Poised as the “new Leonine
era,” worded as if gilding the proverbial lily as if a golden ring, the
installation of Pope Leo XIV reinvigorated Pope Francis’s preachments on the
poor and economic inequality because Robert Prevost chose Leo in large part
because of Pope Leo XIII of the late nineteenth century, whose “historic
encyclical Rerum Novarum, addressed the social question in the context of the
first great industrial revolution.”[1]
Due to “his choice of pontifical name and his mathematical and legal training,
Pope Leo XIV has awakened hope and curiosity among the faithful and the more
secular world about the influence the Catholic Church could exert on the
economic world during his pontificate.”[2]
In the exuberance of a new pontificate, it is easy to get carried away with
excitement as to possibilities. Amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s
crime against humanity in Gaza, no one could be blamed for seeking out hope
wherever it could be found. Nevertheless, it is important to keep in mind just
how marginal the calls of conscience can be, given the onslaught of greed not
only in the present day represented by powerful corporate (and related)
governmental interests, but also in greed’s institutional accretions built up
over time that have a force of their own in protecting the economic (and
political) status quo.
The practical impact of
Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, promulgated in 1891, should not be overstated.
To be sure, it “laid the foundations of the social doctrine of the Church that
inspired Catholic trade unionism, and, some 30 years later, the creation of the
Christian Democratic parties that contributed decisively to the civil and
material reconstruction of Europe after World War II.”[3]
Calling “for workers’ rights without resorting to the class struggle promoted
by Marxist doctrine” by instead focusing on “the balance of fair wages and
equal economic relations,” Rerum Novarum can be said to have been prudent and eminently
practical.[4]
Even so, a focus on microeconomics can only do so much when the macro
political-economy structure is left intact, and that structure, specifically in
its huge concentrations of private capital in modern corporations and their economic-turned-political
power in the halls of government amid elected representatives seeking
campaign-reelection donations and lucrative jobs in the future, plays a crucial
role in perpetuating and even aggravating huge economic disparities and the
corruption of democracy by plutocracy.
“Pope Leo XIII questioned the
concentrations of economic industrial power and was immediately attacked,” says
Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, a banker and former president of the Institute for
Religious Works, the corrupt Vatican financial institution.[5]
Tedeschi attributed the anti-trust legislation in the United States to the
encyclical, but he left out the ensuing fecklessness with which the U.S.
Justice Department has used the Sherman Act to break up oligopolies and monopolies
(e.g., Facebook, Amazon, General Motors, etc) undoubtedly because of “political
pressure.” Even though the Sherman Act was passed “to curb the power of cartels
that had created a near-monopoly regime with serious social repercussions” does
not mean that much curbing actually took place.[6]
Because “serious social repercussions” stem from anti-competitive economic industries,
the staying power of the latter even decades into the twenty-first century
means that even prior efforts to fortify labor unions fell short of the aims of
Rerum Novarum. The proof, in order words, is in the pudding.
That Pope Leo XIV sought to build
on established Catholic social teaching such as Rerum Novarum “to respond to
another industrial revolution and to developments in artificial intelligence
that bring new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and work”
may have been putting the cart before the horse, given the social repercussions
still occurring in 2025 from the gigantic economic and political power of the
mega multinational corporations.[7]
Indeed, “economic data” showed “growing crises and imbalances between average
incomes and the cost of living” in the E.U. and U.S., which a focus on AI would
not address.[8]
In the U.S., the pope’s home
country, for example, the federal House of Representatives was in the midst of
cutting the budget of Medicaid, which funds healthcare for the poor and disabled.
Just days before the inaugural Mass of the new pope, a group of conservative Republican
lawmakers blocked a bill with cuts to the program because they were not large
enough, given the president’s proposed tax-cut (amid a federal budget debt at
the time of $36.21 trillion). That any tax cut would even be proposed
amid such a debt (with Moody’s recently having reduced the U.S.’s credit
rating) defies fiscal logic and prudence. Cutting health-care for the poor
without cutting military spending conjures up “social repercussions” in terms of
values that presumably violate those of Rerum Novarum and thus Popes Leo XIII
and XIV.
I submit that the Roman Catholic
Church still had work to do on the question of human dignity, well-being, and
justice in the context of human nature’s incompatibility with holding so much
economic and political power in such concentrations that human nature itself
may be warped as in the case of an addiction. The incarnation of billionaires
who could not possibly spend such wealth in their respective lifetimes (and
their survival from want is virtually assured) is something that Pope Leo XIII could
not have dealt with, as businessmen such as JP Morgan and John D. Rockefeller
were the millionaire “titans” of the Gilded Age. Having broken up Standard Oil
in 1913 (without changing the ownership) does not mean much as the U.S. Justice
Department stood by through the rest of the twentieth century as more and more
American industries turned into oligopolies and even de facto monopolies. The practical
impact of Rerum Novarum hardly justifies moving on the AI without taking
another stab at the political-economic regime that has perpetuated and even
extenuated massive economic inequality and price-setting “inflation” by companies.
Just days before Pope Leo XIV’s
pontificate officially began, Walmart’s chief financial manager told the media
that the company “had no choice” in raising prices due to new tariffs. Were
Walmart’s industry competitive rather than oligopolistic, Walmart would be a
price-taker, such that market discipline (i.e., choices by consumers) could
mean that Walmart would “have no choice” but to accept lower profit by
absorbing some of the supply-cost increases rather than passing them all on to
the consumers. As U.S. President Trump said, Walmart had made billions of
dollars in 2024, and thus could afford to absorb some of the impact of the
tariffs. Put another way, we have no choice but pass on the increases onto the
consumer is itself not only a lie, but also an indication of the company’s
perception of its industry as less than subject to competitive forces wherein
consumers can vote with their wallets and purses by buying elsewhere rather
than being forced to pay more at Walmart.
If anything, the economic (and related political) regime that supports excessive economic rents being paid by consumers as large corporations continue to profit greatly has endured and even prospered as the status quo since Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum in 1891. Oligopolies came to populate even the high-tech industry, including social media, at the expense of competitive markets and thus consumers as well as workers. Restructuring the underlying political-economic regime lies beyond the purview of labor unions; even the voice of Catholic conscience may be insufficient, given how the regime is fed by and feeds greed. In shifting from a strict anti-wealth paradigm to a pro-wealth paradigm wherein wealth is decoupled from greed (i.e., liberality and munificence vindicating even fortunes as camels slip through narrow places), Christianity had arguably compromised itself with respect to being a normative obstacle to greed.[9]
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. See Skip Worden, God’s Gold: Beneath the Shifting Sands of Christian Thought on Profit-Seeking and Wealth, available at Amazon.
