Modern times created new opportunities and ‘creature comforts’ that were unknown or unimaginable to earlier generations. The seventeenth century saw an explosion of scientific knowledge within nearly every fields of research. The eighteenth century ushered in a new self-understanding of humankind, including new forms of general governance (republic, democratic) and of economy (market-driven capitalism). The nineteenth century saw a symbiotic convergence of these strands with exponential advances in travel (steamboats) and productivity (factories).
But, like any human enterprise, growth benefits also brought untold suffering to many. Harnessing coal and steam power for factories made it possible to assemble huge machines to create an unheard-of rate of production; electric power made it possible to extend producing (work hours). Unbridled producing ran workers to death, often, literally to death. There was no social harness to regulate working conditions.
Two movements began to address the horrid working and social conditions of urbanized industrial production of the nineteenth. One direction was political. Karl Marx and Frederich Engels analyzed and named the causes of unjust suffering of workers through their “hermeneutic of suspicion” by which they unveiled the falsity of property ownership divorced from the sharing the fruits of labor with the workers, the real creators of the products. Their answer was common ownership of the product, or its sale, hence, communal sharing or communism. In their analysis, religion appeared only to support the oppressive status quo by giving meager hope to the working classes of a better life only in “the next life.”
But the second direction was that of Catholicism. Catholics of Austria, France and Switzerland formed schools of thought about ways to correct the current problems. Unlike their communist confreres, the Catholic approach was oriented to reforming, not revolution. There was no one Catholic way to resolve the problem. Instead, a range of resolutions, from collective ownership (resembling communism) to moral demands on factory owners to pay just wages to their workers (hence, a just sharing of profits), developed. Notably, Catholic factory owners were part of these consortia.
Groups went to Rome to plead with the Pope to say something. This began in the 1860s. These pleas fell on the deaf ears of Pope Pius IX (1846-1878) who was absorbed with the loss of the Papal States over the course of twenty years. He could not conceive of the Church exercising any influence over economy. But the sheer tedium of the outcry by Catholic employers and workers finally moved Pope Leo XIII to address the condition of workers.
Through the work (research and writing) of a ghost writer, the Pope promulgated the encyclical*Rerum novarum [On New Things] on May 15, 1891. Some feel the letter was too late; communism had already established itself as the voice of the worker. Others, however, feel that, even at this ‘late’ date, the playing out of various economic schemes gave the encyclical a perspective by which to offer balanced advice. In either case, this letter was monumental, a first of its kind. Never had the modern church spoken of something so secular, so current, and so fraught with controversy. And it made an impact.
Next week we shall investigate the general contents of this encyclical and the repercussions of its promulgation.
*=encyclical is a “circular/circulating letter” from the Pope. In 1891 it was addressed solely to the bishops. Nowadays, the popes address it to bishops, faithful and those of good will.
The impulse to speak
