The Irish standard., 1915-01-16

come to pass that workingmen have
been surrendered, all isolated and
helpless, to the hard-heartedness of
the employer and the greed of un.
checked competition" and that "the
mischief has been increased by rapa-
cious usury still practiced by covet-
GUS and grasping men," assisted "by
the concentration of so many branches
of trade in the hands of few individ.
uals; so that small number of very
rich men have been able to lay upon
the teeming masses of the laboring
poor yoke little better than slavery
ITSELF (The Great Encyclical Letters
Of Pope Leo XIII, New York and Gin
cinnati, 1903, p. 209), but in 1877, as
Archbishop of Perugia, the Pope of
the Workingman, as he has been
called, issued pastoral on the evils
of the time, in which he said: "The
modern schools of economics have
considered labor as the extreme end
of man, whom they account as ma
chine of more or less value, according
as he aids more or less in production.
Hence no consideration for the normal
man, and the colossal abuse that is
made of the poor and lowly by those
who seek to keep them in a state of
dependence in order to grow rich at
their expense. And even in countries
which have the reputation of being
foremost in civilization, what grave
and repeated complaints do we not
hear of the excessive hours of labor
imposed on those that must earn their
bread by the sweat Of their brow?
And does not the sight of poor chill
dren, shut up in factories where, in the
midst of their premature toll, con-
sumption awaits them-does not this
sight provoke words of burning indig-
nation from every generous soul, and
oblige Governments and Parliaments
to make laws that can serve as a check
to this inhuman trafic?" (The Church
and the Workman, Catholic Social
Guild Pamphlet, p. 35.) Nor have the
voices of others within the Church
been lacking in the same sentiments.
Read the Rerum Novarum," advises
DR.. Bandi, the Bishop of Tortona, in
his letter to the Archpriest Dardano,
land you will find that Leo XIII, hav-
ing laid bare the evils that liberalism
the philosophy which has produced
our modern social conditions - has
brought on society, calls Catholics to
the work of restoration. The Pope
does not say: It is the socialists who
are running everything" And he adds.
Society is sick; socialism is the sur
situations and the very laws have set
aside the ancient religion" because
1.-The ancient workingmen's guilds were
abolished, and no organizations Eat
least, for quite a time) took their
place" The usury today practiced so
freely under different guise" has
been more than once condemned by
the. church." In word, the primary
cause of our evil industrial and social
conditions is due to the rejection of
the social and religious teachings of
the Catholic church. The church and
the new order are clearly at variance.
The former upholds the integrity of
the family, for social as well as relig-
ious reasons, for there can be no
healthy society with a corrupt and un-
settled family life; the latter seeks
to destroy the integrity of the family.
The former upholds the right of men
to organize; the latter rejects this
right, though the forces Of necessity
are now compelling it to accept this
truth. The former believes in the wide
diffusion Of wealth among the people,
the latter would place it in great guam
titles in the hands of some employing
or mercantile superman. All of the
theories which have produced our
modern social ills were the result of
teachings plainly anti-Catholic, those
of the 18th century philosophers and
the liberal economic school.
The Church Opposed to Socialism.
But the church, opposed as we have
seen to the teachings and practices of
Liberalistic Capitalism, is also at vari-
ance with Socialism. Mr.. Thompson
tries to convince us that it is not, but
he succeeds very poorly. AS early as
1873 Leo XIII condemned the Social
istic teachings in an encyclical ION
Socialism, Communism, Nihilism,"
Plus TX having already expressed a
similar condemnation before him.
This Plus x repeated later on. In the
very encyclical from which Mr..
Thompson quotes, the Pope says: ITO
remedy these wrongs, the Socialists,
working on the poor mans envy of
the rich, are striving to do away with
private property and contend that in