papal encyclicals 2 - some extracts:
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papal encyclicals and marx - some extracts: on socialism and liberalism gives extracts from papal encyclicals that are critical of its competing religion, socialism. This page is one in a series of supporting resources for other briefing documents that analyse dysfunctional social, or group, behaviour in modern society. |
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sister document: | |
précis of the communist manifesto and extracts from Das Capital |
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Papal
encyclicals The Church of Rome has long been an implacable foe of ‘liberalism’, or independent thought. It has tended to identify liberalism with freemasonry. It has also, with good cause, disparaged socialism from early in the development of Marxist socialism. Many other independent thinkers of the time also understood the intellectual bankrupcy of socialism. For another approach, see my page on Frédéric Bastiat [1801-1850]. I shall place my comments on papal encyclicals, published from the mid-1800s onwards, into three groups:
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Pope Pius IX, 16 June, 1846 – 7 February, 1878This was the Pope who, in 1870, declared the Pope (himself!) to be infallible. 8 December 1849: On
the Church in the pontifical states /nostis et nobiscum Pope Pius
IX
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1864: Quanta cura / condemning current errors Pope Pius IX Encyclical of Pope Pius IX promulgated on December 8, 1864.
This is vitally important. It amounts to a statement the the family owns the child, not the State. This passage warns that the corruption of society when the State attempts to interfere in that bond. The results can be seen in National Socialist states, for example Nazi Germany, where children were actually brainwashed into praying to Hitler, and similarly in international socialist (Communist) Russia. Similar concerns, on a slow burn, have long been discussed where states take over the educational process. In other words, the societal damage done by the revolutionary socialist states, such as Germany and Russia, is also generated over the longer term by socialist parties.
Promulgated at the same date as Quanta cura. 1864: the syllabus of errors / syllabus errorum Pope Pius IX Remember, these attitudes are condemned as errors!
In the jargon of the Church of the time, ‘rationalism’ was reason without faith; whereas ‘fideism’ was faith without reason and identified with fundamentalism. The Church tended to identify ‘rationalists’ and freemasons as the hated ‘liberals’. ‘Rationalism’, together with ‘fideism’, were determined upon as the errors of ‘modernism’. 1870: the Pope is declared infallible Pope Pius IX [see also Pius IX] Pastor aeternus, which was approved by Vatican I on 18 July, 1870, defined the extent and limits of papal infallibility. Chapter 4, section 9 states:
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Pope Leo XIII, 20 February, 1878 - 20 July, 19031879: on socialism / quod apostolici muneris —‘the deadly plague’ Pope Leo XIII
The Roman Catholic Church is, of course, a major long term enemy of freedom, but it has not proven nearly as dangerous as socialism. Socialism dehumanises, and that is what Rome recognised from very early on. Socialism has also been responsible for ginormous amounts of social disruption (and for deaths by the 10s of millions). This again was recognised, and even predicted, very early on by Rome. But the Church has also been a major enemy of liberalism, a dire fault it shares with socialism. On balance, however, socialism has proven to be a much greater enemy of humanity. The major enemy identified by the Church, in its fight against liberalism, was freemasonry rather than socialism. Socialism is more authoritarian even than the Church. The Church has also however responded to the real concerns regarding the conditions of workers often expressed by socialism. 1890: on freemasonry in italy / dall'alto dell'apostolico seggio, Pope Leo XIII
The Church was fighting furiously against the intrusions of the State, which in its turn was attempting to remove all education, charity and so on, as well as to capture all Church property, clergy appointments etc. This process continues to this day under such labels as "social justice" and "social progressive". It has generated many destructive forms of revolution around the world, resulting in tens of millions of deaths. Unfortunately, the babies are often ejected with the bath water. One must just hope that some balance emerges from the conflict. 1891: on capital and labour / rerum novarum, Pope Leo XIII Rerum Novarum is regarded among catholic apologists, with almost overweening pride, as showing the deep concerns of the Church for the poor and oppressed. A tract that is vaunted as ‘modern’. It is from Rerum Novarum and later, that the idea of the corporative state was developed. The corporative state is supposed to work from the bottom of society upwards, with unions and business organisations regarded as legitimate expressions of the individual. The theory tends to assume that, by working together, individuals, families and such organisations can be part of the state without serious conflict. Of course, this does not prove so, as various individuals and interests jockey for advantage. The corporative state is often confused with the corporate state of socialism. Individuals in the socialist corporate state are its creatures, and the state is a beehive where individuals and their interests must be strictly subject to the state. In both cases, the reality tends to end at similar points with top-down government, lack of freedom, and predictable poverty. But the dogma behind these models is seriously different. The Church is far more humanity-oriented and tends to kill far less. Socialism is essentially collectivist where the individual has no intrinsic place, individuality or value. Rerum novarum was developed further in Quadragesimo anno (1931). |
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Pope Pius X, 4 August, 1903 – 20 August, 1914
Again remember carefully, these attitudes are condemned as errors!
