THE POPE AND THE WAGE-EARNERS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 21, 20 February 1891, Page 11

THE POPE AND THE WAGE-EARNERS.

(From the Pilot.) THE Encyclical which Pope Leo XIII. has been prepaiing on the social question has beenfr quently touched upon within the past few months in the Pilot's Roman correspondence. The Pope has been working on it for over a year, and has been furnished, at his own request, with copious memoranda from political economists, eminent ecclesiastics, and others competent for tne task, in Europe, America, and otherwhere. A contribution to the vital question of 'he relations of capital and labour, from the head of the historic Church, which owns the allegiance of 2.j0,000,000 of the human race, and who is, moreover, counted in the front rank of modern statesmen, is naturally looked for with eagerness by the whole civilised world. The Encyclical will appear, probably, next Easter. The Associated Press correspondent claims to have obtained this outline of it. "The Encyclical will icview and expound the whole question affecting wage- workers. The document will comprise three parts : — First, His Holiness will develop the general principle upon which social economy is founue.i, a d the dominant idea of distributive justice, which should regulate the intercourse of men, and the spread of wealth. The Pope sajs that, distributive and restorative justice is needed to prevent misery an.t sweating on one side and exoibitant riches and tyranny on the other. The second part comprises the origin and cause of the present ondition of the social problem. On this point His Holiness tikes a new thesis, first developed in his Encyclical on socialism. The third part contains the views of the Pope regarding the remedies, beyond religion and moral influence, to be advocated. His Holiness expresses himself a°;ain in favour of intervention by the State within the limits previously set forth. He condemns capitalism as noworgauised.and advocates a mor3 equitable and just distribution of riches." The editorial comments of certain newspapers on the Pope's attitude to the wage-earners, whorein it is asserted that he is making a radical departure from the action of his predecessors, and introducing a new spirit into the Catholic Church, betray an ignorance of Catholic principles, and the historic outworking of them, deplorable in instructors of the public. The Catho.ic Church has always been the friend of the oppressed ; and her theologians the unerring exponents on the rights of the people and the rights of the wage-earners. While Protestants in England and Germany defended the "divine right " of kings, Catholic theologians expounded the God-given right of the people. Cardinal Bellarmine placed no mediate nnwpr between f -he people and God, but he supposes the people to be between the king and God. The great Suarez and St. Alphonsus Liguori confirm this doctiine, on the authority of so early teachers aa St. Ambrose, St. Gregory the Great, and St. Augustine. St. Thomas Aquinas, to the study of whose works Pope Leo XIII. has given so great an impetus, says : — " A tyrannical Government is unjust, being ordained, not for the common good, but for the private good of the ruler ; therefore, the disturbance of this rule is not sedition, unless when the overthrow of tyranny is so inordinately pursued, that the multitude suffers more from the disturbance tnan fiom the existence of the Government." Ihe guilds of workingmen in the Middle Ages were established under directly Catholic influence ; and we know of no modern

organisations which so effectually protect the rights of the wage* earnnrs.

Why, then, make a wonder of Rome's approval of Cardinal Lavigerie's endorsement of the French Republic, or of the Pope's protest against the oppression of wage-earners by capitalists?