More than a century after its publication, the encyclical Rerum Novarum was not only decisive in its time: its principles continue to influence contemporary discussions about social justice, labor rights and the role of the State.
What are the central ideas that keep it in force and how do they dialogue today with challenges such as artificial intelligence or migration? Here we review five keys that explain why this text of Leo XIII that turns 134 is still obliged to be a must now begin the Pontificate of Leo XIV.
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1. Social justice and human dignity
On May 15, 1891, Pope Leo XIII promulgated the encyclical Rerum Novarum, a document specially focused on the difficulties suffered by the first workers in the nineteenth century and that, 134 years after its publication, is again news.
As revealed by Cardinal Robert Prevost in an encounter with Cardinals two days after the election of the new Pontiff, the reason for the election of the name Leo XIV was “because Pope Leo XIII, with the historic encyclical Rerum Novarum, faced the social issue in the context of the first great industrial revolution.”
This document was blunt in its diagnosis of undesirable consequences that – together with the positive ones – carried the vertiginous industrial development of the time. Its validity “has been given for having initiated the concern of the Church for modern social issues and giving rise to the social doctrine of the Church in a structured and academic way,” says Professor Santiago Casas Rabasa, Vice Dean of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Navarra.
“Although the encyclical responds to a situation of a very specific moment and place (the industrialization process of the nineteenth century in Europe), its principles, to the extent that they are based in Christian anthropology and in Thomistic thought, they are still in force,” says the expert.
The term social justice does not appear in the encyclical Rerum Novarum, but the Pontifical document anticipates its essential content, framed within the tradition of Saint Thomas Aquinas. “The notion of justice that the pontiff handled is the tomista: habit according to which one, with constant and perpetual will, gives each one their right (giving each of theirs),” says Fr. Casas.
2. Defense of private property and rejection of socialism
The encyclical “distances socialism by claiming private property as a natural right.” The Pope understood socialism as something close to current communism. As for liberalism, it is not mentioned either, but ultimately was the vision represented by those employers who only sought the maximum benefit and minimum intervention of the State to the detriment of the working condition.
For his part, the theologian Jaime Ballesteros, a professor at the Ecclesiastical University of San Dámaso, emphasizes that the encyclical Rerum Novarum implies “the recognition that justice cannot be reduced simply to an individual virtue” and that it is “necessary to face the need for a fair social order, of fair structures, of fair laws”.
Leo XIII criticized both liberal individualism and socialist collectivism. “He rejected an individualistic vision of the person who forgets his necessary link to others and society through the common good”, and was also contrary to the “collectivist conception that subordinates the good of the person to the good of a social, anonymous, indeterminate whole, to the good of the State, to the good of the party, to the good of a social class,” explains Ballesteros.
3. Dialogue with modernity and openness to the world
To understand the novelty that rerum novarum represents, it is not enough to attend to its immediate contents. As Professor Ballesteros points out, it is essential to place this document in its historical context, after the long and conflicting pontificate of Pius IX. “It must be remembered that Leo XIII happened to the length and difficult pontificate of Pius IX, marked by a confrontation between the pontifical teaching and modernity, which led to a block condemnation of it, with the consequent isolation of Catholicism with respect to the intellectual world.”
Faced with that climate of defensive confinement, “Leo XIII tried to establish a dialogue with the intellectual, social and political world, reconciling the dialogue between reason and faith, following the way of thinking of Saint Thomas Aquinas,” says Ballesteros.
Along these lines, “said positive aspects and conditions of legitimacy of some of the modern political and economic institutions.” Rerum Novarum not only breaks the silence of the Church in the face of the “social issue”, but opens a new ecclesial attitude with the will to intervene morally in public life.
For Father Casas, in addition, Rerum Novarum “faces precisely those ‘new things’ that are the economic and social changes derived from the industrial revolution and, ultimately, from the point of view of ideas, of the changes produced by the Enlightenment.”
4. Centrality of work dignity
From the economic point of view, what was at stake is not so much the novelty of the teaching of the Church, “but the reality of a church that faces a new society, a new conception of politics, with the development of liberal revolutions and socialist and communist ideologies, to a new conception of the economy, with liberal capitalism, industrialization, conflict between capital and labor.”
In that sense, Leo XIII was forced to intervene: “In a more concrete way, Rerum Novarum faces the working issue, above all, underlining the dignity of the worker and, therefore, of work, which cannot be reduced to merchandise.”
5. STATE ROLE AND SOCIAL RIGHTS
The teachers agree that the encyclical did not intend to offer technical solutions, but to morally illuminate a specific situation. “Rerum Novarum does not give economic solutions to the problems raised by the Industrial Revolution,” says Fr. Casas. Its main merit “consists of a realistic description of the situation and a call to employers and workers regarding their mutual responsibilities and duties.”
In addition, Leo XIII also called on the State “as referee and legislator of economic and social life and, specifically, of conflicts between the parties.”
Among the most innovative contributions of the document, Ballesteros highlights “the need for fair remuneration, beyond supply and demand, that is sufficient for the livelihood of the worker and his family.”
In front of socialism, “that the Pope condemns”, is reaffirmed “the right to private property in the context of the general principle of the universal destiny of goods.” It is not an absolute, but relational right: “This right cannot simply be a formal right, but implies the need to promote the access of all workers to a certain property through just salary,” explains the expert.
On the other hand, in the face of economic liberalism, Rerum Novarum enforces the right of working association: “reaffirms the right of association of workers to defend their righteous rights,” says Ballesteros.
Likewise, principles are promoted that today we recognize as the basis of a social state: “the limitation of working hours, the right to rest, special attention to working conditions for women and children.”
Regarding the role of the State, Leo XIII introduced a fine balance that prefigures the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity: “It also underlines the importance of the role of the State, which has to ensure the common good, and in a special way by the most needy, with an intervention that is not unlimited … or insufficient,” says Ballesteros.
That is, “it anticipates the principle of subsidiarity against a state that drown the subjectivity of society, and the principle of solidarity against a minimum state,” concludes the expert.
Victoria Cardiel
Victoria Cardiel is a journalist specialized in social and religious information issues. Since 2013, he has covered all the news of the Vatican for various media, such as the Spanish news agency Europa Press, or the weekly of the Archdiocese of Madrid, Alfa and Omega.