In the five years since I began writing the Twilight Patriot Substack, I’ve had occasion to mention only one pope — and that was the medieval Pope Innocent III, who appears briefly in my essay on the Magna Carta.
If you’re a Catholic and you believe that these men are chosen by the Holy Spirit, then the reason for refusing to put them in political boxes should be obvious. If, like me, you’re merely an astute observer of events, then just remember how John Paul II annoyed the traditionalists by kissing the Quran as a gesture of friendship to Muslims, and how Francis annoyed the liberals by complaining about the frociaggine (i.e., “faggotry”) in the Vatican. These “factions” in the Church, and their respective popes, are not as different from each other as the news industry tries to make us think!
This was also the reason that, when the American Cardinal Robert Prevost was elected last week and became Pope Leo XIV, I wasn’t at all surprised by the regnal name he chose. After all, popes and cardinals and bishops are also annoyed by the attempts by outsiders to cast everything they do in a factional light, and every new pope naturally wants to emphasize unity and make it clear that he’s a pope for the whole Church. But reusing the name of any recent pontiff — for instance, by becoming Pius XIII, John Paul III, Benedict XVII, or Francis II — would align oneself with a faction.
Francis tried to get around this problem by naming himself after a saint (Francis of Assisi) whose name had yet to be used by any popes. But this was a radical enough move that if the next pope had done the same thing, he would have simply been saying, “I’m going to be a second Francis,” which is not the message Cardinal Prevost wanted to send. And so he had to reach back a little more than a century into the past, for the name of the most recent pope who is admired by just about everyone in the Church — and that was Leo XIII, who reigned from 1878 to 1903.
Pope Leo XIII had a fascinating life. He was born in 1810 as the sixth child of a Sienese count and a descendent of Cola di Rienzo, the great Roman populist of the early Renaissance. He was a clever boy, writing poetry in Latin by age 11; at 18 he entered a pontifical academy, where he was soon impressing the cardinals with his knowledge of canon law. He rose steadily through the ranks and at age 67 was elected pope, reigning until his death at 93, during which time he became the oldest pope ever, as well as the first pope to be filmed and the first to have his voice recorded.
A lot of progressive commentators are gushing over the new Pope Leo’s apparent admiration for Leo XIII, whom they describe as a “social justice” pope, who, by issuing the 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, “defended workers’ rights” and “laid the foundation for Catholic social teaching.”
The expectation seems to be that the people who read these headlines will nod along with the progressive buzzwords without thinking too hard about what these things meant in 1891, much less actually reading Rerum Novarum for themselves.
I am of the opinion that everyone should read Rerum Novarum. (Here is the Latin original; here is the official English translation.) “But I am not Catholic,” some of you might say, “so why should I care what a long-dead pope had to say about the proper relationship between labor and capital?”
Well, I am not an Anglican, but I still wrote a positive review of C. S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy last November. There is just something important about seeing a Christian thinker, of whatever denomination, predict what will happen if mankind keeps on pursuing some materialist vision of utopia — and then seeing that prediction fulfilled. And for Leo XIII, writing way back in 1891, that utopian vision was the one peddled by the Socialistae — the followers of people like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (no one had yet heard of Lenin or Trotsky) who insisted that a happy and just society was about to come into being, if and only if socialist revolutionaries could abolish private property.
Leo was not an apologist for laissez-faire capitalism. He was frank about the hard condition of the working poor in most of Europe and the genuine evils that had stirred up class conflict and made the doctrine of the Socialistae seem appealing. He writes that
some opportune remedy must be found quickly for the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class: for the ancient workingmen’s guilds were abolished in the last century, and no other protective organization took their place. Public institutions and the laws set aside the ancient religion. Hence, by degrees it has come to pass that working men have been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition. The mischief has been increased by rapacious usury, which, although more than once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless, under a different guise, but with like injustice, still practiced by covetous and grasping men. To this must be added that the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; 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.
Pope Leo XIII was unapologetically in favor of what were, at the time, called “social laws” — laws that regulated workplace safety conditions, established minimum wages, limited the hours and days of labor to ensure that workers had enough time for rest and worship, forbade women and children from being employed in work “unsuited to their sex and age,” and ensured that children had enough education that they could make the best use of their talents, even if they began life poor.
But with the would-be abolishers of private property, there could be no compromise. It was against human nature. Man, at his creation, had been given dominion over the earth and had been commanded to till the soil to earn his bread. To forbid him from owning the soil he worked, the tools with which he worked it, or the fruits of his toil would be to deprive him of his humanity.
To the Marxist intellectuals, who gabbled about the difference between “private property” and “personal property” — who insisted that only the “means of production” would be owned by the state, and that workers would still receive wages for the labor they contributed — Leo’s response was simple. Men of thrift and foresight, as soon as they had saved up a little money beyond their immediate needs, would want to buy land with it, or machinery, or something that would make supporting their families a little easier in the future than it had been in the past. And if a working man couldn’t reinvest his own wages, then they were never his wages to begin with.
Would social inequality be the result? Of course. And Pope Leo (who is after all the son of a count!) isn’t much troubled by this.
It must be first of all recognized that the condition of things inherent in human affairs must be borne with, for it is impossible to reduce civil society to one dead level. Socialistae may in that intent do their utmost, but all striving against nature is in vain. There naturally exist among mankind manifold differences of the most important kind; people differ in capacity, skill, health, strength; and unequal fortune is a necessary result of unequal condition. Such inequality is far from being disadvantageous either to individuals or to the community. Social and public life can only be maintained by means of various kinds of capacity for business and the playing of many parts; and each man, as a rule, chooses the part which suits his own peculiar domestic condition.
