the challenges (of which there are many) to create a Christian workplace have changed radically in Australia since 1891. Nonetheless it is no exaggeration to assert that the Rerum Novarum contains a goldmine of wisdom most of which is still applicable and necessary to heed today.

I will follow this post up at a later date with greater commentary on Rerum Novarum, but for the mean time I want to concentrate on a single point. This is Pope Leo’s simultaneous condemnation of both unbridled capitalism and socialism. Such a denunciation of both practices was fairly radical in its day as the extract from the writings of G. K. Chesterton, below, demonstrates. The rejection of the two most prevalent economic theories of the age, by the Pope, affirmed an alternate road, a more "human" solution to the problems of justice in economics. The condemnation of both capitalism and socialism also presents a striking example of the value of the Pontiff; free, through the grace of God, from bowing to the fads of an age, and thus able to present the necessity of Catholicism to be present, in all areas of life, to the world.

“Shades of the prison-house began to close and with them came a merely mechanical discussion as to how we were all to get out of prison. Then indeed, in the darkness of the dungeon, was heard the voice of Mr. Sidney Webb, telling us that we could only conceivably get out of our Capitalist captivity with the patent Chubb key of Collectivism. Or to use a more exact metaphor, he told us that we could only escape from our dark and filthy cells of industrial slavery by melting all our private latchkeys into one gigantic latchkey as large as a battering ram. We did not really like giving up our little private keys or local attachments or love of our own possessions; but we were quite convinced that social justice must be done somehow and could only be done socialistically. I therefore became a Socialist in the old days of the Fabian Society; and so I think did everybody else worth talking about except the Catholics. And the Catholics were an insignificant handful, the dregs of a dead religion, essentially a superstition. About this time appeared the Encyclical on Labor by Leo XIII; and nobody in our really well-informed world took much notice of it. Certainly the Pope spoke as strongly as any Socialist could speak when he said that Capitalism "laid on the toiling millions a yoke little better than slavery." But as the Pope was not a Socialist it was obvious that he had not read the right Socialist books and pamphlets; and we could not expect the poor old gentleman to know what every young man knew by this time--that Socialism was inevitable. That was a long time ago, and by a gradual process, mostly practical and political, which I have no intention of describing here, most of us began to realize that Socialism was not inevitable; that it was not really popular; that it was not the only way, or even the right way, of restoring the rights of the poor. We have come to the conclusion that the obvious cure for private property being given to the few is to see that it is given to the many; not to see that it is taken away from everybody or given in trust to the dear good politicians. Then, having discovered that fact as a fact, we look back at Leo XIII and discover in his old and dated document, of which we took no notice at the time, that he was saying then exactly what we are saying now. "As many as possible of the working classes should become owners." That is what I mean by the justification of arbitrary warning. If the Pope had said then exactly what we said and wanted him to say, we should not have really reverenced him then and we should have entirely repudiated him afterwards. He would only have marched with the million who accepted Fabianism; and with them he would have marched away. But when he saw a distinction we did not see then, and do see now, that distinction is decisive. It marks a disagreement more convincing than a hundred agreements. It is not that he was right when we were right, but that he was right when we were wrong.“

“The Exception Proves the Rule” from The Catholic Church and Conversion by G. K. Chesterton