Religion And Politics 11. Rerum Novarum. The 1891 Papal Encyclical that Pulled the Church into the Modern Age.

Send us Fan MailRerum NovarumFor those of you who are Catholics, I have bad news for you.  There was a time in the 1800s when your church went over the edge, in terms of what you value today.  It renounced reading of unapproved books, it renounced what you would think of as education, it renounced curiosity, and it even renounced the existence of Germany and Italy.  (The pope had a vested interest in the non-existence of Italy given that he was the ruler of his own state, which got absorbed into Italy.  Anyone who voted in an Italian election or served the Italian state in any way was excommunicated.  To be honest they made themselves irrelevant, so that large numbers of Italians marched away from the church.   This is called anti-clerical).  This 1891 encyclical, by Leo XIII, one of the great popes, reversed that disastrous tendency, and tried to drag the Church into the modern age. An encyclical is important not because it repeats what the Church has already said – the rich should give charity to the poor.  That's not new – but because it says something the Church has never said before.  These are called New Teachings.  This encyclical has three new teachings.  Those are identified along the way. An encyclical is an official teaching by the pope.  The word means Letter and borrows from the epistles (letters) of Paul in the New Testament.  Encyclicals have numbered paragraphs to make it easier to discuss.  The podcast makes reference to those numbers throughout. It is possible to listen to this podcast without the text in front of you, but this is a case where I would recommend that you download the encyclical and read along.  I will attach a link. This was a class lecture.  How would we classify this pope?  He is definitely a classical conservative in the sense of Disraeli.  He clearly has Lockean impulses.  He is a cultural conservative in the sense of gender issues.  He is NOT a Ronald Reagan conservative. (“The most frightening words in the English language are, I’m from the government and I’m here to help”).   He clearly wants to save the capitalist system and to reinforce the power structure and make it work more effectively.  He feels a bit of nostalgia for the past but is realistic that we cannot turn back history.  He wants the Church to play a role in the future in terms of creating and shaping parties and unions.  Would you call him a paternalistic Disraeli cautious reformer?  That is an awkward term but I can’t think of any that is better. Note:  I think the Pope was answering the Communist Manifesto, even though he never mentions Marx.  See if you agree. http://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html