The Evolution of the Papacy. Francis Ambrose Ridley 1949
No one can be both a sincere Socialist and a good Catholic. – Pope Pius XI, Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno
The proclamation of Papal Infallibility, which marked the high-watermark of Papal supremacy in and over the Roman Catholic Church – a Church, incidentally, now more ‘Roman’ and less ‘Catholic’ than in past ages – was quickly followed by the loss of the Popes’ Temporal Power. For war broke out between France and Germany immediately after the Proclamation of Papal Infallibility upon 18 July 1870. The counter-revolutionary French Dictator Louis Bonaparte (Napoleon III) was forced to withdraw his troops from Rome, where they had safeguarded the last days of the Papal Power. The Italians thereupon promptly marched in. Rome became the capital of the secular Italian Kingdom, whilst the Pope, now the (self-styled) ‘Prisoner of the Vatican’, henceforth sat and schemed behind its walls.
In 1878, the ultra-reactionary Pope Pius IX, who in his famous Syllabus of 1864 had denounced modern civilisation and all its works, died, and was succeeded by Leo XIII, probably at bottom equally reactionary, but a good deal more intelligent. The long reign of this remarkable Pope (1878 – 1903) marked important historical developments, particularly in the social and political spheres. For it was Leo’s Social Encyclical Letters which marked the beginnings of the powerful modern movements of ‘Christian Democracy’ and ‘Catholic Action’.
As this is the predominant type of Catholicism in the twentieth century, a word may usefully be added upon these recent developments in Papal policy. For the Church of Rome, particularly since those political opportunists, the Jesuits, took charge of its destinies, is a very flexible institution in worldly affairs, and one must not make the mistake of judging its subtle policies purely on the strength of the denunciations of its opponents.
Upon 15 May 1891, Pope Leo XIII issued his most famous Encyclical, The Condition of the Working Classes, or Rerum Novarum, to give it its proper Latin title. This Encyclical of Pope Leo, whose chief adviser here is said to have been the English Cardinal Manning, was the first of many such defining the new social and political outlook of the Papacy as and when faced with the problems of the modern industrial age. Its teaching is the foundation of modern Social Catholicism; and it is necessary to understand it if one would understand what modern Catholicism is today.
If we penetrate the long-winded verbosity which characterises modern Papal pronouncements, we can express the essentials of this policy in the following terms. (The two most important documents that are relevant in this connection are the aforementioned Rerum Novarum of Pope Leo and the later Quadragesimo Anno – In the Fortieth Year – of Pope Pius XI – 15 May 1931.)
The following paragraphs may be taken as a summary (not at all in ecclesiastical inflated phraseology) of the modern social policy of the Popes that began in 1891.
Prior to the publication of Rerum Novarum, the social policy of the Popes had been one of pure undiluted reaction in every sphere. All and any democracy was alien to the Vatican. The French Revolution, that potent seed of modern political progress, was anathema to Rome. The Papacy sought for its allies not among the broad masses of the people, who, to be sure, did not count for much politically before the French Revolution, but solely at Courts and in the narrow and exclusive circles of the governing classes; amongst royal autocrats, landowners, generals and, in brief, amongst the feudal ruling classes of the old pre- (French) Revolution regime. It was in alliance with these atavistic feudal relics that the Papacy tried to drown the European revolutionary movements in blood during the era between 1814 and 1870 when the ‘Holy Alliance’ was in its hey-day.
However, as the nineteenth century wore on the European landscape began to change with increasing rapidity, particularly after the ‘Year of Revolutions’, 1848. The Industrial Revolution crossed the Channel from its birthplace, England, and began to transform the ancient agrarian civilisation of Europe. In country after country the factory system made its appearance, and along with it there came the inevitable problems that accompany industrialism everywhere, the struggle of Capital and Labour, the rise of Socialism, the emergence of the masses to political consciousness. The fundamental social fact about the past century has been undoubtedly the entry of the popular, previously inarticulate, masses upon the stage of history.
