Growth of Catholic Social Teaching

Until recently (less than 10 years ago), there was no well defined body of guidelines called Catholic Social Teaching (CST). The CST grew from scattered papal statements on particular socio-economic situations that arose in Europe. When formulating their responses, the popes have never taken account of the impacts of western colonialism and imperialism. Developing countries with very different histories and cultures were and still are expected to somehow adapt the CST to their needs.

CST in the 19th century
Papal social teaching is generally believed to have begun with Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum (1891) [On the Condition of Workers]. That, however, is not quite accurate. Leo's predecessor, Pius IX, set out his views of the social order in the encyclicals Qui Pluribus (1846) and Nostis et Nobiscum (1849), and in other formal statements.

Pius was not writing with the universal church in mind. His reasons were more down to earth: at the time several groups (called 'secret societies' by the pope) were operating to unite Italy into one kingdom and the pope was worried that a united Italy would mean a loss of temporal power to which popes had become accustomed. In Qui Pluribus he denounced these secret societies that sought to do this. He ranted against "the crafty Bible Societies, which renew the old skills of the heretics and force on people of all kinds gifts of the Bible" and warned about "the unspeakable doctrine of communism."

He expressed himself even more vigorously in Nostis et Nobiscum, after riots in Rome had forced him to flee to Gaeta. The goal of communism or socialism, he declared "is to excite workers and others by continuous disturbance, especially those of the lower class, whom they have deceived by their lies and deluded by the promise of a happier condition. ... Let our poor recall the teaching of Christ himself that they should not be sad in their condition, since their very poverty makes lighter their journey to salvation, provided that they bear their need with patience and are poor not alone in their possessions, but in spirit too."

So here was an early lesson from the papal teaching:
the poor and deprived must put up with their lot, they will be rewarded in the next life. They must not envy the rich and powerful. Authority must not be challenged.
This has been the unvarying message of the popes to the wretched of the earth, most of them the Third World masses. But consider the CST of the early Fathers.

CST of the early Church Fathers
Early Catholic social teaching focused on the poor and disadvantaged.
Wrote Clement of Alexandria around the year 200:
"All possessions are by nature unrighteous," , "when one possesses them for personal advantage and does not bring them into the common stock for those in need."

Church Doctor St Ambrose (340?-397) wrote:
"It is not with your wealth that you give alms to the poor but with a fraction of theirs which you give back, for you have usurped something meant for the common good of all."

Basil the Great (329?-379) said to the rich:
"That bread which you keep belong to the hungry; that coat in your closet, to the naked. How did you get that which you call your property? How do the possessors get rich, if not by taking the things that belong to all?"

St. John Chrysostom (349?-407) was even more emphatic:
"I have often laughed while reading documents that say: 'That one has the ownership of fields and house, but another has its use.' For all of us have the use, but no one has the ownership." And again: "How did you become rich? From whom did you receive it, and from whom he who transmitted it to you. From his father and grandfather. But can you, ascending through many generations, show the acquisition just? It cannot be. The root and origin of it must have been injustice."

Pope Gregory 1 - the Great (590-604)
"You are wrong if you keep for yourself the wealth that God has created for all. He who does not share with his possessions with others is a killer for he is slaying those who could have lived from his plenty. When we share with those who are suffering, it is not an act of pity but the payment of a debt."

Clearly it is to the first centuries of Christianity, that we must look for the true foundations of Catholic social teaching. After the fateful encounter with pagan Emperor Constantine in the 4th century, the popes acquired a taste for temporal power and possessions from which they have never recovered. They therefore found it expedient to ally with the ruling classes - first the emperors and kings, later the state elites and capitalists.

Leo XIII
Leo XIII, who succeeded Pius in 1878, continued in the same vein. In his second encyclical, Quod Apostolici Muneris (1878), he spoke glowingly of the ruling classes, demanded support for authority and opposed calls for equality. He wrote: "The revered majesty and power of kings have won such fierce hatred from these seditious people that disloyal traitors ... refuse obedience to the higher powers to whom, according to the admonition of the apostle, every soul ought to be subject ... and they proclaim the absolute equality of all men in rights and duties."

By the late 19th century, colonial domination was in full swing and Leo realised that capitalism was replacing monarchies as the dominant economic system in western Europe and the USA. The capitalists were too powerful to be manipulated by the church, so Leo decided to compromise with the advice of the Gospel and the early Church Fathers on poverty and wealth and instead sought accommodation with the system.

