The Pope's Social Encyclical

Extract

As readers of Blackfriars are likely to have and to have read the Encylical itself, we shall have begun to satisfy our duty to our Holy Father if we call attention to some of its main statements and principles.

It is just a little disconcerting that our Holy Father has to acknowledge that gratitude for the Rerum Novarum of Pope Leo XIII was not universal even among Catholics. Thus he is obliged to write of the Rerum Novarum :

Despite this widespread agreement, however, some minds were not a little disturbed, with the result that the noble and exalted teaching of Leo XIII, quite novel to worldly ears, was looked upon with suspicion by some, even among Catholics.

The same paternal rebuke of Catholics is to be found in another passage dealing with Workmen’s Associations or Trade Unions which had been advocated by Pope Leo XIII :

The lesson was well timed. For at that period rulers of not a few nations were deeply infected with Liberalism, and regarded such unions of working-men with disfavour, if not with open hostility. There were even Catholics who viewed with suspicion the efforts of the labouring classes to form such unions, as if they reflected the spirit of Socialistic or revolutionary agitators.