Pope Leo XIII and the Catholic response to modernity.

We often refer to the latest developments in our times as "modern," but we tend to forget that the modern age actually began five hundred years ago--back in the 1500's with the Renaissance, the Reformation, the birth of modern science, the age of exploration, and the first stirrings of political change that led to the end of feudalism and the rise of the modern state. We also tend to forget that the oldest continuing institution of Western civilization, the Roman Catholic Church, was the principal opponent of many of these changes and formulated strategies to counter some of these movements for several centuries.

Not surprisingly, a common view of the Catholic response to modernity over this period is the critical one expressed by Thomas Bokenkotter in his popular book, A Concise History of the Catholic Church. The author claims that "the Catholic Church's reaction to the rise of modernity was largely defensive and negative ... the result was a state of siege mentality that characterized modern Catholicism down to our day." (1) He argues that this siege mentality damaged the Church in crucial respects, but it was finally ended by the Second Vatican Council in 1962-65 when the Church embraced modern civilization in an optimistic manner and liberated Catholicism from its long-standing distrust of modernity.

There is, of course, an important element of truth to this view. The Catholic Church reacted negatively to the Protestant Reformation and formulated a counter-reformation strategy at the Council of Trent (1545-1563) reasserting traditional doctrines; it opposed Galileo's defense of the Copernican revolution and placed him under house arrest; it responded to the anti-Catholic violence of the French Revolution by condemning liberalism and allying itself with conservative monarchs and aristocratic orders; it clung to the Papal States against the tides of Italian nationalism and unification until the temporal domains were forcibly taken away; the Syllabus of Errors was issued by Pope Pius IX in 1864 stating that it is an error to believe that the Catholic Church should reconcile itself to "progress, liberalism, and modern civilization"; and the Church conducted a debate about the "modernist heresy" for a century after the Syllabus that was not set aside until Vatican II deliberately avoided the use of anathemas or condemnations to present its teachings to the world.

Yet, in all fairness, it cannot be said that the Church responded to modernity solely by a defensive siege mentality until it was liberated by Vatican II. This reading of Church history is based on a misleading division of parties into "reactionaries" vs. "progressives" that, in fact, echoes the progressive conception of history more than the Catholic Church's view. The assumption of the progressive thesis is that modernity is the end point of history and that people who oppose features of modernity are reactionaries who will eventually see the light or die out ("it's only a matter of time until the old guard passes away").

A more accurate understanding of the Church's response to modernity is to see that its view of history is different from the progressive view because it is not based on a simplistic opposition between moving backward vs. moving forward. The Church looks at the world from the perspective of the two realms, the eternal and the temporal, otherwise known as the Two Cities, consisting of "the city of God" with its unchanging principles and its embodiment in centuries of church tradition and "the city of man" or "earthly city" with its historical cycles reflected in the rise and fall of nations and civilizations. Guided by this dual perspective, the Church reacts slowly to all historical change, sometimes taking several centuries to assess new historical periods and gauge a proper reaction. What looks like opposition is often a kind of digestion--a sorting out of the temporal in the light of eternity. Moreover, the Church tends to move forward by looking backwards--addressing contemporary concerns by rediscovering earlier traditions and renewing the past in the idiom of the present (a Catholic version of t'shuvah, the Jewish idea of renewal derived from a Hebrew word for return, repent, and renew). And, in a further complication, the Church's deepest response is sometimes obscured by immediate institutional interests and temporal concerns that gain an exaggerated emphasis until the eternal perspective of the city of God is reasserted and a correct balance of the Two Cities is restored.

Seen in this light, the Second Vatican Council was not a long-delayed embrace of modernism (as progressives contend) but an assessment of modernity from several perspectives that at first glance seem contradictory. On the one hand, the spirit of Vatican II was summed up in the Italian word "aggiornamento" which means bringing things up to date, while on the other hand, the spirit of Vatican II was summed up in the French word "ressourcement" which means going back to the sources, especially the earliest sources of the Church in the writings and practices of the Church Fathers in order to renew the past in the present. The consistent strategy underlying the two slogans lay in re-charting Church traditions from those it had established since the Council of Trent in order to confront modernity with a fuller, richer, and older concept of tradition than those immediately following Trent. A deeper consistency also lay in the Church's belief that the essential truths of the Catholic faith never really change at all--that what looks like change is merely the way that permanent truths are presented to the contemporary world or the way that essential doctrines of faith and morals are distinguished from judgments of prudence in political and social matters.

