Habemus papam! We have a pope!

Like other Catholics in the U.S. and around the world, I was stunned that the conclave of cardinals assembled in the Sistine Chapel on May 8 chose American Robert Prevost to become the next pope. For years, we’d heard that no American, at least in the foreseeable future, would become what Catholics call the Vicar of Christ.

Once the media had caught its collective breath, the speculation began. Would the Chicago-born Robert Prevost, now Leo XIV, follow Pope Francis’ footsteps, touting issues like climate change and immigration? Would he favor the liberal wing of the Catholic church or the traditionalists? Was he prepared to tackle the Vatican’s horrible financial mess?

After reading and listening to a good deal of conjecture, I decided to adopt a wait-and-see approach to these questions while entertaining a cautious hope that Pope Leo will be good for the Catholic church and its 1.4 billion believers worldwide.

I also hope and pray that Catholics and non-Catholics alike will weigh the words and writings of this pope with nuance and discernment. While we don’t have to agree with the papacy on matters of politics and culture, we should be aware that in the past certain encyclicals – those papal letters sent to the bishops but for public consumption as well – were ignored or derided with consequences extending far beyond Rome.

In 1891, for instance, Pope Leo XIII issued Rerum Novarum, which means “of new things.” It advocated for a middle way between laissez-faire capitalism and the socialism then infecting European intellectuals and governments. This encyclical recognized, for instance, both the rights of workers and property rights, with each intended to be a part of the common good. It opposed class conflict, but supported such ideas as a fair wage and free association for workers.

Rerum Novarum also advocated the principle of subsidiarity, which calls for governance of human affairs by local means whenever possible. In other words, groups like the family and community associations and governments usually know better how to deal with their problems than do far-away, centralized governments.

In 1931, in the midst of the Great Depression, Pope Pius XI reiterated and expanded on these ideas of subsidiarity and of individual freedom and localism in his encyclical “Quadragesimo Anno” (In the Fortieth Year):

It is a fundamental principle of social philosophy, fixed and unchangeable, that one should not withdraw from individuals and commit to the community what they can accomplish by their own enterprise and industry. So, too, it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and a disturbance to right order to transfer to the larger and higher collectivity functions which can be performed and provided for by lesser and subordinate bodies.

By then, the Communists had created the Soviet Union, and the Nazis were on the rise in Germany. The idea of a centralized, often totalitarian government proceeded to strip away individual liberties and local control, and in turn gave the world the bloodiest century in its history. Even today, this struggle continues. We see it at work, for instance, in American education, where the federal government continues to impose itself on matters formerly left to the states, to local governments, and to community school boards.

Here’s another pertinent case for listening to the Vatican. In 1907, Pope Pius X issued “Pascendi Dominici Gregis,” an encyclical subtitled, “On the Doctrines of the Modernists.” Here he labeled modernism as “the synthesis of all heresies,” in essence, those philosophies which proved deadly to reason and faith in the 20th century, and which metastasized and infect our American culture even today.

For a witty and well-written general look at these attacks on Christianity and on the human person, I suggest reading John Perricone’s article “Pope Pius X vs Modernism.” Here Perricone relates one incident that is especially amusing. When some advisers recommended to the pope that he moderate his attack and take a more conciliatory tone toward the modernists, Pius X responded, “You want them to be treated with oil, soap and caresses. But they should be beaten with fists. In a duel, you don’t count or measure your blows, you strike as you can.”

That same conciliatory tone remains in play today, both in the church and in American society. These attempts to treat our now radical modernism with oil and caresses are in large part responsible for the wreckage we see in culture today.

We needn’t agree with opinions and ideas that flow out of the Vatican. In recent years, for example, Pope Francis’s declarations on immigration seemed to many people, including Catholics, naïve at best, while his embrace of climate change appeared more affected by the mood of the age than by reason and real data.

Yet given the encyclicals and other papal writings of the recent past – and here we haven’t touched on John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body” or Benedict XVI’s war against “the dictatorship of relativism” – all Christians and preservationists of Western culture would do well to pay attention when the pope speaks.

—

The republication of this article is made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal. 

Image Credit: Flickr-Catholic Church England and Wales, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0