In response to the spread of socialism and the other “New Things,” Pope Pius IX, socialism and the other new things continued to spread. Finally, in 1868 he convened the first ecumenical council since Trent in the sixteenth century.
De Lamennais
Although the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 abruptly terminated the Council, the Fathers of Vatican I defined two key doctrines that countered the “theory of certitude” of Félicité de Lamennais. These were the infallibility of the teaching office of the pope, and the primacy of the intellect.
Infallibility is often misunderstood, even by Catholics. It applies only to matters of faith and morals, and then only under certain conditions. Significantly, infallibility does not apply to any kind of science, including theology, which in the Catholic Church is regarded as the “Queen of the Sciences.” (The Medieval appellation. In the early nineteenth century the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss called mathematics Queen of the Sciences.)
In Catholic belief, a pope guided by the Holy Spirit can be absolutely correct in defining a principle in matters of faith and morals. At the same time, lacking the omniscience of God, he can be completely wrong when applying that same principle to a specific instance or situation. Thus, as was the case with the initial approval of de Lamennais’s theory of certitude, a pope can be mistaken when applying his reason to a political, social, scientific, theological, or philosophical question.
Aquinas
One of the purposes in defining papal infallibility was to rein in the extravagant claims of those who, like de Lamennais, imputed far greater power to the pope than that with which, in Catholic belief, his office vests him. Similarly, defining the primacy of the intellect made it clear that, contrary to the theory of certitude, reason — the foundation of faith — resides in every human person, not in any form of the collective or in the pope as pope.
This reaffirmed a fundamental principle of Thomist philosophy and of Catholic doctrine. That is, knowledge of God’s existence and of the natural law written in the hearts of all men can be known by the force and light of human reason alone. As the Council Fathers declared,
If anyone says that the one, true God, our creator and lord, cannot be known with certainty from the things that have been made, by the natural light of human reason: let him be anathema.
After the death of Pius IX in 1878 the new things of socialism, modernism, and the New Age remained a threat. Nevertheless, Pope Leo XIII proved a serious disappointment to reactionaries and radicals alike by steering the Church by a middle course into the modern age. Initially, however, even though he issued a series of encyclicals on the problem in the early years of his pontificate, he was not able to make significant headway in countering the new things.
Pope Leo XIII
Something was missing from the program. Simply condemning the new things was not having the desired effect. As more and more people were stripped of power, respect for human dignity and the sovereignty of the person continued to degenerate as the nineteenth century wore on.
Fortunately, however, Leo XIII was not only an outstanding philosopher and theologian, he was also a capable civil politician and statesmen. He is the last pope to have had experience of civil government, having served as Papal Governor of Benevento and of Perugia, as well as in the diplomatic corps of the Papal States.
In the 1880s, controversies stirred up in the United States by Father Edward McGlynn and the adherence of many Catholics to the theories of the agrarian socialist Henry George threw the Catholic world into confusion. As the situation developed, Leo XIII realized that what was needed was a proactive social program in addition to sound social doctrine to counter the allure of socialism and restore personal economic power as the basis for maintaining essential human dignity. This he presented in 1891 in Rerum Novarum, “On Labor and Capital.” The pope’s prescription can be summed up very briefly:
We have seen that this great labor question cannot be solved save by assuming as a principle that private ownership must be held sacred and inviolable. The law, therefore, should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many as possible of the people to become owners. (Rerum Novarum, § 46.)
Unfortunately, demonstrating that even someone like Leo XIII can make a mistake in applying a principle, the only suggestion he had as to the means to implement his program was one that virtually guaranteed lack of success. As he said,
If a workman’s wages be sufficient to enable him comfortably to support himself, his wife, and his children, he will find it easy, if he be a sensible man, to practice thrift, and he will not fail, by cutting down expenses, to put by some little savings and thus secure a modest source of income. (Ibid.)
Alexis de Tocqueville
Consequently, both capitalists and socialists were able to dismiss the main programmatic application in Rerum Novarum on the grounds of alleged impossibility. Some even asserted that Leo XIII changed fundamental Catholic teaching due to their confusing the recommended social program with the mandatory social doctrine. Nor were these the only problems.
Although widespread capital ownership is the best and most direct means of personal economic empowerment, even that left unresolved the problem of the increasing complexity of modern life and the growing powerlessness and alienation of the human person from the social order. In addition to an effective means of acquiring and possessing private property in capital, a new social theory, what Alexis de Tocqueville characterized as “a new science of politics,” was needed to reconnect people to each other and to the common good. This, as we will see in the next posting on this subject, was the problem of social justice.
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