In this essay, I would like to focus on the figure of Pope Leo XIII as a fascinating and inspiring church leader who in many ways set the example for the Catholic response to modernity in the next century, including Vatican II--the response of moving forward by looking backward and of renewing the past in the present. Leo XIII stands as a great figure of nineteenth-century Catholicism that was besieged by many hostile ideologies and currents of modernism. He responded on at least two levels: by calling for a Thomistic revival that would move the Church forward by finding answers in medieval and Scholastic sources; and, more importantly, by nudging the Church toward a clearer distinction between those truths which are essential and unchangeable and other truths which are legitimately open to change because they are judgments of prudence chosen to fit the circumstances of the modern, democratic, industrial world. I will conclude with some observations about how Leo XIII's approach was followed by great twentieth-century popes such as John Paul II and how it might be applied to the challenges of modernity that we face today.

Christian Civilization and the Revival of Thomism

When Leo XIII was elected pope in 1878, the question on everyone's mind was whether he would continue on the collision course with modernity that his predecessor, Pius IX, had followed or chart a new course that would be more accommodating toward the modern world. What the world got was a little bit of both. In the words of the French ambassador to the Vatican assessing the new pope, Leo was a man of "prudence and firmness." (2) The ambassador recognized Leo's traits of character, combining the flexibility of a man trained in the art of diplomacy with a firm adherence to unchanging principles and deep loyalty to the "sacred memory" of Pius IX whom Leo admired for his courageous defense of an embattled Church in tumultuous times. What the ambassador did not articulate, but we can recognize in hindsight, was that these were not merely personal traits of Leo XIII. They were his way of weaving together the eternal and the temporal realms of Christianity, combining the distinction and unity of the Two Cities in the Church's response to modernity. Leo combined firmness in adhering to what is essential and permanent in the city of God with prudence in adapting the Church's temporal teachings to the pressing issues of the day--including the Papal states in Italy; the question of republicanism in France and America; the anti-Catholic kulturkampf in Germany; and the condition of the working classes in modern industrial society.

The key to Leo's approach was his recognition that the Church was locked in a battle of ideas that required a defense of its enduring principles in relation to the ebbs and flows of historical civilization. As many have noted, Leo thought the best way to defend the enduring principles was through a strengthening of traditional devotions, religious orders, and Thomistic theology. Less noted though no less important was Leo's overall view of historical civilization, which he often spoke of in short hand as Western or European civilization but which he understood as a universal ideal of Christian civilization led by the Catholic Church. Leo's aspiration was to promote a new era of Thomism within a historical Christian civilization that incorporated elements of modern philosophy and modern democracy.

The earliest hint of this viewpoint can be found in a Lenten Letter entitled "The Church and Civilization" written in February 1877 by Cardinal Gioacchino Pecci, Archbishop of Perugia, who one year later became Pope Leo XIII. The cardinal and future pope took up the questions, "Is the Catholic Church hostile to the progress of industry, art, and science? Is there, as her adversaries declare, a natural and irremediable incompatibility between the Church and civilization?" To these questions, Cardinal Pecci answered, "No, the Catholic Church is hostile to no phase of progress; it is not incompatible with civilization, even in its purely material aspects." (3) In the course of the letter, the Cardinal clarifies Pius IX's statement about "progress, liberalism, and modern civilization" by insisting it was not intended to mean opposition to true progress over the ages. Cardinal Pecci makes this point by broadening the term "progress" to refer to the historic mission of civilization as such, which he defines as the victory of man and society over barbarism that is not limited to modern or Western civilization. Cardinal Pecci's approach enables him to affirm progress or development without being a narrow modernist and offers a way of sorting out the positive and negative features of modern progress.

