May 15 is the 135th anniversary of the promulgation of Rerum Novarum, the encyclical of Pope Leo XIII that is widely regarded as the document that established the foundations for modern Catholic social teaching.
But what do we mean by “social teaching” and how does it differ from the Church’s teachings on other moral matters? And in what way did Rerum Novarum mark a kind of beginning?
To answer this, we need to understand that the Church had for centuries leaned heavily upon the theology of Thomas Aquinas, especially in his development of “natural law” as the mainstay of all Catholic moral thinking. Put in its simplest form, “natural law” involves a fundamental belief in a creator God who is rational and good and who has imparted to his creation clear signs of that reason and that goodness. He has also made humans in his image and likeness, which means, among other things, that he has endowed us with reason and moral awareness. Therefore, “natural law” refers to our human rational recognition of, and thus participation in, the rational order and moral goodness of the natural world, which is a recognition that can lead us to develop fundamental moral principles.
This is why Catholic moral theology has always been a combination of reason and Revelation, with Scripture providing us with the certainty of divinely revealed moral truths, but now also combined with a deepening of our understanding of the full implications of these truths through the use of natural-law moral reasoning. It is “faith seeking understanding,” with reason being the handmaiden of faith.
Prior to the modern era, the Church really did not have a body of separate natural-law reflections that we could designate as “Catholic social teaching.” There was simply “Catholic moral teaching,” within which there existed as subcategories such topics as private property, wealth, the obligations of justice and charity within the political order, and the rights and duties of citizens in the social order.
And so long as that social order remained thoroughly sacral and leavened with the yeast of Catholic culture, the seamlessness of Catholic moral theology did not seem to require a separate category called “Catholic social teaching.”
So what changed? Christendom died, that is what changed, and Western culture evolved through a series of revolutionary jolts from a sacral order rooted in Catholicism to a secular order rooted in the de facto atheism of an official “indifference” to religion. After the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the Scientific Revolution, the world was never the same. Science and “secular reason” ruled the day, and any kind of religious discourse was deemed inherently irrational and purely subjective.
Thus was the entirety of modern society constructed on the proposition that we can proceed to organizing ourselves socially as if God does not matter — or, worse, that the very idea of God is socially dangerous and therefore religion must be purged from the public square as a matter of social hygiene.
But how does all of this relate to Rerum Novarum and the rise of modern Catholic social teaching? The move to privatize religion meant that the vast growth of political, economic, industrial, military and scientific/technological power was now governed in its entirety by a thin set of wispy-thin secular “values” that seemed to serve the needs primarily of the ruling classes at the expense of the new class of industrial workers.
Pre-modern aristocratic societies were very class-conscious. And that sense of class privilege remained within the modern world’s development of industrial and political power with wealth and influence falling into the hands of a very few, giving rise to Marxist theories of class conflict and various agitations for socialism as the answer. But in all of this, the voice of the Church had been removed from polite society and then from not-so-polite society.
Therefore, Pope Leo XIII understood that the social order was no longer Catholic and was deeply secular. What was needed in his mind was a recalibration of Catholic moral theology wherein Catholic natural-law theory would be applied to the social problems created by secular society, fully aware that such an endeavor would be met with hostility by many. Nevertheless, Leo understood that this “new revolutionary world” (which is what “Rerum Novarum” really means) needed, in a more specifically social modality, the revolution of the Gospel.
In other words, the social order had become “separated” from the Church and therefore a new category of moral thinking that had outreach to that separated world was needed. When we look at the specifics of Rerum Novarum, we see that the encyclical is subtitled as “On Capital and Labor.” We see, therefore, a focused awareness on the fact that there was a new economic reality that was of particular concern. Money (capital) had become a commodity in and of itself, and even as industrial factories generated enormous wealth for a few, that money was itself invested in other ventures, making money a source of more money, and so on. And none of it really trickled down to the laborers.
Working and housing conditions became appalling, and there were not as yet any government regulations on industry, nor were there labor unions, and those in wealth were able to buy influence with politicians. Socialism emerged as a revolutionary answer to these problems, and that threat only increased over time.
Therefore, Leo begins his encyclical with a defense of private property against socialism and underscores that, in the end, socialism, being grounded in secular and atheistic motivations, was a dead end that would make the human condition worse. He proposes instead a notion of private property that affirms its value and its grounding in natural law, and he nuances this by appealing to the fact that such rights are not absolute and that there are social obligations rooted in the law of God that may at times supersede it.
Leo affirms the rights of labor to organize into unions but also cautions that this cannot be grounded in an adversarial notion of class warfare, of the “proletariat rising up” against the wealthy classes. He affirms the rights of factory owners to make a profit and that the factory is legitimately theirs but then cautions that excessive profiteering must not come on the backs of unfairly low wages for their workers.
In short, what Leo proposes is that our economic relations should be governed by the golden mean of the Christian virtues. We may not live in a Catholic culture anymore, but, Leo points out, the fact remains that the Church possesses truths from the Gospel that alone can provide us with the modes of virtuous living required for any social order to work. In a world where the only law is the Hobbesian “war of all against all,” the only result will be the dissolution of our social bonds, which will in turn lead to tyranny.
The danger in all of this is that “social teaching” will become an abstraction and that the secular separation of culture from the Church can lead us into a false sense that natural-law principles are some kind of halfway-house language between faith and unbelief. That natural-law thinking, grounded as it is in “reason,” is a “neutral” form of moral thinking that all people of goodwill can embrace.
There is some truth in the idea that natural law is a theory that can appeal to anyone who has a basic belief in God. But when used as a “non-offensive” substitute for the more specific and prophetic categories of the Gospel, natural-law theory can play into the hands of those who think there is only one true form of reason, and that is secular reason, which is falsely thought to be more “objective” than faith-based reason.
Thankfully, Leo XIII rejects the “neutralist language” approach and insists that, ultimately, the answer to the social ills that plague us is nothing short of Christ and the regenerative grace of salvation that he alone brings. This is why, in the end, Leo embraces a holistic social message that calls on all parties to pursue lives of Christian virtue and that this approach transcends all political stratagems.
Pope Leo XIV is set to sign his first encyclical on the anniversary, with the rumored title of Magnifica Humanitas (“Magnificent Humanity”). This should not surprise us, given his choice of papal name! And he will, no doubt, build on the legacy of his predecessor and apply the same prophetic wisdom to the new and unique social ills of our time.
Peter is still speaking. And the Church’s voice is perhaps even more needed and important now than ever before.
