Putting Pope Francis in Perspective

A senile old fool at the mercy of factions in the Church, manipulated by the Jesuits, out of touch with reality, a disappointment to liberals seeking more change, and a menace to conservatives trying to hold the line against any change. . . .

Pope Francis? No. That was how some discontented individuals and groups in the Catholic Church viewed Pope Leo XIII (Gioacchino Vincenzo Pecci, 1810-1903) at the height of his powers in the 1890s. At the same time, he was immensely popular with non-Catholics, especially in the United States. Senator Cushman Kellogg Davis of Minnesota (1838-1900), a Protestant, eulogized him in Congress. President Stephen Grover Cleveland (1837-1908) presented the pope with a copy of the U.S. Constitution as a personal gift, which was kept in the papal apartments and shown to favored visitors.

Physically frail, throughout his pontificate Leo XIII enjoyed undimmed intellectual vigor combined with an iron will and a pastoral solicitude for all people. He successfully redefined the popular image of the papacy in the decades following the loss of the Papal States. He also defended the Church against pressures brought to bear on the natural law and orthodox Christian belief and culture by the “new things” of the modern world.

In particular, Leo XIII was concerned with the economic disenfranchisement of ordinary people through the disappearance of small ownership. He criticized the concentration of capital ownership and power under both capitalism and socialism — under capitalism, in a private sector élite; within socialism, in the State.

Leo XIII realized that widespread capital ownership is key to a just society because it distributes power widely among the citizens. As Daniel Webster (1782-1852) pointed out, “Power naturally and necessarily follows property.” Both Webster and Leo XIII understood that “property” is not the thing owned, but the natural right to be an owner, along with the socially determined and limited bundle of rights that define what an owner may do with what he owns. Property confers to the owner control and the right to receive any income generated.

Power is essential because people need power to be able to exercise their natural rights, especially life, liberty, and property. By exercising their natural rights within a justly structured social order, people build habits of doing good; they “acquire and develop virtue.”

Of course, to have a right, even a natural right (as part of one’s nature), does not mean that right can be exercised without limits. Where the right to be an owner is inherent in the human person and can never be taken away without taking away that person’s humanity, how that right is exercised is necessarily limited by the duty not to harm the person or property of others, or the institutions of the common good.

Leo XIII recognized that of capitalism and socialism, the greater danger is in socialism, which abolishes private property. Where capitalism inhibits or prevents most people from owning capital, thereby limiting to a few the exercise of the natural right to be an owner, socialism denies that people even have the right to own (although private ownership may be permitted as a prudential expedient). Because it apes authentic Catholic doctrine so closely, Orestes Augustus Brownson (1803-1876), the noted controversialist and former socialist, characterized the abolition of private property as an evil so subtle that it “would if it were possible, deceive the very elect, so that no flesh should be saved.”

Despite the increasingly strident criticisms of both modernists and traditionalists, however, as well as misunderstanding on the part of the orthodox, Leo XIII kept Sacred Tradition intact, while adapting human tradition as far as possible to changing conditions. He emphasized the need for the Church to do “old things, but in a new way,” as Pope Benedict XV (Giacomo Paolo Giovanni Battista Della Chiesa, 1854-1922), later put it.

Pope Pius XI (Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti, 1857-1939) systematized Leo XIII’s teaching with his completed social doctrine. This is summed up in Pius XI’s own breakthrough in moral philosophy, “the act of social justice.” The act of social justice enables people organized in solidarity with others to act directly on the institutions of the common good to conform them to natural law principles.

Pope Francis faces a similar situation. In light of “new things” on a scale unimagined by Leo XIII (particularly the growing wealth, income, and power gap), Francis must adapt human traditions, including the popular image of the papacy, to current conditions.

At the same time, as pope, Francis must maintain Sacred Tradition inviolate. This he has done, earning for himself criticisms from both liberals and conservatives that no doubt have also gained him wry smiles of sympathy from his predecessors in heaven.

It comes as no surprise, then, that liberals and socialists consistently interpret papal teaching as mandating a form of socialism, presumably requiring a change in essential human nature. Just as consistently, conservatives and capitalists take what is said about widespread capital ownership as prudential on the grounds that nobody is required to do the impossible — as they believe a system of widespread capital ownership to be.

Both liberals and conservatives have trouble grasping the fact that there are two “parts” to papal teaching. The first part, to which Francis is currently devoting most of his efforts, is the need to keep people alive and in reasonable health in a manner befitting the demands of human dignity. Given the increasingly desperate global situation, this calls for a more intensive and effective application of individual justice and charity, as well as some redistribution by the State.

By itself, however, the first part of papal teaching is, and can only be, effective as a short term expedient. It is not a solution, permanent or otherwise. It can only buy time to implement the second part of papal teaching: restructuring the institutions of the social order so that people can once again meet their own needs by employing their own labor and enjoying the income generated by capital they own directly. In this way they grow in virtue and prepare themselves for their final end.

The second part of papal teaching is specifically social — how people interact with, and as members of, their institutions and groups. It must not be confused with justice on the individual level — whether paying workers a just wage or enabling propertyless people to acquire capital ownership. In and of themselves these worthy actions do nothing to lift underlying institutional barriers that prevent or inhibit people from participating fully in the totality of the common good. As Pius XI explained,

What We have thus far stated regarding an equitable distribution of property and regarding just wages concerns individual persons and only indirectly touches social order, to the restoration of which according to the principles of sound philosophy and to its perfection according to the sublime precepts of the law of the Gospel, Our Predecessor, Leo XIII, devoted all his thought and care.

On reflection, Francis’s greatest task may be convincing people that the emergency measures so desperately needed at the present time are not, as many suppose, a solution. That assumption blinds people to the need to go beyond individual justice and charity to something more, to something specifically social for which every pope since Leo XIII has called, however briefly: the restoration of the social order through acts of social justice.