ENCYCLICAL OF POPE LEO XIII ON CAPITAL AND LABOR

Oh hohm. Such a great mouthpiece Pope Leo XIII was for extolling and providing cover for the excesses of the worst breed of capitalist. Whilst my experience with such religious writing is used to coming away from them not wholely satisfied one way or another, this particular piece was heavily biased toward the "Captain's of Industry" and capitalist civilizations of the time. Explicitly condemning the practices by which labor can usurp the yoke of the unjustly enriched, and no consideration whatsoever against the fact that as capital centralizes, there are fewer and fewer places to actually look for employment that isn't in one way or another unconscionable to the Soul. Which, thankfully, the fellow at least had the decency to recognize that one isn't at, nor should be at liberty to give one's soul up because the only people signing cheques are those that are most conditioned to being in service not to anyone else, but merely to themselves.

For instance, it places the burden of the yoke of thrift equally on all men, without recognizing that that yoke provides exactly the spiritual cover required for the pernicious greedmonger to sleep soundly after condemning thousands to a situation where in their self-preservation is not guaranteed.

I see some mild concessions to the working class, which we have plenty of history from which to reason that even with a Papal acknowledgement, these words did not suffice to tilt the behavior of men away from ungodly and abusive treatment of their fellow men until such time as they were confronted with force. That the Pope of all people then doubled down by pointing out that "agitators would arise to foment violence and revolt" without taking into consideration that is the only language left that will be understood by the man whose heart has sufficiently hardened to enable him to with a stroke of a pen condemn thousands to millions, nay billions at a time to suffering. To usurp their livelihoods as his own to be rented back, ensuring that no ownership is onto his potential competitors conferred upon which could be built the means to diminish his own prosperity.

No... Pope Leo XIII, your encyclical is in places valid, but woefully out of date and in need of a massive update. Even in it's time, that wording would have been fairly what we today call "milquetoast" in terms of providing the necessary spiritual force to temper the excesses of man's vices. Our current day, is evidence enough of that. Where instead of true virtue and the ability of all to live prosperously, we have a divided class of those seeking desperately to get by, and those seeking desperately to ensure no one gets by them.

Whilst I'm not Catholic, I do do tend to honor the tradition of firmly worded letters nailed to their doors to keep them honest. This encyclical in it's time may have seemed fine, but with hindsight reeks of inadequacy and hedging, with excessive pandering to the already wealthy. This alone explains to me greatly why the labor movements of the late 1800's and early 1900's were not only as bad as they were, but absolutely necessary. If Leo XIV can't do any better than this, then it may once again come to bloodshed. The feedback loop is much tighter, and news travels much faster. Likely why the wealthy are doing everything they can to weight media outlets in their favor, and destroy any unregulated medium of anonymous communication. For these men are greedy, but not stupid. They know deep down the Lord dost tolerate the machinations of the Devil to test the tendencies of humankind, and they fear the inevitable outcome that will arise when the rest of mankind through privation is forced to harden their hearts as they (the wealthy) have. For in the eye's of one who has only their Soul left to bargain with, laid bare is the banal veil of Evil, and if one is to meet their Maker earlier than planned as a result of another man's artifice... Well. Justice doth favor action, whereas the banal finds fertile sustenance in the inaction of vacuous platitude debated endlessly.

Perhaps I am one of the Agitators of which the Pope spoke. Yet I feel no pause at any of the words I have hitherto written. So do with them what you will. If what we have to live with is supposed to be fine, I do not agree that anything about it is what one could conscionably call just.