From the moment the choice of Robert Prevost as successor of Papa Francisco Interpretations about the political and religious meaning of the new head of the Catholic Church were disseminated.
In addition to the references to his biography, from his birth and his life to his early youth in the United States and his pastoral experience in Chiclayo (Peru, a country of which he also adopted nationality), which he remembered in his first message from the balconies of the Basilica of San Pedro, highlights the choice of the name with which his papacy, Leo XIV.
His predecessor, the Italian Gioacchino Pecci, Lion XIII, Pope between 1878 and 1903, he was the author of the encyclical letter Of the revolutionary (Of the new things “,” of the political changes “or” of the revolutionary changes “, according to different translations from Latin to Spanish), origin of the so -called” social doctrine of the Church “, distant from both the most conservative positions of the Church and of the subsequent” theology of the liberation “, which combined Christian preaching with the Marxist analysis.
Marx and Engels had published “The Communist Manifesto”, in 1848 a revolutionary wave was triggered in Europe and the “second Industrial Revolution” generated gaps that paid the advance between the unions of the thesis of the “class struggle”
Of the revolutionary It spread in a context that keeps similarities with current times. Since the mid -nineteenth century there was a situation of revolutionary euphoria and, at the same time, accelerated technological change. In 1847 Karl Marx y Friedrich Engels They had published “The Communist Manifesto”, the following year a revolutionary wave in Europe was triggered and the so -called “Second Industrial Revolution” generated differences in income and wealth that favored the progress between the unions of the Marxist thesis of the “class struggle.”
In the second half of the 19th century, the use of elevators had been generalized, which gave more vigor to the construction of buildings in height, the Bessemer method was perfected, which reduced the production of steel, the internal combustion engine was created, which transformed the automotive industry and revolutionized mobility and transport, the first typewriting machines of reasonable size were manufactured Dmitri mendeleev He published the original “Periodic Table of the elements” and in the following years the first “rare earths” were discovered, today in the geostrategic contest between the US and China.
They were decades in which the pasteurization and cooling of food, the Swedish was known Alfred Nobel created the dynamite, the American Thomas Alva Edisonwhich made the invention an industry, created the electric bulb that, in the words of the fiction writer and scientific disseminator Isaac Asimov “He began to remove the blackness of the night” and in turn facilitated the night activities and the extension of the working day.
In those years he went from the telegraph to the phone, the Croatian Nikola Tesla built the first alternating current engine, the Swedish Alfred Nobel created the dynamite, of intensive mining use, the German Carl Benz He built the first “practical” car with internal combustion engine, American findings Martin Hall and the French Paul Héroult They gave rise to a cheaper and efficient method of aluminum production and the British John Dunlop He created the tire, which improved the suspension of cars and facilitated their diffusion.
The fate of subtitle that leads the encyclical, abundant in economic references, is “about the situation of the workers”, around whose political orientation and economic situation Leo XIII was very worried, as their first words show: “Awaken the revolutionary pruritus that for a long time agitates the peoples, it was expected that the des adjacent, of the economy ”.
Socialists believe that moving the property of individuals to the community, the evil present could be cured. But this measure is so inappropriate that it even harms the working classes themselves and is unfair
Of the revolutionary He repeatedly affirms private property as part of “natural law” and in harmony with Christian principles. It also reflects the concern of the Church for “the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few and the poverty of the vast majority” and firmly opposes “the socialist solution.”
This is stated: “The socialists, stating the hate of the destitute against the rich, try to end the private property of the goods, better estimating that, instead, all the goods are common and administered by the people who govern the municipality or govern the nation (…). unfair, because it exercises violence against the legitimate possessors, alters the mission of the Republic and fundamentally agitates the nations. ”
Another passage underlines the ecclesial criticism of “some restorers of unusual opinions” that although “grant, it is true, the use of land and the various products of the field to the individual, they deny the existence of the right to own the land on which he has built or the field he cultivated.”
According to the encyclical, “the totality of the human race (…) found in the law of the same nature the foundation of the division of the goods and consecrated, with the practice of the centuries, private property as the most in accordance with the nature of man and with the peaceful and quiet coexistence. And civil laws, which, when they are fair, deduce their vigor of that same natural law, confirm and summarize even this right.”
In case the previous passages do not suffice, in another section Of the revolutionary He urges “rejecting that fantasy of socialism to reduce private property to common, because it damages those who are intended to help (…)”.
And when it raises the problem of improving “the condition of the lower classes-nineteenth-century vocabulary-reiterates that” the principle that private property must be conserved inviolable “must be kept fundamental.”
The encyclical rejects the idea that “one social class is an enemy of the other, as if nature had arranged to the rich and the poor to fight each other in a perpetual duel (…). Both, he says,” they need at all: neither capital can subsist without work, nor work without capital. ”
But he warns: “Pressing the needy for their profit and seeking their gain in the poverty of others do not allow the divine or human laws. And to disappoint someone in the salary due is a great crime.”
Underlined the “natural law” and the rejection of the class struggle, the encyclical says that, “in relation to the proletarians (…) the Church wants and strives that they leave its mystrime state” and worry about “what part of help can be expected from the State.”
Those who govern, follow, have as a duty to make the State administration “spontaneously out of the prosperity of both society and individuals, since this is the mission of politics and the inexcusable duty of the rulers.”
But it clarifies that what contributes most to prosperity “is the probity of customs, the line and orderly constitution of families, the observance of religion and justice, moderate public burdens and their equitable distribution, the progress of industry and trade, the flourishing agriculture and other factors of this nature.”
And it concludes equidistantly by highlighting, among the duties of the Government “defending the equally social classes, inviolably observing the justice called distributive.”
Concept at the same time related to “social justice”, which Javier Milei considers “an aberration.”
According to the Argentine president, “technology is the greatest sample of the abilities of the human being, both individual and collective; each technological innovation is a step that man has taken to solve a problem, allowing him to have idle time to solve the following.”
Two weeks ago Milei awarded the Order of May to Jesús Huerta de Sotowhom he described as “colossus of the ideas of freedom.” In his speech, Huerta de Soto defined the State and political power as “the institutional incarnation of Antichrist” and to statism as “the main threat to humanity.”
Of the revolutionarytext to which the new Pope probably remitted, defended private property, rejected the class struggle and affirmed the subsidiarity of the State in a worldwide context agitated by the political conflict (which that time, manifested, two decades later, in the Russian revolution and the First world War) and an accelerated technological change. Like now.
How far will digitalization and virtuality advance that led the Italian philosopher Luigi Zoja To talk about “the death of the neighbor”? Can the “energy transition” stop or mitigate “climate change”? How far will the geostrategic confrontation between the US and China? How much will artificial intelligence change the world of work, art, politics and so many others? What will be its effects on the distribution of income and wealth?
Rerum Novarum, the Vatican “encyclliconomy” of more than 130 years ago, does not provide the answers, but invites you to formulate better questions.
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