Marx & Engels' Communist Manifesto appeared in 1848 and Marx's Das Kapital in 1867. Marx had predicted that the working class would become alienated under the capitalist creed and Leo was worried that the workers would be attracted to the socialist doctrine of equality and attack on private property. In the encyclical On Socialism (1878), Leo launched his polemic:
"We hasten to point out that a deadly plague is creeping into the very fibers of human society and leading it on to the verge of destruction... That sect of men called socialists, communists or nihilists, bound together in a wicked confederacy, have long been planning the overthrow of all civil society.
“They proclaim the absolute equality of all men in rights and duties... They assail the right of property sanctioned by natural law. They strive to seize and hold in common whatever has been acquired by lawful inheritance or by labour or thrift... Socialists would destroy the right of property, alleging it to be a human invention, claiming a community of goods.
The socialists have sought to distort the Gospel to suit their own purposes. Their habit is always to maintain that nature has made all men equal...
“The inequality of rights and of power proceeds from the very Author of nature.... God has appointed various orders in civil society, differing indignity, rights and power. The Church with much greater wisdom recognises the inequality of men, inequality in actual possession and holds that the right of property and of ownership stands inviolate."

Note how Leo is accusing the socialists of distorting the gospel when they advocate equality and attack the accumulation of private wealth. Like his predecessor, Leo advised the poor:
Don't envy the rich but be contented with your lot.

Rerum Novarum (1991) was his attempt to reach an accommodation with capitalism. Marx had rejected private property and advocated class struggle to defeat the capitalists. Aware of the church's considerable property, Leo worried that  Marx sought to abolish all property whereas Marx attacked bourgeois property based "on the exploitation of the many by the few". Leo does not acknowledge the Marxist claim that the wage system is inherently unjust or his theory of surplus value. The encyclical tacitly admits that the wage system is inherently legitimate, as long as it keeps profit within "just limits". In other words, the capitalist system needed only to be reformed, not overthrown. Thus Leo condemned socialism but was not against capitalism.

Pius XI
Leo had underestimated capitalist greed. The virtuous Christian employers, on whom Rerum Novarum had relied to improve the lot of the worker, had failed to materialize. Socialism, in consequence, had won the allegiance of a steadily growing number of the world's dispossessed.

Pius's Quadragesimo Anno (1931) celebrating the 40th year of Rerum Novarum accepted several elements in the Marxist critique of capitalism. He accepted with Lenin that "free enterprise" must evolve into monopoly capitalism, "an international imperialism whose country is where profit is". The free market, Pius charged, "of its own nature" concentrates power in those "who fight most violently and give least heed to their conscience."

He discerned that under capitalism "economic domination has taken the place of the open market. Unbridled ambition for domination has succeeded the desire for gain; the whole economic regime has become hard, cruel and relentless in frightful measure.'' As a result, even the public authority was becoming the tool of plutocracy, which was thus exerting a stranglehold on the entire world. All that he could propose was that "all forms of economic enterprise must be governed by the principles of social justice and charity".

Resigned to the system and the inequalities it created, Pius XI wrote that the workers would have to "accept without rancor the place which divine providence has assigned to them." It was a position spelled out by a predecessor, Pius X, that "Human society as established by God is made up of unequal elements. ... Accordingly, there (will) be rulers and ruled, employers and employees, learned and ignorant, nobles and plebeians."

Pius XII
In 1941, this pope commemorated the 50th anniversary of Rerum Novarum by a radio broadcast. He spoke on three fundamental values of social and economic life: the use of material goods, work and the family. He reaffirmed the right to private property and material goods. Man's work is at once his duty and his right and it is for individuals to regulate their mutual relations and if they cannot do so "fall back on the State to intervene in the division and distribution of work". Pius affirmed that the private ownership of material goods has a great part to play in promoting the welfare of family life. It "secures for the father of a family the healthy liberty he needs in order to fulfill the duties assigned him by the Creator regarding the physical, spiritual and religious welfare of the family.''
The truth is that Pius XII had only general principles to offer, no great insights. We had to wait for the 1960s for some new thinking and from an unexpected source - Liberation Theology.

Reference
Papal Doubts about Capitalism, Gary MacEoin, National Catholic Reporter (1997)