In the
previous posting on this subject, we saw to what extent “the New
Christianity” had infiltrated the mainstream Christian denominations,
especially the Catholic Church. Pope
Pius IX called the First Vatican Council in part to deal with the problem, and
two key doctrines were defined as part of the effort. These were papal infallibility to rein in the
exaggerated claims being made for papal authority by fideists, Neo-Catholics,
and reactionaries, and the primacy of the Intellect to put faith on a solid
foundation consistent with reason.
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| Pope Pius IX |
The Franco-Prussian
War (1870-1871) brought the First Vatican Council to an abrupt end. French troops had been posted in Rome to ward
off efforts to seize the city as the capital of the new Kingdom of Italy. With the French withdrawal, Italy occupied
Rome, confining the pope to the Vatican for the next fifty-nine years.
Efforts of
varying intensity would continue to be made to abolish the papacy and the
Catholic Church. The loss of temporal
sovereignty, however, was not the deathblow many people anticipated. Freed of responsibility as a political
entity, the Church made tremendous gains as a religious institution.
This naturally
required a change in the tactics employed by the socialists. The “vast wealth” of the Church would
continue to be a target of both liberals and conservatives of course. Liberals wanted to seize it for the people
but control it indirectly, the conservatives for themselves directly.
Without a
political entity as a base of operations, however, factions had to contend for
administrative control of the Church to be able to change essential doctrines
as well as disciplines (i.e.,
applications of doctrine). In the case
of the liberals, they would be able to hide their efforts to change doctrine
under the guise of necessary changes in discipline contingent upon the loss of
the Papal States. Conservatives would
insist on returning to outdated disciplines in order to impose spiritual power
in place of the lost temporal power.
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| Pope Leo XIII |
On the death of
Pius IX in 1878 the way appeared to open up for a liberal “re-purposing” of the
institution that would redefine religion, or a conservative return to Good Old
Days that never existed. The only
question was the selection of the right pope.
As it happened,
no one was able to decide on a candidate acceptable to the various
factions. A compromise candidate, the
elderly, frail, and possibly terminally ill Vincenzo Gioacchino Raffaele Luigi Pecci, Cardinal
Archbishop-Bishop of Perugia, was elected as a stopgap. This, it was hoped, would allow the factions
to buy time to strengthen their respective positions and when Pecci died elect
a pope who would implement the agenda of the faction that backed him.
Pecci, who took
the name Leo XIII (1810-1903, elected 1878), proved a serious disappointment to
both liberals and conservatives for not having the decency to die on
schedule. Instead, stymieing plans to
turn the Church modernist or lock it into a Medieval fantasy, he went on to
have the second-longest pontificate in history up to that time back-to-back
with the longest to date.
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| De Lamennais, New Things champion |
Leo XIII’s great
accomplishments were to recapture Christianity from the socialists, modernists,
and New Agers, and to bring the Church up to date without sacrificing
truth. By taking the high road of
developing doctrine and reforming discipline instead of adopting modernist and
socialist innovations and expedients, the new pope laid the groundwork for
building a just and humane future for every child, woman, and man.
Early Leonine
encyclicals were predominantly reiterations of standard Catholic teaching. The pope warned of the dangers of socialism,
modernism, and other new things of the modern world. Consistent with the Canons of Vatican I, he
also gave the standard prescription to combat these evils: applications of
faith and reason through prayer and the study of “the philosophy of common
sense”: Aristotelian-Thomism.
Significantly,
Leo XIII never used the term “social justice.”
By the time of his election, it had been captured by the
socialists. It was much more important
and immediate to take back the terms Christian and Catholic. Recovering the term “social justice” could
wait.
#30#