Confronted with an age of such a kind, both political and ecclesiastical reaction were forced to remodel their traditional methods; either they had to find a broader basis in popular support, or else face a speedy obliteration. Secular reaction solved this fundamental problem, as I shall show in my next chapter, by resorting to Fascism, the essential feature in which it differs from old-style Conservatism is that it uses demagogic ‘leftist’ phraseology in order to attract the unprivileged masses to support its essentially counter-revolutionary aims.
But here again, as in the case of its adoption of a totalitarian dictatorship in 1870, the clerical reaction was a generation ahead of the political reaction. For the Social Encyclicals of the Popes between 1891 and 1931 discharged an identical purpose. Their essential aim was – and is – to find a mass basis for Papal policy by the use of ‘leftist’ demagogic phrases. Here again the Popes were the teachers of Fascism.
The Papal Encyclicals envisage a definite Social Order, which the Church of Rome seeks to put into force wherever it has the power. A Social Order which may, perhaps, be defined as a Church-controlled Capitalism resting on a judicious balance of Capital, Labour and peasantry in which the Church has the last word as umpire. Both the excesses of Capitalism and Socialism are denounced. Capital, according to Pope Leo, ‘lays upon the workers a burden but little lighter than that of slavery itself’. Whilst Socialism, according to Pope Pius, ‘conceives society in a manner entirely repugnant to Christian Truth’.
Here the Church becomes the ‘rejoicing third'; it simultaneously safeguards the propertied classes against Socialist and Communist expropriation by the workers, whilst simultaneously protecting the masses against the abuses of Capitalism. Such was and is ‘Christian Democracy’, the ideal state of Roman sociology. Who was it once said that one cannot serve God and Mammon simultaneously?
The above type of social order obviously requires a clerical-controlled dictatorship to enforce it, and it is in fact the formula since revealed to the world as Clerical Fascism, from Austria to the Argentine.
A word may here be usefully added upon the attitude of Roman sociology to respectively Capitalism and Socialism, the two main social ideologies of the modern world. Contrary to the opinion of many people, the Vatican is neither completely pro-Capitalist nor completely anti-Socialist. It all depends (to quote that eminent pundit Dr Joad), what one means by Capitalism and/or Socialism.
Competitive Capitalism was the creation not of the Church of Rome, but of its bitterest enemies, the Protestant Reformers, amongst whom it has always found its main support. Competitive Capitalism has actually always fitted in much easier into the atmosphere of Protestant rather than of Catholic countries. And whilst the Vatican may, and today does, regard Capitalism as a lesser evil than ‘godless Communism’, it has never unreservedly accepted the competitive ideology of Free Trade, so profoundly foreign to Catholic Traditionalism.
Similarly with regard to Socialism, in spite of the dictum of that ultra-reactionary Pope Pius XI quoted at the head of this chapter, the Vatican has never officially condemned the moderate (non-Marxian) Socialism of such bodies as the British Labour Party and the Canadian ‘Cooperative Commonwealth Federation’.
Here again, it all depends on what one means by that somewhat elastic term ‘Socialism’. Some forms of Socialism are undoubtedly irreconcilable with Catholicism, for instance, Marxist Socialism with its materialist analysis of human history and society, Anarchism with its categorical repudiation of any and all authority; such manifestations of Socialist thought will never, one can assert with complete confidence, be received at the Vatican.
But there is Socialism and Socialism! In Australia, for instance, the Vatican works quite well with the Labour government. Under the title of Catholic Socialism, Signor FS Nitti has collected an impressive array of authorities, and Catholicism could coexist with Socialist governments provided they were not too materialistic in outlook and, an important point, did not socialise too much Church property.
Thus a new political Catholicism developed along with the industrial age between Rerum Novarum (1891) and Quadragesimo Anno (1931). This new Catholicism has the ultimate intention of dominating European (including American) society, let there be no mistake about that! But in 1917, before the new Catholicism had acquired sufficient strength for this ambitious purpose, a new wave of revolution set in with the Russian Revolution, the successor to the Reformation and the French Revolution.
Once again, as in the days of the Inquisition and the ‘Holy Alliance’, Rome had occasion to seek for a secular sword wherewith to drown the anti-clerical revolution in blood. She found it in her secular pupil, Fascism.