Lessons for the new Pope: Leo XIII and liberalism

Pope Leo XIV by choice of his name has revived interest in Pope Leo XIII. Both were elected at a time rife with social polarisation. For Leo XIII, tensions were over the good or ill of socialism. For Leo XIV, they are over the good or ill of liberalism. Leo XIII is generally associated with taking up the gauntlet against socialism, but it bears remembering he also positioned the Catholic stance towards liberalism.

Two encyclicals of Leo XIII confronted socialism.

Quod apostolici muneris was issued in 1878, the first year of his pontificate. Its subtitle left no doubt where Leo XIII stood. The English subtitle was “on socialism” and the text called out “the boldness of these bad men.” If this wording came across as harsh in English, it was positively scathing in the Latin original where the subtitle was “de erroribus modernis” and the text chastised “perfidorum hominum audacia.” Catholics and Socialists were both committed to poor relief; however, there was a clear dividing line between them, namely the right to private property: “The right of property and of ownership, which springs from nature itself, must not be touched and stands inviolate.”

De rerum Novarum followed in 1891. It went beyond polemics, to suggesting constructive alternatives, such as protection against overwork (“It is neither just nor human so to grind men down with excessive labour as to stupefy their minds and wear out their bodies.”) and the right to minimum wage (“Wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner.”)

The encyclical Libertas addressed the other seminal political movement of the nineteenth century, liberalism. Quod apostolici muneris was an unequivocal condemnation, Libertas a more uanced critique.

Libertas lauded “Liberty, the highest of natural endowments” and made a distinction between the true meaning of liberty and liberalism: “Man, indeed, is free to obey his reason, to seek moral good, and to strive unswervingly after his last end.” However, certain proponents of liberty “usurp the name of liberty, style themselves liberals”. For Catholics, liberty is the freedom to choose between good and ill, between right and wrong, between rational and irrational. Liberty is a divine gift, not a human construct. Certain liberals, on the other hand, posit “the supremacy of the human reason, which, refusing due submission to the divine and eternal reason, proclaims its own independence, and constitutes itself the supreme principle and source and judge of truth. Hence, these followers of liberalism deny the existence of any divine authority to which obedience is due, and proclaim that every man is the law to himself.”

Leo XIII criticised the blurring of borders between liberalism and relativism: “a doctrine of such character is most hurtful both to individuals and to the State. For, once ascribe to human reason the only authority to decide what is true and what is good, and the real distinction between good and evil is destroyed; honour and dishonour differ not in their nature, but in the opinion and judgment of each one; pleasure is the measure of what is lawful.”

Libertas, read as an intellectual critique, was prescient. Its argumentation looked forward, anticipating debates over a school of thought which came to flourish much later, namely post-modernism. However, whereas Rerum Novarum proposed working practices that were ahead of the times and that today are no longer controversial, the practical suggestions proposed by Libertas – about teaching and freedom of the press – seem dated. Political pragmatism, alas, was not a strong suit of Leo XIII. Thus, he upheld two measures of his predecessor, Pope Pius IX, who was piqued by the unification of Italy and the loss of ecclesial territories. He excommunicated King Victor Emanuel and ordered Catholics to refuse political mandates. (But Leo XIII was by no means unrepresentative of Vatican diplomacy. It took until 1919 until that ban was dropped.)

Leo XIII is credited with shaping a Catholic response to the overriding challenge of his time, socialism. Perhaps Leo XIV will take up his mantle and mould Catholic teaching on the crisis of liberalism. That he is aware of the challenge there can be no doubt. After all, some of today’s most vocal detractors of liberalism — such as Patrick Deneen, Ross Douthat and J.D. Vance — are his compatriots.

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