This remained in force until recently (I am unsure of the dates, as sources give different dates ranging from 1967 to 1989) when a brief “Profession of Faith” and an “oath of fidelity” was substituted. A modern short and somewhat diluted form, including a short form of the creed, was issued in 1989. A copy can be found here.
It begins:
After a couple of long paragraphs, it ends thus:
This oath amounts to swearing to obey orders and never to think independently. |
Pius XI, 6 February, 1922 – 10 February, 1939
For further commentary on this, see Fascism is socialism: Franco was not a Fascist And immediately afterwards, we have Pius XI raging against the socialist statolatry of Mussolini. 29 June 1931: on catholic action in Italy / non abbiamo bisogno Pius XI
19 March 1937: on aethestic communism / divini redemptoris Pius XI
John Paul II, 16 Oct., 1978 –2 April, 20051 May 1991: the hundredth year / centesimus annus John Paul II This encyclical is a update at the centenary of Rerum novarum / On capital and labour, that had been issued by Pope Leo XIII in 1891. DistributismThe attack on socialism in rerum novarum (Leo XIII, 1891) recognised the problems with predatory monopoly capitalism. These ideas were developed under the label of ‘Distributism’, for example, in The Servile State by Hilaire Belloc, published in 1912. The analysis led to the widespread introduction of anti-monopoly laws in Western societies, and can be seen in Margaret Thatcher’s drive for a ‘property-owning democracy’, in David Cameron’s slogan, ‘the big society’ and in the asserted aspiration of the European Union under the label of ‘subsidiarity’. In recent economic thinking, Hernando De Soto has written clearly and cogently on this matter. See, for example, The Mystery of Capital, for some highly recommended reading. Currently (November 2013), there is a reasonably coherent article at Wikipedia but it cannot, of course, be relied upon to remain stable or even coherent. related document |
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hbk, T.N. Foulis, 1912 archive.org has downloadable copies in several formats Modern reprints are widely available. |
Kindle edition Ignatius Press, 2010 |
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Review: In this book from just 100 years ago, Hilaire Belloc discusses a problem still propounded by socialists today, that the rich are getting richer while the middle class and poor are not. But Belloc was doing this with 100 years less experience. Even then, Belloc knew that confiscating business by politicians would lead to an even worse state of wage slavery. However, he did recognise that 'peasants' would prefer a slave state because then they wouldn't have to think. That is, they would happily trade freedom for security. Belloc also knew that the slave state was socially damaging, so he wanted property more widely distributed. This was termed Distributism at the time. His main concern was the ever increasing centralisation of power brought about by concentrated wealth. What I found particularly fascinating is that, after the later State confiscation of much wealth by ideologues like Clement Attlee, property is now being spread once more through privatisation. This was an objective the writer thought to be very difficult to achieve in 1912/13. Belloc thought, because of the difficulties, that the concentration of wealth among a small number of families (the state of capitalism at that time) would be more likely tackled by government control than by wider ownership. The book is rather disorganised and therefore difficult to read, but it is historically important as it draws on rerum novarum before the full horrors of state socialism were apparent. Hilaire Belloc [1870 - 1953] was a Catholic Anglo-French writer, who took British citizenship in 1902. He wrote over 200 books and was known as the man who wrote a library. Belloc was a Liberal M.P. between 1906 and 1910. He is famous for his children's poems in the manner of Victorian cautionary tales such as those of Struwwelpeter.
Hillaire Belloc also wrote a travelogue on the Pyrenees mountain range.
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The Pyrenees by Hilaire Belloc with forty-six sketches by the author and twenty-two maps |
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Methuen and Co., 1909, hbk, 340 pages
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The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else |
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Basic Books, pbk, reprinted 2003 ISBN-10: 0465016154 Black Swan, 2001 ISBN-10: 0552999237 |
Kindle edition Transworld Digital, 2010 |
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C O L O U R K E 'Y'Blue links to parts of this document All links are underlined |
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