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2. Leo XIII (1878-1903)

a) Leo XIII vs. the Industrial Revolution

o The 19th century saw the Industrial Revolution replace the domestic “cottage” economy [remember this from Socials 9].

o One of the effects was that a few wealthy industrialists owned factories that often exploited workers with low wages, long hours, and dangerous working conditions.

o Child labour was also a problem because children could be paid less and exploited more easily, e.g. the following excerpt from a commission investigating British coal mines:

Patience Kershaw, age 17: “I go to [the mines] at 5 o’clock in the morning and come out at 5 in the evening…I do not stop or rest any time [to eat]…sometimes they beat me if I am not quick enough…I am the only girl in the pit…”[1]

i] The Socialist response—Karl Marx and Das Kapital

• In reaction to this, many people thought that this exploitation was rooted in a constant struggle between the social classes of society.

• They believed that in this struggle, the “proletariat” (working class) would be exploited by the “capitalists” (private owners) who controlled all the profit.

• Because of this class struggle, it was up to the workers to overturn this system and institute a “classless society” where no one would be exploited.

• These ideas were expressed by the German thinker Karl Marx in his book Das Kapital written in 1867. Marx also worked with his colleague Friedrich Engels in the book The Communist Manifesto.

• These two books influenced many socialist groups to start agitating for change, and Marx would be known as the “father of modern communism”.

• For Marx, religion was the “opiate of the people.” In other words, religion (particularly Catholicism since the Church did own land) was just a means to placate the people and prevent them from starting the proletariat revolution.

• Because of this, the Socialists of the 19th c. and later the Communists of the 20th c. were destined to be enemies of religion and the Catholic Church.

ii] The Church’s response—Leo XIII and Rerum Novarum

• By 1878, Leo XIII was elected after Pius IX passed away.

• Leo XIII knew that the abuses of the Industrial Revolution were evils that had to be dealt with, just like Pius IX had to deal with Secular Nationalism and the other errors he fought.

• To do that, Leo wrote the encyclical Rerum Novarum (“Of the New Things”). In it, he criticized both extreme socialism for its attack on religion and irresponsible capitalism for allowing so many injustices.

• Leo also encouraged the formation of trade unions as a reflection of the medieval guilds, provided that they had the approach of “collaboration [with employers] through conflict.”

• Other excerpts of Rerum Novarum:

“Religion teaches the rich man and the employer that their work-people are not their slaves; that they must respect in every man his dignity as a man and as a Christian; that labour is nothing to be ashamed of, if we listen to right reason and to Christian philosophy, but it is an honourable employment, enabling a man to sustain his life in an upright and creditable way; and that it is shameful and inhuman to treat men like chattels (belongings) to make money by, or to look upon them merely as so much muscle of physical power (Rerum Novarum 21).

“Let the working man and the employer make free agreements, and in particular let them agree freely as to the wages; nevertheless, there underlies a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner. If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accepts harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice” (Rerum Novarum 45).

b) Leo XIII vs. Darwinism

• Another challenge to the Church occurred in 19th c., which was reminiscent of the Galileo case in the 17th c.

• In 1859, Charles Darwin published The Origin of the Species which formulated the theory of evolution.

• This theory posed questions that made the Galileo controversy look minor:

- Did God create the world if humans evolved from ape, which in turn evolved from other species?

- Was the world created in 6 days? Did Adam and Eve really exist?

- Were those who said that the Bible must be read literally wrong?

- If natural selection was correct (i.e., “only the strong will survive”), does helping people who were weak, old, handicapped, or otherwise “undesirable” was against nature?

• Leo realized that the challenges Darwinism proposed needed an answer from the Church.

• To do that, he instituted the Vatican Biblical Commission in order to study the Bible using new methods in archeology and linguistics. He also encouraged biblical scholarship around the world, and he even opened Vatican archives to academics.

• These studies could not answer the challenges of Darwinism immediately, but they did allow future scholars to reconcile the Bible and science.

3. St. Pius X (1903-1914)

o When Leo XIII died, a man from a humble Italian peasant family was elected pope: Cardinal Giussepe Sarto, who took the name of Pius X.

o Pius X’s guiding principle of his pontificate was shown by his motto: Instruare Omnia in Christo (“To Restore All Things in Christ”).

o He tried to do this in 2 ways.

a) Pius X and the Holy Eucharist

• Pius felt that the best way for Catholics to be spiritual was to receive Christ in the Eucharist frequently.

• Recent customs saw Catholics receiving Communion as little as once a month.

• Pius encouraged daily Communion, teaching that Eucharist isn’t only a reward for the good, but medicine for the spiritually needy.

• Pius extended this vision with an extraordinary step on Dec. 20, 1905 when he decreed that a person’s First Communion should be received around the age of 6 instead of around the age of 14.

• His reason was that a child should receive First Communion before committing his/her first mortal sin.

b) Pius X vs. Modernism

• While he was trying to foster the spirituality of ordinary Catholics, Pius went on the offensive against the philosophical enemies of the Church.

• Pius knew that all the difficulties the Church went through because of the ideas that caused Secular Nationalism (e.g., Rationalism and the other philosophies condemned by Bd. Pius IX in Quanta Cura).

• St. Pius X saw all these ideas merging as a whole in the beginning of the 20th c. as a new type of philosophy called Modernism.

• Like Pius IX and Quanta Cura, Pius X attacked the ideas of Modernism with an encyclical of his own: Pascendi Dominici Gregi (“Of feeding the Lord’s Flock”), written on September 8, 1907.

• In this encyclical, he calls Modernism the “synthesis of all heresies” and contains 3 fundamental errors:

i] Agnosticism—the idea that the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of Revelation and faith cannot be known with certainty.

ii] Immanence—the idea that Bible and Divine Tradition are only the result of feelings and emotions of religious people and thus are not real.

iii] Moral Evolutionism [not Darwin’s theory of Evolution]—the idea that the dogmas and moral standards of the Catholic Church are not unchangeable; in other words:

- Morality is the result of gradual evolution of human thought.

- Because of this, the Church’s moral standards must develop and give place to other moralities as times change.

- Morality, then, is subjective, and the Church should comply with the times.

[Note: this is a similar criticism that some critics threw at Benedict XVI when he was elected pope in 2005.]

• Through all this, Catholics could progress spiritually and face philosophical attacks against the Church.

• Unfortunately, the Church would have to deal with an even bigger set of crises that affected it and the rest of the world.

• When Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo in 1914, both the Church and the world would face the biggest challenges ever.

Assignment

1. Compare how Urban VIII handled the Galileo case to how Leo XIII handled Darwinism; which pope did a better job?

2. Use excerpts of Rerum Novarum to show how Leo XIII tried to address the abuses of the Industrial Revolution.

3. In what way was what Pius IX tried to do with Quanta Cura and the Feast of the Immaculate Conception similar to what Pius X tried to do with Pascendi Dominici Gregi and lowering the age for First Communion?

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[1] Scott, Jonathan French, and Alexander Baltzly. Readings in European history since 1814. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1958. Print.

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