Thus, Cardinal Pecci says, "Society, being made up of men essentially perfectible, cannot remain at a standstill; it makes progress and perfects itself; one century inherits the inventions, discoveries, and improvements of its predecessors, and thus the sum of physical, moral, and political benefits grows marvelously." He argues that the record of history shows that man is better off materially and morally today because of improvements in housing, tools, machines, bridges, and railroads, as well as in manners, security, and freedoms, including the end of medieval tortures and the overcoming of feudalism's petty tyrants and regional rivalries. "It is true then that man in society goes on perfecting himself in his physical comfort, moral relations with his fellows, and his political condition. And the different degrees of this successive development to which man in society attains are civilization." The principal means is human labor, which Christianity dignified while protecting workers from exploitation and promoting leisure for higher kinds of contemplation. Hence, he says, the Church cannot be accused of instilling into the human heart "a mystical contempt of earthly things" or an asceticism that excludes material improvements, as its critics charge. Nor is the Church the enemy of science, because science brings ever-greater knowledge of the Creator's universe, and the Church recognizes that "a little knowledge leads away from God, but much knowledge leads back to God." Cardinal Pecci's letter even cites favorably the scientific contributions of Copernicus (a clever avoidance of Galileo), Kepler, Volta, and Faraday. The letter also praises technology for giving man a certain mastery over nature, a power that reflects the creation of man in the image of God and the divine grant of dominion over the earth. Cardinal Pecci's conclusion is that the Syllabus of Errors does not condemn true civilization, only "the civilization which would supplant Christianity and destroy with it all wherewith Christianity has enriched us." The last sentence expresses his hope "to return at a future day to this subject"--something the cardinal was able to do as pope.

Indeed, Cardinal Pecci was elected Pope Leo XIII the next year; and in the course of his long pontificate (1878-1903) he wrote a series of encyclicals about the fate of Christian civilization and the need for a Thomistic revival. (4) All of the encyclicals begin with an account of the evils that have befallen modern society, often in dire and dramatic language, resulting from false doctrines and from the rejection of the authoritative leadership of the Catholic Church. This is the thematic title of Leo's first encyclical, Inscrutabili Dei Consilio ("On the Evils of Society," 1878) which clearly continues the subject of the cardinal's Lenten Letter by answering critics who accuse the Church of opposing "genuine progress." Leo lists the evils of modern society and argues that "the very notion of civilization is a fiction if it does not rest on the abiding principles of truth and the unchanging laws of virtue and justice" which are found "chiefly in ... a philosophy that seeks not the overthrow of divine revelation but to prepare its way ... as the great Augustine and the Angelic Doctor have proved to us." In other words, the Church emphatically supports the genuine progress of civilization but opposes the evils of modern society resulting from false philosophies that ignore divine revelation, and it seeks a solution in Christian philosophy derived from traditional sources.

In subsequent encyclicals, Leo continues these themes: "We have fallen upon times when a violent and well-nigh daily battle is being fought about matters of highest moment ... when Christian institutions and morality decline, and the main foundation of human society goes together with them." (5) The false and destructive currents of modern thinking that Leo identifies by name in his writings are liberalism, socialism, communism, anarchism, nihilism, naturalism, materialism, rationalism, and Free Masonry. (6) Interestingly, Leo no longer mentions Protestantism as an enemy of the Church because the focus is on doctrines that would establish a purely human or naturalistic order of things and endanger the Church with the ever growing power of the centralized state. The polemical context of Leo's thought is not the Reformation but Christian civilization beleaguered by secular humanism and the secular state. He recognizes that secular political ideologies such as liberalism and socialism can produce unfettered capitalism or an all powerful state that the Catholic Church must resist if she is to preserve the true spiritual nature and dignity of man.

Leo's first line of response reminds one, not so much of St. Thomas Aquinas, but of the nineteenth-century writer, Chateaubriand, and his influential work, The Genius of Christianity (1856) which discusses religion "from a purely human point of view"--surveying the useful contributions that Christianity has made to Western civilization in morality, politics, and culture. Though not indifferent to the question of ultimate truth, Chateaubriand avoids traditional Christian apologetics because he believes the spirit of the times requires a practical defense against the false charge that Christianity is the enemy of civilization. Chateaubriand's strategy is to show that much of what is proudly embraced by the Western world, even by modern secularists, would not exist without the Christian heritage of Europe--achievements such as hospitals, orphanages, cathedrals, Bach cantatas, universities, monogamous marriage, institutions of law and government, and even the moral ideas of human dignity and human equality.

