Catholic Church and Catholic Social Teaching
In May of 1891, People Leo XIII issued the encyclical Rerum
Novarum. The document on the one hand affirms the right to property and
rejects socialism as injustice. However, it is also saturated with Marxist jargon
and categories. The term “class(es)” and “the working class(es)” occur 32 times
in the space of 20 pages, and the document uses the term “proletarian” as well
as referring to the apparent oxymoron “unchecked competition.”
The Rerum Novarum contains the seeds of what later
came to be known as the “preferential option for the poor” when it claims that “when
there is question of defending the rights of individuals, the poor and badly
off have a claim to especial consideration.” The statement seems to intend counterbalancing
advantage of rich people via an imposed counter advantage to poor or weak
people. However, here it countermands biblical justice, which says that neither
rich nor poor should be shown favortisim, but everyone should be judged fairly
(Leviticus 19:15).
The Rerum Novarum, through correctly defending
property as essential to justice, nevertheless cracked the door to both
injustice and socialism, when it declared, “the public administration must duly
and solicitously provide for the welfare and the comfort of the wedding
classes,” and “Justice . . . demands that the interests of the working classes
should be carefully watched over by the administration,” and other such
statements. The Rerum Novarum’s error at these points laid a foundation
for the Catholic Church’s subsequent dalliance with liberation theology.
Having gained a foothold in the Catholic Church beginning
in Latin America throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Marxism eventually bore fruit
in the form of a bona fide socialist Pope, Francis. Douglas Farrow opened his
2017 article in the Catholic magazine First Things “’Is the pope
Catholic?” used to be an answer, not a question.” The reference here is not
merely to Francis’ embrace of liberation theology but also the slack and
apparently compromising stance toward moral matters that, scripturally
speaking, are rather non-negotiable. (Daniel Alan Brubaker, What’s Wrong
With Socialism? A Biblical Investigation for Everyone [Lovettsville, Va.: Think
and Tell, 2024], 192-93)
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