As we saw in the
previous posting on this subject, Pope Benedict XV was not able to make any
significant progress against the advance of the new things of socialism,
modernism, and the New Age first because of World War I, and then his premature
death in the flu pandemic following the war.
It was left to his successor, Pope Pius XI, to carry on the struggle.
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| Pope Pius XI |
As he stated in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, his first
encyclical, the new things of the modern world and their rapid spread were of
primary concern to Pius XI. He was
aware, of course, that modernism — under which he included socialism and New
Age thought — permeated all levels of society “like a
contagious disease.” (Ubi Arcano, § 59.) Worse, “even some among the best of our laity
and of the clergy, seduced by the false appearance of truth which some of these
doctrines possess, have not been altogether immune from error.” (Ibid.)
Foremost among
the modernist doctrines Pius XI condemned were totalitarianism, which opposes
the dignity and sovereignty of every human being, and socialism, which attacks
private property, the chief support of human dignity. (Ibid., § 60.)
Both totalitarianism and socialism, while claiming to establish and maintain
some form of Heaven on Earth, only succeed (as Fulton Sheen warned) in creating
a living Hell. For that reason, Pius XI
took as the motto of his pontificate — and as the title of his first encyclical
— “The Peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ.”
Nor was Pius XI
whitewashing or “baptizing” modernism and socialism, attempting to distinguish
“good” modernism and socialism from “bad” modernism and socialism as so many
commentators still insist. It was,
rather, a complete refutation of the New Christianity and Neo-Catholicism.
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| Msgr. Taparelli |
Pius XI made it
clear that sovereignty resides in the human person and not the collective, and
that the goal is the spiritual Reign of Christ the King in the hearts of men,
not the material Kingdom of God on Earth.
The pope’s social doctrine thereby directly challenged the central tenet
of modernism and socialism that puts sovereignty in the collective instead of
in actual human beings.
This breakthrough
in moral philosophy relied on Pius XI’s realization that ordinary people can
directly access the common good, the common good being that vast network of
institutions within which people as “political animals” acquire and develop
virtue. This sounds unimportant until we
know that before Pius XI, even authorities such as Msgr. Taparelli assumed that
no one can access the common good directly.
They believed the institutions of society — the common good — are either
fixed and unchangeable, or too big for “just folks” to deal with, and
consequently can only be affected indirectly.
Assuming the
common good is not directly accessible automatically means that the best anyone
can do socially is to be personally virtuous and hope his good example inspires
others to act virtuously as well. Since
the usual way people act virtuously in society is by rulers passing good laws
and citizens obeying them, Aristotle and Aquinas called the virtue that relates
to the common good “legal justice.”
To some
commentators, calling the virtue directed to the common good “legal justice”
means that if people refuse to act virtuously (or in the way those in power
claim is virtuous) the State not only has the right, but the duty to force them
to be virtuous. This changes the role of
the State from punishing evil to coercing good.
From a Catholic perspective, this offends against human dignity,
violates free will, and nullifies or denies natural rights inhering in the
human person, vesting them in the collective — the hellish Kingdom of God on
Earth of the socialists and modernists.
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| Fulton J. Sheen |
Centuries later,
Taparelli needed something to counter the “democratic religion” of
socialism. The error of socialism is
that humanity as a whole can be perfected and the Kingdom of God on Earth
established by denying natural rights and only letting people have such rights
as benefit humanity as a whole.
The problem, of
course (as Fulton Sheen would point out) is that socialism upends the proper
order of things by reversing the direction of legal justice. Traditionally, the way to develop and
maintain a culture of virtue is for individuals to act virtuously and influence
humanity as a whole indirectly, by example.
Socialism takes the virtue that already presumably exists in the
collective and tries to force individuals to conform to whatever “vision of
virtue” the most powerful, such as the Incorruptible paragon of Republican
Virtue, Citizen Maximilien François
Marie Isidore de Robespierre (1758-1794), wish to impose directly on
everyone else. (Heinrich A. Rommen, The
Natural Law: A Study in Legal and Social History and Philosophy. Indianapolis, Indiana: Liberty Fund, Inc.,
1998, 51-52.)
Taparelli
therefore expanded Aristotle’s concept of legal justice and restored the proper
direction to legal justice. His
principle of social justice did this by adding that whatever is done to reform
the common good, even though indirect, must always be in conformity with the
natural law.
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| Pope Leo XIII |
This is important
because the natural law is written in the hearts of all human beings and not in
the collective. That being the case, all
laws must respect fundamental natural rights such as life, liberty, and private
property, which cannot be violated even to obtain the greatest good. (Cf. John
11:50, 18:14.) Very broadly, this is what Pius XI meant by “the Reign of Christ
the King.” It is not an earthly empire
like the socialist or modernist Kingdom of God on Earth, but a justly
structured common good that provides the environment within which people can become
virtuous and prepare them for Heaven.
There was,
however, a problem. Leo XIII clearly had
Taparelli’s principle of social justice in mind when he issued Rerum Novarum. He had been precise in what was needed to
provide the institutional environment for people to become virtuous: widespread
capital ownership. What he did not do
was explain effectively how to restructure the institutions of society to
provide that environment or give a feasible means to finance widespread capital
ownership.
As a result, both
capitalists and socialists assumed that the pope was just telling people to do
the right thing, with “the right thing” depending on what the capitalists and
socialists wanted it to be. All of them
believed the common good could not be accessed directly. It was therefore not subject to restructuring.
Further, they
believed the only way to finance widespread capital ownership was to rely on
poor people cutting consumption to save out of an inadequate income. They could then be incapable of purchasing
assets that the rich refused to sell.
Capitalists
therefore decided that things were fine the way they were because the pope had
defended private property as sacred and inviolable, justifying their
greed. Socialists thought that things
would be fine the way they planned because the pope had redefined private
property to provide widespread capital ownership, justifying their envy.
It turned out
both were wrong.
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