Some Interesting Quotes from RERUM NOVARUM

Rerum Novarum was written by Pope Leo XIII in 1891. Sadly the encyclical has been hijacked by the left to present it as an attack on capitalism. The truth is that it is really something totally different. It stands up for human rights, workers & business owners, parents & property owners. You can read the entire encyclical following the above link. But here are a few quotes from it the Liberal "Catholics in Name Only" don't want you to know about. & it also serves as a reminder that the Democratic agenda pushed by such so-called Catholics as Pelosi, Biden & Harkin to aid & abet Obama is not in line with Catholic teaching in way too many ways that they don't want to admit.

1. "The elements of the conflict now raging are unmistakable. . . . finally, in the prevailing moral degeneracy. The momentous gravity of the state of things now obtaining fills every mind with painful apprehension; wise men are discussing it; practical men are proposing schemes; popular meetings, legislatures, and rulers of nations are all busied with it - actually there is no question which has taken deeper hold on the public mind." (Par 1) Sounds a lot like today, doesn't it?

2. "Therefore, venerable brethren, as on former occasions when it seemed opportune to refute false teaching, We have addressed you in the interests of the Church and of the common weal, and have issued letters. . . .The discussion is not easy, nor is it void of danger. It is no easy matter to define the relative rights and mutual duties of the rich and of the poor, of capital and of labor. And the danger lies in this, that crafty agitators are intent on making use of these differences of opinion to pervert men's judgments and to stir up the people to revolt." (Par 2) Again, sound familiar? That last line sure sounds a lot like what Obama has been trying to do, but wait til you read what is in Paragraph 4

3. "To remedy these wrongs the socialists, working on the poor man's envy of the rich, are striving to do away with private property, and contend that individual possessions should become the common property of all, to be administered by the State or by municipal bodies. They hold that by thus transferring property from private individuals to the community, the present mischievous state of things will be set to rights, inasmuch as each citizen will then get his fair share of whatever there is to enjoy. But their contentions are so clearly powerless to end the controversy that were they carried into effect the working man himself would be among the first to suffer. They are, moreover, emphatically unjust, for they would rob the lawful possessor, distort the functions of the State, and create utter confusion in the community." (Par 4) Class envy, government control, redistribution of wealth, no private property it is almost as if Pope Leo was reading the Democratic play book. But then, given that Pope Leo is exercising the Petrine Charism, the Holy Spirit clearly was warning us propheticly of what lie ahead in the 21st century.

4. "It is surely undeniable that, when a man engages in remunerative labor, the impelling reason and motive of his work is to obtain property, and thereafter to hold it as his very own.. . . a working man's little estate thus purchased should be as completely at his full disposal as are the wages he receives for his labor. . . . Socialists, therefore, by endeavoring to transfer the possessions of individuals to the community at large, strike at the interests of every wage-earner, since they would deprive him of the liberty of disposing of his wages, and thereby of all hope and possibility of increasing his resources and of bettering his condition in life. " (Par 5) So much for the idea of redistribution of wealth.

5. "What is of far greater moment, however, is the fact that the remedy they propose is manifestly against justice. For, every man has by nature the right to possess property as his own. This is one of the chief points of distinction between man and the animal creation. . . . But animal nature, however perfect, is far from representing the human being in its completeness, and is in truth but humanity's humble handmaid, made to serve and to obey. . . .man alone among the animal creation is endowed with reason - it must be within his right to possess things not merely for temporary and momentary use, as other living things do, but to have and to hold them in stable and permanent possession;" (Par 6) So much for putting nature above human beings. It doesn't say it in so many words, but it does point out that if endangered species are protected, then all the more so should the unborn be protected. In what we have read so far we see a repeat of what the Declaration of Independence said about "Natural Law": “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” (Sorry Obama, but these rights do come from God, despite your recent attempt to cut Him out of the picture once again.)

6. "The great mistake made in regard to the matter now under consideration is to take up with the notion that class is naturally hostile to class, and that the wealthy and the working men are intended by nature to live in mutual conflict. So irrational and so false is this view that the direct contrary is the truth. . . . Each needs the other: capital cannot do without labor, nor labor without capital. " (Par 19) There goes class envy out the window.

