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The Myth of Rerum Novarum
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
It is often claimed that the encyclical Rerum Novarum of Leo XIII laid a foundation for the emergence of trades unions and was ‘the workers’ charter’. This is a myth. The origins of the encyclical and Catholic Social Teaching in the late nineteenth-century were entirely socially conservative. Rerum Novarum condemns socialism and its authors thought that the primary purpose of what the encyclical calls ‘associations’ was devotional, ‘confraternities of mutual support and religious observance’.
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- Copyright © 2012 The Author. New Blackfriars © 2012 The Dominican Council. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2011, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK, and 350 Main Street, Malden MA 02148, USA
References
1 Our Best Kept Secret: The Rich Heritage of Catholic Social Teaching by Schultheios, Michael J., DeBerri, Edward P. and Henriot, Peter J., London: CAFOD, 1988Google Scholar. It had previously been published in Washington DC: Center of Concern, 1987. This, however, is described as a ‘revised and expanded version’. I have been unable to trace the original, though there is a suggestion it had first been published in Manila.
2 London: Collins, 1984; Mystic, Connecticut: Twenty Third Publications, 1985; 2nd edition by Harper Collins, London, 1991; 3rd edition by Twenty-Third, 1992; Portuguese edition, Lisbon, 1987. My Introduction has also been published in Korean!
3 I came across this story when writing a commemorative piece on the centenary of Rerum Novarum for The Tablet in 1991. Unfortunately I can no longer find the reference.
4 Aubert, Roger, Catholic Social Teaching: An Historical Perspective, Milwaukee, Marquette University Press, 2003, p. 143Google Scholar.
5 “Rerum Novarum”: Ėcriture, Contenu et Réception, Rome: Ėcole Française de Rome, 1997. The article referred to is pp. 11–27.
6 Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. The article to which Dr Ivereigh refers is at pp. 95–115.
7 The Tablet, 11 June 2011, p. 22.
8 Misner, Paul, Social Catholicism in Europe, London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1991Google Scholar.
9 The Viscount de Bonald is memorable, at least to me, because, while studying scholastic philosophy I came across his name as an ‘adversarius’ to some scholastic position.
10 “Faith and Fate. Eine Vogelsperspektive of German Social Catholicism” in Ward, W. R., Faith and Faction, London: Epworth Press, 1993, pp. 333–344, at p. 335Google Scholar.
11 See Lamberts, Emiel (ed.), The Black International/L’Internationale noire, Louvain: Leuven University Press, 2002Google Scholar, especially the article by Lamberts himself, ‘L’Internationale noire: Une organisation secrete au service du Saint Siège’, pp. 15–101.
12 Aubert, op. cit., p. 83.
13 Coffey, Joan L., Léon Harmel, Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame University Press, 2003CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
14 Ward, op. cit., p. 339.
15 On the Opera dei Congressi, see Aubert, op. cit., pp. 152–156.
16 The history of the drafting of the encyclical can be followed in Giovanni Antonazzi, L’enciclica Rerum Novarum: testo autentico e redazioni preparatorie, first published Rome 1957, 2nd edition Rome: Edizione di Storia e Letteratura, 1991. The process is recounted in a number of places, but perhaps most conveniently in Aubert, op. cit., pp. 99–105 or John Moloney, ‘The Making of Rerum Novarum April 1890–May 1891’ in Paul Furlong and David Curtis (eds.), The Church Faces the Modern World: Rerum Novarum and its Impact, Scunthorpe: Earlsgate Press, 1993, pp. 27–39.
17 Jarlot, Georges, Doctrine Pontificale et Histoire, Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1964, p. 201Google Scholar; and cf. Coffey, op. cit., pp. 161ff.