What’s in a name? Newly elected Pope Leo XIV sent a message about how his pontificate might unfold when he chose to follow in the footsteps of Pope Leo XIII. The following is an essay on Pope Leo XIII and his Rerum novarum of 1891 – the beginnings of Catholic Social Teaching. It is an excerpt from Doing Faithjustice: An Introduction to Catholic Social Thought and Action, By Fr. Fred Kammer, SJ
Rerum novarum, 1891 (On the Condition of Workers)—Pope Leo XIII
Setting. Following the Industrial Revolution, liberalism, capitalism, and socialism competed for allegiance in nineteenth-century Europe and America. European Catholic leaders were discussing economic problems and the harsh plight of industrial workers. In 1890, Emperor William II convened an international conference in Berlin on problems of labor.74 Unions were developing in a conflicted industrial arena. In the United States, a majority of bishops supported the Knights of Labor, narrowly averting a papal condemnation of the Knights in the late 1880s based on issues around membership by workers of all faiths and no faith.75
Pope Leo commissioned and carefully reviewed a first draft by the Jesuit Matteo Liberatore, then another by the Dominican Cardinal Tommaso Maria Zigliara, then a third version involving Liberatore with the Jesuit Cardinal Camillo Mazzella, revised yet again by Msgr. Gabriele Boccali, one of the pope’s secretaries.76
Summary. Pope Leo examined the misery and exploitation of industrial workers and families [3], noting the destitution of many and the concentration of wealth by few [3]. Rejecting class warfare and denial of property rights, Leo affirmed private possession and the common purpose of property [8], distinguishing just ownership from just use [22]. He taught the duty to pay a living wage [45], rights to organize [49-52], and collaboration rather than class struggle. Leo sets the framework for the next century: opposing liberalism, which deifies reason, freedom, and conscience, but also opposing socialism, which “gives too great a role to the state” and does not recognize individual dignity and rights.77
The church has a right to speak out on social issues and promote social reconciliation [16]. The state in turn must intervene when the common good or a particular class suffers and there is no other remedy [36]. The state should protect property rights for “as many as possible” [46] and rights of association and religion, as well as assuring that workers are paid sufficiently to be adequately “housed, clothed and bodily fit.” [34]
Key Ideas
Moral Outrage. By declaring that “some opportune remedy must be found quickly for the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class” [3], Pope Leo set the Church firmly amid the burning social questions of his day. He denounced “a rapacious usury” and concentration of economic power “so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself” [3]. Beyond the content, Leo laid a solid foundation for later social teachings: “perhaps even more important was the character of the document as a cry of protest against the exploitation of poor workers.”78
His intervention was a solemn rejection of a dominant economic tenet of the day, “that labour is a commodity to be bought at market prices determined by the law of supply and demand rather than by the human needs of the worker.”79 Leo’s was a stinging protest against the economic status quo, and its effect over time was to move social issues to the center of the Church’s mission, “driving home the idea that Catholics must have a social conscience,” and to encourage those already so committed.80
Workers’ Rights and Duties. Working from a framework of natural law, Pope Leo built upon the foundational concept of human dignity and the related belief that work is not just a commodity. From these he developed specific worker rights: freedom to receive and spend wages as they see fit [5]; integrity of family life, including providing necessities to children [13]; wages sufficient to support a worker who is “frugal and well-behaved” and, by implication, his or her family [45]. This concept of a family wage will be clarified and grow across the 130-year tradition, but it is rooted here in Pope Leo’s writing.
Leo upheld rights to reasonable hours, rest periods, health safeguards, safe working conditions, and special provisions for women and children, including minimum age requirements [42]; freedom to attend to religious obligations [20]; no work on Sundays or holy days [41]; and the right to form workers’ associations [49-52]. These rights will be developed further by succeeding teachers of the tradition. Workers also were to work well and conscientiously, not injure the property or person of employers, refrain from violence or rioting, and be thrifty and prudent [20 and 46].
Numbers in [brackets] are the paragraph numbers in Rerum Novarum.
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- Roger Aubert, Catholic Social Teaching: An Historical Perspective, 193.
- Charles Curran, American Catholic Social Ethics: Twentieth Century Approaches, 8–9.
- Aubert, Perspective, 193–94.
- Curran, Catholic Social Teaching, 71.
- Donal Dorr, Option for the Poor: A Hundred Years of Vatican Social Teaching, 11.
- Dorr, Option, 12.
- Dorr, Option, 13.
Doing Faith Justice, [Paulist Press, 4th Edition, 2023], pp. 106-108.
Feature image: Fresco of Mother Cabrini and Pope Leo XIII, Rei Momo, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