Leo follows this approach in his encyclicals by arguing that the central doctrine of Christianity--the redemption of the world by Christ--has inspired Western civilization with "the dignity and hopes of man"; the historical effect of this belief has been to uplift the world--by raising marriage to the dignity of a sacrament and replacing polygamous marriages of pagan cultures with monogamous love that honors husband and wife and promotes "the dignity of women"; by helping to end "the curse of slavery" and restoring men "to the original dignity of their noble nature"; by providing relief for the poor and suffering masses in charitable institutions; by defending the dignity of human labor and protecting workers' rights; by supporting education in the universities and culture as a patron of the arts; by upholding the authority of the state while tempering its power. (7) With this list of achievements in mind, Leo is dumbfounded that the Church could now be accused of opposing "genuine progress" or of being the enemy of civilization.

Yet, false currents of philosophy have misled the modern mind, and an effective response requires not only practical arguments but also the presentation of eternal truth and its incorporation into Catholic education so that the truths of reason and faith are taught to future generations. These points are coherently stated in Leo's now-famous encyclical, Aeterni Patris ("On the Restoration of Christian Philosophy," 1879). He begins by lamenting "the evils which now afflict us" and, in a kind of trickle-down theory of ideas, traces the corruption of Christian civilization to the sixteenth-century universities and schools of philosophy which spread false ideas to the public and undermined political authority, leading to the assassination of kings and sovereigns. The solution is a revival of Thomas Aquinas, whose teachings are still valid "on the true meaning of liberty ... on the divine origin of all authority, on laws and their force, on the paternal and just rule of princes, on obedience to the higher powers, [and] on mutual charity." In endorsing those teachings, Leo pointedly refers, as many scholars have noted, to "the wisdom of St. Thomas" rather than the letter of St. Thomas because Leo wants to encourage openness to the advances of modern natural science; hence, he says, "if there be anything that ill agrees with the discoveries of a later age, or ... is improbable in whatever way, it does not enter Our mind to propose that for imitation to Our age." (8) Leo thereby accepts new scientific knowledge without fear or defensiveness because he follows Aquinas in holding that reason (including philosophy and science) is not contradicted by faith but is brought to completion by faith.

The Development of Thomistic Natural Law

The centerpiece of Leo's Thomistic revival is the theory of law, specifically Catholic natural law, which Leo elaborates in his encyclicals and invites others to develop further. In presenting his version, Leo is determined to meet the radical demands of the false ideologies of his age with a doctrine that is absolute in its theoretical principles while permitting practical flexibility. This is achieved by combining several traditional and modern elements, which I would identify as follows: (1) Thomas's view of the universe as an ordered hierarchy of being governed by law; (2) Thomas's view of politics guided by divine and natural law combined with the "transfer theory of power" of Francisco Suarez that permits a variety of legitimate regimes; (3) Thomas's theory of property combined with Locke's theory of natural rights that gives private property a "sacred and inviolable" status against socialism; and (4) a notion of the rights and dignity of "the human person" that includes Kantian ethical ideas and points toward twentieth-century Catholic personalism. By examining these four elements, we can see how Leo XIII was able to offer moral certitude in the realm of higher law along with a wide arena for prudence to operate in the new democratic age.

The Thomistic view of the universe as an ordered hierarchy of being can be found in Leo's encyclical, Quod Apostolici Muneris ("On the Evils of Socialism," 1878) where he attacks the socialist belief in the absolute equality of all men and contrasts it with "the true equality of the Gospel." The Gospel recognizes the inequality of talents and abilities among human beings while affirming their moral and spiritual equality because "the same end is set for all, each one is judged by the same law and receives punishments and rewards according to his deserts." The equality of the Gospel is therefore consistent with the hierarchical ordering of the universe and society: for God created the world so "that the things which are lowest should attain their ends by those which are intermediate, and these again by the highest. Thus, even in the kingdom of heaven, He has willed that the choirs of angels be distinct and some be subject to others; also in the Church He has instituted various orders and offices; so also He has appointed ... various orders in civil society, differing in dignity, rights, and power but solicitous for the common good." This vision of the universe and man is Thomistic in the sense of seeing the structure of reality as a divinely created hierarchy of being, organized into lower and higher realms, and directed by God to their proper ends for the good of the whole created universe.