7. "Of these duties, the following bind the proletarian and the worker: fully and faithfully to perform the work which has been freely and equitably agreed upon; never to injure the property, nor to outrage the person, of an employer; never to resort to violence in defending their own cause, nor to engage in riot or disorder; and to have nothing to do with men of evil principles, who work upon the people with artful promises of great results, and excite foolish hopes which usually end in useless regrets and grievous loss. The following duties bind the wealthy owner and the employer: not to look upon their work people as their bondsmen, but to respect in every man his dignity as a person ennobled by Christian character." (Par 20) So much for the vandalism that is often done by unions & their thugs. They MUST show respect to the employer & his property. But the employer also has a moral responsibility to treat the worker fairly & equitably. In other words, the Golden Rule. This also gets at the inate human dignity found in every human being from the moment of conception. Worker & employer must live & work together for the betterment of both.

You get the idea. But there are a few other interesting things I discovered in this encyclical. For instance:

8. "Now, in preventing such strife as this, and in uprooting it, the efficacy of Christian institutions is marvellous 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." (Par 19) In short, we can't throw God & religion out the window & leave it with no say in the public forum. In fact this makes it clear that authentic Catholic teaching must be the guideline we operate by. (See also Paragraph 16)

On to some interesting quotes about family:

9. " No human law can abolish the natural and original right of marriage, nor in any way limit the chief and principal purpose of marriage ordained by God's authority from the beginning: "Increase and multiply."" (Par 12) Plain & simple, marriage is between ne man & one woman. There can be no other options, no civil unions, gay marriages etc.

10. "That right to property, therefore, which has been proved to belong naturally to individual persons, must in like wise belong to a man in his capacity of head of a family; nay, that right is all the stronger in proportion as the human person receives a wider extension in the family group. It is a most sacred law of nature that a father should provide food and all necessaries for those whom he has begotten; and, similarly, it is natural that he should wish that his children, who carry on, so to speak, and continue his personality, should be by him provided with all that is needful to enable them to keep themselves decently from want and misery amid the uncertainties of this mortal life. Now, in no other way can a father effect this except by the ownership of productive property, which he can transmit to his children by inheritance." (Par 13) I found this interesting in light of all the debate in inheritance taxes. Besides the fact that those taxes are another attempt to redistribute wealth it is clear that the Catholic Church sees passing on an inheritance as a part of parental responsibility to care for their children.

11. "if the families on entering into association and fellowship, were to experience hindrance in a commonwealth instead of help, and were to find their rights attacked instead of being upheld, society would rightly be an object of detestation rather than of desire. " (Par 13) In other words, the government should NOT interfere with parental rights. Parents are the ones who are to provide an education, decide what is appropriate, & what is the best way to achieve that education among other things, not the state. Laws such as those requiring parental notification before an abortion are proper. Sorry Planned Parenthood, but parents do have a right to know what is going on with their children & your attempts to undermine those rights are, ase Pope Leo says, detestable. Society is built on the family, not promiscuity, access to abortion & all the other garbage PP & others in the "culture of death" promotes.

12. "The contention, then, that the civil government should at its option intrude into and exercise intimate control over the family and the household is a great and pernicious error. . . .Paternal authority can be neither abolished nor absorbed by the State; for it has the same source as human life itself. "The child belongs to the father," and is, as it were, the continuation of the father's personality; and speaking strictly, the child takes its place in civil society, not of its own right, but in its quality as member of the family in which it is born. And for the very reason that "the child belongs to the father" it is, as St. Thomas Aquinas says, "before it attains the use of free will, under the power and the charge of its parents."(4) The socialists, therefore, in setting aside the parent and setting up a State supervision, act against natural justice, and destroy the structure of the home. " (Par 14) In part this is a reiteration of what I pointed out about Paragraph 13, parental rights come 1st, the family is the basic foundation of society & the laws must uphold, not destroy that structure. Again, it is the Holy Spirit working & knowing what lay ahead in the 21st Century that enabled Pope Leo to speak so prophetically to what the left is trying to do today & why it is wrong.

I could go on, but you get the point. Rerum Novarum is clearly showing us the proper relationship between labor & capital. It makes it clear that any society that is socialist in nature cannot be in line with God's will. At 1 point Pope Leo calls statism a form of slavery. (Par 15) It also makes it clear that the foundation of any Christian society must be the family. I say once again that it is obvious that the Holy Spirit was working through Pope Leo to speak not only to the conditions of the late 19th Century, early 20th Century, but to where we find society today in the early part of the 21st Century.