Who We Are - Volume 2 - Chapter 12: Appendix: Bismarck, the Pope, and the Birth of the Catholic Social Doctrine
By Anton Chaitkin; Copyright Anton Chaitkin
Note from Anton Chaitkin:
This “Appendix: Bismarck, the Pope, and the Birth of the Catholic Social Doctrine” should be read in conjunction with Part One of Chapter 12 of Who We Are, which was posted earlier this morning.
The subject of labor unions, and how the sacredness of human life is historically associated with the idea of a republic, will be taken up in Part Two of Chapter 12, to be posted next week.
Appendix:
Bismarck, the Pope, and the Birth of Catholic Social Doctrine
The objectives of the republican nationalists could not be attained without solving a needless, destructive political-religious conflict. Chancellor Bismarck, the wily East Prussian Junker aristocrat, was squaring off in his Kulturkampf ("culture struggle") against the Roman Catholic Church, led by Pope Pius IX.
The May Laws and other measures against German Catholics had been adopted by Prussia and the newly consolidated German Empire in the period 1871-73.
British Crown agents were playing a double game with respect to the Church. Anglicans intrigued with north European Protestants, Jansenists, Old Catholics, and Orthodox Russians to whip up reaction to the perception of danger from the new Papal infallibility doctrine.[1] The London-based stooge Giuseppe Mazzini had been thrown against Italy, his revolution and freemasonry terrifying and cornering the Vatican.
Pius IX (Pope from 1846 until his death in 1878), because of his fear of revolutionary republicanism, looked favorably upon the British-backed slaveowners' rebellion against the American Union. Meanwhile, British Catholic counsellors within the Church helped keep the Vatican confined to the false choice: protection of the Church by "black nobility" oligarchs, versus giving in to the atheist onslaught. Pius was rendered incapable of communicating with Germany's leaders, who had made the Catholic Church their enemy.
As a result, the Catholic Center Party, representing Germany’s sizeable Catholic population, was led into opposition that blocked Bismarck’s nationalist policies.
Henry Carey had endeavored to outflank the British-Mazzini game in Europe. Carey met with Count Cavour-advocate of railroad-building modernization-in the late 1850s, and worked with Italian patriots to promote a unified Italian nation.
Leo XIII was elected pope in February, 1878, after he had closely monitored the German crisis for seven years. Leo immediately applied his new power to solving the problem, writing to Germany’s Emperor William of his regret at the rupture between Germany and the Vatican. Bismarck responded, to the peace offering:
“I began . . . as soon as the present pope ascended the throne, to open . . . negotiations with Monsignor Masella (the papal nuncio in Munich).”[2]
Kulturkampf was soon abandoned by agreements reached between the German government and the Vatican.
Leo XIII aligned the Catholic Church with the ideals which were in that era embodied in the national aspirations of both the USA and Germany. The defense of labor rights, strongly advocated in the Church by Baltimore Archbishop James Gibbons, was taken up by Pope Leo, who made Gibbons a cardinal.[3]
Leo’s encyclical Rerum Novarum, subtitled On the Condition of the Workers, declares it society’s duty to ensure a decent existence to the working class. This is the birth of the Catholic Social Doctrine, working for the harmony of interests between all members of society, and the sacredness of each human life. It was in general Carey’s and Lincoln’s view, most pointedly in opposition to Malthus, to the imperial assertion that human life has no essential worth.
The Vatican-authorized biography of Leo XIII contains bitter words about the oppression of Ireland, and approval of Charles Stewart Parnell’s Land League, the open political movement for Irish rights.[4]
At the time of Leo’s accession to the papacy, the Philadelphia Carey circle was intervening in Ireland to steer the freedom struggle into cooperation with Parnell.
[1] Bernard O’Reilly, Life of Leo XIII, From an Authentic Memoir Furnished by His Order, Written With the Encouragement, Approbation and Blessing of His Holiness the Pope. (“Popular Edition”; New York: Charles L. Webster & Company, 1887), pp. 463-464.
[2] Bernard O’Reilly, Life of Leo XIII, From an Authentic Memoir Furnished by His Order, Written With the Encouragement, Approbation and Blessing of His Holiness the Pope. (“Popular Edition”; New York: Charles L. Webster & Company, 1887), p. 474 for “regret at the rupture” and p. 476 for Bismarck quote.
[3] Gibbons fought successfully against an attempt to impose a Church ban on the Knights of Labor, instigated by the British-Crown-loyal Catholic hierarchy of Canada. John Tracy Ellis, The Life of James Cardinal Gibbons (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Company, 1963, pp. 88-90.
[4] O’Reilly, Life of Leo XIII; see chapter xxiv on Ireland, pp. 421-435, especially p. 426 for the Land League.