Leo also argues that the created universe is well-ordered because it is governed by law; and he follows Aquinas's fourfold classification of law into eternal, divine, natural, and human law. In Libertas ("On the Nature of Human Liberty," 1888), he develops the Thomistic theory of law by attacking the false notion of liberty in liberalism and rationalism that equates liberty with doing what one wants independently of moral law and bases the authority of the state on the will of the people independently of higher law. By contrast, Leo defines true liberty as the use of natural reason to choose what is good and to avoid what is evil. True liberty therefore requires law: "nothing is more foolish ... than the notion that, because man is born free by nature, he is exempt from law." Following Thomas, Leo says that law is an "ordination of reason" and that natural law is the participation of rational creatures in the eternal law; it is a rule of reason written on the human mind by God directing human beings to their proper ends, enabling them to use liberty properly. In a modification of Thomas, Leo includes in natural law the power of grace to move the natural inclinations of human beings to God.

Natural law is therefore a type of higher law that provides guidelines for the state to determine the "particular rules of life ... for the common end." Statesmen and legislators apply natural law to the time and place of their situation by using political prudence to establish the civil or human laws for their nations. While Leo defines natural law as fixing duties and defining rights, he always insists in Thomistic fashion that "moral life consists exclusively in the knowledge and practice of virtue" and "whatever is opposed to virtue and truth may not be ... sanctioned by the protection of the law." (9) Taken as a whole, these statements demonstrate Leo's belief in the Thomistic view of the created universe as an ordered hierarchy of being and of man as a rational creature directed by eternal and natural law to use liberty for choosing a virtuous life.

In addition to original Thomism, Leo adopts the transfer theory of power from the sixteenth century neo-Scholastic, Francisco Suarez, in his understanding of the forms of government. Leo follows Suarez by stating that "the right to rule is from God" but specific rulers are "designated" by the people who transfer authority to kings or assemblies. The crucial difference between the transfer theory of power and modern liberalism is that the neo-Scholastic theory insists that all legitimate authority comes originally from God and that man is created with a social nature by God for "a natural community of life" based on language, economic dependence, and friendship. Since the state is a sacred authority, it may not be disobeyed except to obey the higher duties of divine and natural law. (10) The momentous consequence of the transfer theory of power from God, to the people, to specific rulers is that a variety of regimes may be legitimate--monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, or mixed constitutions--depending on which form best fits the customs of the people. As long as the government is "just and for the common advantage" and "rulers bear in mind that God is the paramount ruler of the world," it is legitimate and must be obeyed. Hence, "no one of the several forms of government is in itself condemned ... if wisely and justly managed. Neither is it blameworthy ... for the people to have a share in government ... nor is the Church opposed to real and lawful liberty."

On the complex issue of church-state relations, Leo asserts that the ideal is the "public profession of ... the one true religion" which means a Catholic, confessional state. However, the Church also supports rulers who "for the sake of securing some great good ... patiently allow custom or usage to be a kind of sanction for each kind of religion having its place in the state"; and the Church holds that no one shall be forced to embrace the Catholic faith against his will. Leo therefore declares that the "prudence of the Church" allows for religious toleration and pluralism; for "in the extraordinary condition of these times, the Church usually acquiesces in certain modern liberties." (11) With these arguments, Leo opens the way for the Church to approve on grounds of political prudence a liberal or constitutional democracy under God (a republic) as the best regime in France and America while approving a constitutional monarchy under God for nations such as Italy, England, Germany, and Russia. (12)

While preserving original Thomism in most respects, Leo's positions on the natural rights of property and on workers' rights indicate the influence of modern philosophers, especially Locke and Kant. In Rerum Novarum ("On Capital and Labor," 1891), Leo defends the interests of the working class by condemning both unfettered capitalism and state socialism. He takes the extraordinary step of embracing Locke's theory of property as a natural right and elevating its moral status by saying "private ownership must be held sacred and inviolable." Of course, Locke's argument is only one among nine separate arguments for private property; and it is qualified by the Thomistic doctrine of the best use of property for the common good, including limited state intervention on behalf of working people and the demand for a just minimum wage. As Ernest Fortin points out, Leo raises the status of property rights to "sacred and inviolable" in order to match the radical claims of socialism against private property while rejecting the individualistic premises of Locke's teaching. (13) Leo's strategy is to "Christianize" property rights by combining them with Aristotelian-Thomistic arguments for property--that man as the rational animal who is master of his acts is given property by God prior to the state for his food and provision; that property is supported by the tenth commandment's prohibition against coveting goods; that property is required by "a most sacred law of nature" which says a father should provide food and necessities for his family; and that virtue requires wealth as an external good. With these arguments, Leo incorporates modern natural rights into Catholic natural law while maintaining the priority of virtue, the family, and the common good to individual self-interest.