Due to mankind’s fallen condition, inequality will produce benefits to the human race but also suffering and hardships that have to be endured. But this doesn’t mean it can be done away with, and those who “pretend differently — who hold out to a hard-pressed people the boon of freedom from pain and trouble, an undisturbed repose, and constant enjoyment — they delude the people and impose upon them, and their lying promises will only one day bring forth evils worse than the present.” Also,
just as the symmetry of the human frame is the result of the suitable arrangement of the different parts of the body, so in a State is it ordained by nature that these two classes should dwell in harmony and agreement, so as to maintain the balance of the body politic. Each needs the other: capital cannot do without labor, nor labor without capital. Mutual agreement results in the beauty of good order, whereas perpetual conflict necessarily produces confusion and savage barbarity. Now, in preventing such strife as this, and in uprooting it, the efficacy of Christian institutions is marvelous and manifold. First of all, there is no intermediary more powerful than religion (whereof the Church is the interpreter and guardian) in drawing the rich and the working class together, by reminding each of its duties to the other, and especially of the obligations of justice.
Later in the encyclical, Leo talks about the especial duties governments have to protect the working poor, and the right the workers have to form trade unions and workingmen’s associations to collectively bargain for their rights, and to provide relief for widows, orphans, and the sick or injured. He also argues that these organizations will succeed to the extent that they are motivated by Christian charity, and a realization that working for the material well-being of one’s fellow men is not an end in itself, but a preparation for the world to come.
But what does he hope will be achieved, in this world, by all this work on behalf of the poor?
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. … The law, therefore, should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many as possible of the people to become owners.
Many excellent results will follow from this; and, first of all, property will certainly become more equitably divided. For, the result of civil change and revolution has been to divide cities into two classes separated by a wide chasm, [but] if working people can be encouraged to look forward to obtaining a share in the land, the consequence will be that the gulf between vast wealth and sheer poverty will be bridged over, and the respective classes will be brought nearer to one another.
A further consequence will result in the great abundance of the fruits of the earth. Men always work harder and more readily when they work on that which belongs to them; nay, they learn to love the very soil that yields in response to the labor of their hands, not only food to eat, but an abundance of good things for themselves and those that are dear to them. …
And a third advantage would spring from this: men would cling to the country in which they were born, for no one would exchange his country for a foreign land if his own afforded him the means of living a decent and happy life.
These three important benefits, however, can be reckoned on only provided that a man’s means be not drained and exhausted by excessive taxation. The right to possess private property is derived from nature, not from man; and the State has the right to control its use in the interests of the public good alone, but by no means to absorb it altogether. The State would therefore be unjust and cruel if under the name of taxation it were to deprive the private owner of more than is fair.
This, then, is the “social teaching” to which Pope Leo XIII committed the Catholic Church: that without property there is no liberty, and that church and state should work together to create a nation of property-owners — a nation that makes no pretense to bring about earthly equality but does its best to make sure every working man is rewarded for his toil, and that those with the greatest talents, and best work ethic, are able to rise to the stations where they can be of the most use to their fellow men.
On the whole, the moral sense of Rerum Novarum is closer to what one finds in the libertarian Ludwig von Mises Institute than it is to the platform of practically any present-day left-wing party.
And it’s worth remembering that Pope Leo’s predictions were borne out by events. Just as Pope Paul VI, when he issued Humanae Vitae in 1968, had foreseen the bad results of the Sexual Revolution with far more clarity than its naïve promoters did, so too did Leo XIII, nearly eighty years earlier, foresee the bad results of the Bolshevik revolution.
The nations of Catholic Europe where Leo’s teachings were held in the highest regard — that is, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Ireland, and pre-WWII Poland — all managed to put a lid on the class conflict and avoid the horrors of communism (though in Spain this was a near-run thing). Protestant countries like England and the United States, who were led in a similar direction from their own pulpits, also prospered. Meanwhile, it was Russia, where the Orthodox Church was subservient to the tsars and largely failed to call out corruption and greed among the upper classes, that fell to the horrors of communism.
Rerum Novarum means “of the New Things” in Latin, though it is often translated loosely as “Revolutionary Changes.” Though the matters that Leo spoke of may not be as “new” as they were in 1891, they are still relevant. We patriots would do well to remember that if we want men and women to “cling to the country in which they were born,” then we must make sure that government does not simply try to help corporations maximize profits. It must also defend the domestic labor market, keep skilled industries in the country rather than offshoring them, and force people to respect borders.
In short, we must favor the “national conservatism” of statesmen like Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, and J.D. Vance over the worn out globalism of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, and Klaus Schwab.
This, then, is the “social teaching” that the author of Rerum Novarum left behind him. And if you are as curious about the world as I am, then you will read Rerum Novarum for yourself, instead of blindly assuming that the left-wing press knows what it’s talking about when it says that Leo XIII was a “pope for the poor” or a “champion of the working classes!”
Twilight Patriot is the pen name for a young American who lives in South Carolina, where he is currently working toward a graduate degree. He also has a Substack where you can read more of his writings, such as this recent essay about how medieval and renaissance Europe owe their progress in science and engineering to the Christian faith.
Jesus Christ is King