In a further development of Thomism, Leo argues for private ownership as away of raising the dignity of labor. He tells employers "to respect in every man his dignity as a person ennobled by Christian character ... [and not] to misuse men as though they were things in the pursuit of gain, or to value them solely for their physical powers"; these moral imperatives are requirements of natural reason and Christian philosophy. Here, Leo introduces a principle that becomes paramount in twentieth century Catholic natural law: respect for the rights and dignity of the human person. In characteristic fashion, Leo gives this principle a Thomistic grounding in the rational and spiritual dignity of man--in the view of man as a rational creature with an immaterial soul created "immediately from God" and in Christ's redemption which "restored the original dignity of man's nature." But Leo also grounds the respect for human dignity in the Kantian ethical imperative to treat human beings as persons rather than as things, which implies not exploiting them as means for profit, as if they were merely physical tools.

Taken as a whole, Leo's natural law doctrine is a combination of original Thomism, Suarezian transfer theory, Lockean natural rights, and Christian-Kantian appeals to treat workers as human persons. This doctrine strengthens natural law by giving it a greater moral absolutism than exists in original Thomism and adds to traditional claims of virtue the modern claim of respecting the inviolable rights and dignity of the human person. It also permits a prudent accommodation to modern liberal democracy (as Thomas himself would have urged on Aristotelian grounds of choosing the best possible regime in the given circumstances). This new version of Thomistic natural law gave Leo formidable moral authority to oppose liberalism, socialism, and nihilism on the level of theory while allowing flexibility in developing the Church's policy toward the nations and governments of his day.

Thus, Leo recognized the end of monarchy in France and directed French Catholics to vote and participate in the political life of the Third Republic, much to the consternation of Catholic monarchists in France who opposed the Church's ralliement to the republic. Toward America, Leo took a generally positive view of its republican government and its practice of religious pluralism which allowed the participation of Catholics in civic life; he also sought to strengthen the Catholic faith by establishing the Catholic University of America in Washington D.C. and by raising Archbishop Gibbons of Baltimore to the rank of cardinal; but Leo warned of "Americanism" as a type of heresy which tempted people to trim their faith in order to assimilate into American life. Leo also dealt with Bismarck in Germany in a prudent, some might say calculating, fashion. While Bismarck pursued his anti-Catholic kulturkampf to the point where it became counter-productive, Leo encouraged his softening of the culture war by dealing directly with him in matters of diplomacy and Church appointments; this policy meant recognizing Germany's conservative monarchy, and it eventually led to three visits by Kaiser Wilhelm II to the Vatican. In Italy, Leo was less successful in his prudential approach to politics. While recognizing that Pius IX's demand for a return of the Papal States from the Kingdom of Italy was the only sure support for the freedom of the Church in the age of the nation state, Leo never expected to get them back. Yet, in the hope of securing a deal for a sovereign Vatican State in a territory of its own that would protect the freedom of the Church from political interference by the Italian government, Leo maintained the ban on voting and participating in the politics of the Italian kingdom. Leo's efforts failed, showing that political prudence is sometimes unsuccessful in balancing the demands of the spiritual and temporal realms. (14)

The Lessons of Leo XIII

Pope Leo XIII provides a model of the Catholic response to modernity for all people, especially conservatives, to understand because he combines a firm attachment to the Permanent Things with a prudent adaptation to the modern world. It required Leo to define and uphold what is unchangeable, essential, and permanent in Catholic faith while recognizing those areas in science, philosophy, and even Biblical studies that are legitimately open to new discoveries as well as those areas of politics and economics that are changeable because they are based on prudent applications of natural law. We may not always agree with his judgments on where to draw the line between the "Permanent Things" and the "Changeable Things" because prudential judgments are inherently imprecise. Hence, critics of Leo XIII, like Ernest Fortin, must be heeded when they warn that Leo was too optimistic in incorporating Lockean natural rights into a Thomistic framework because the human rights revolution unleashes political forces that the Church can not always contain by insisting that rights must serve the common good and the true ends of man. Leo was aware that a strong assertion of property rights against the centralized state of socialism or nationalism might lead to materialism and individualism rather than the common good; and that danger must be kept in mind by neoconservative Catholics who seek to baptize free market capitalism rather than treat it as the best practical choice in the circumstances.

At the same time, we should not forget that no less a figure than Pope John Paul II paid a great tribute to Pope Leo XIII by publishing Centesimus Annus in 1991 on the one hundredth anniversary of Leo's Rerum Novarum. John Paul II looked back to Leo XIII in commemorating the fall of communism, and he re-affirmed Leo's social teaching in favor of a qualified version of private property, capitalism, and workers' rights. Pope John Paul II's anti-communism and affirmation of the dignity of labor are deeply indebted to the spirit of Leo XIII.

Indeed, many of the best contributions to the Church's social teaching from Leo XIII to John Paul II indicate that the Catholic response to modernity is neither simply reactionary nor progressive. Rather, the Catholic response is a special way of moving forward by looking backward and of renewing the past in the present that seeks to combine the eternal perspective of the city of God with the legitimate but secondary concerns of the city of man. Leo XIII as well as John Paul II offer guidance on maintaining a proper balance between the two cities that requires a special Catholic combination of firmness and prudence in confronting the challenges of modernity.

1. Thomas Bokenkotter, A Concise History of the Catholic Church: Revised and Expanded Edition (New York, 1990), 231. 2. David I. Kertzer, Prisoner of the Vatican: The Pope's Secret Plot to Capture Rome from the New Italian State (Boston, 2004), 159. 3. The Lenten Letter of 1877 can be found in an edited version in Joseph E. Keller, S. J., editor, The Life and Acts of Pope Leo XIII, Preceded by a Sketch of The Last Days of Pius IX (New York, 1879), 230-237. 4. Among the most important encyclicals are: Inscrutabili Dei Consilio, "On the Evils of Society," 1878; Quod Apostolici Muneris, "On the Evils of Socialism," 1878; Aeterni Patris, "On the Restoration of Christian Philosophy," 1879; Arcanum, "On Christian Marriage," 1880; Diuturnum, "On the Origin of Civil Power," 1881; Immortale Dei, "On the Christian Constitution of the State,"1885; Libertas, "On the Nature of Human Liberty," 1888; Exeunte lam Anno, "On the Right Ordering of Christian Life," 1888; Sapientiae Christianae, "On Christians as Citizens," 1890; Rerum Novarum, "On Capital and Labor," 1891; Graves De Communi Re, "On Christian Democracy," 1901. 5. Sapientiae Christianae, "On Christians as Citizens," 1890. 6. See, Exeunte Iam Anno, "On the Right Ordering of Christian Life," 1888, par. 8; and Humanum Genus, "On Free Masonry," 1884. 7. Inscrutabili Dei Consilio, "On the Evils of Society," 1878, par. 5; and Arcanum, "On Christian Marriage," 1880, par. 14. 8. James Collins, "Leo XIII and the Philosophical Approach to Modernity," in Leo XIII and the Modern World, Edward G. Gargan, editor (New York, 1961), 193-94. 9. Sapientiae Christianae, "On Christians as Citizens," 1890, par. 30; Immortale Dei, "On the Christian Constitution of States," 1885, par. 32. 10. Diuturnum, "On the Origin of Civil Power," 1881, par. 5, 7, 11, 12, 15. 11. Immortale Dei, "On the Christian Constitution of States," 1885, par. 36; Libertas, "On the Nature of Human Liberty," 1888, par. 34. 12. Immortale Dei, "On the Christian Constitution of States," 1885, par. 4, 36. 13. Ernest L. Fortin, A. A., "'Sacred and Inviolable': Rerum Novarum and Natural Rights," Theological Studies, 53:2 (June 1992), 211-214. 14. For an insightful treatment of these issues in Leo's age, see Michael Burleigh, Earthly Powers: The Clash of Religion and Politics in Europe from the French Revolution to the Great War (New York, 2005), 334-411.

ROBERT P. KRAYNAK is Professor of Political Science at Colgate University. He is the director of the Center for Freedom and Western Civilization at Colgate University and author of Christian Faith and Modern Democracy.