Through the whole century one line of thought and action has been
gradually disengaging itself from all others and dominating them.
That is the social movement, or the tendency towards a more evenly
just and natural conception of all the relations that arise from the
common dwelling of mankind in organized society. It has long taken the
form of institutions and plans for the betterment of the conditions
of the people, of woman, of all who suffer or think they suffer from
the actual organization of society. If there is something Utopian in
certain plans or hopes, there is too much that is justifiable at the
root of other attempts to reorganize our social conditions. Not to
speak of the undesirable inheritances of the past, the new conditions
created for the common man by the spread of industrialism and
commercialism have often been painful in the extreme, and have aroused
both violent protests and deep sympathy. By the help of God we have
abolished the reproach of slavery in every civilized land, but we hear
from the laboring multitudes a vague cry that they are already in the
throes of a return to that accursed institution.
Here the doctrines of Catholicism are eminently in accord with the
right conception of human nature, the functions of authority and mutual
help or charity, the duty to live, and the right to all the necessary
means for that end. She is sympathetic, historically and naturally, to
the toiling masses, who, after all, form everywhere the bulk of her
adherents, and have been always the most docile and affectionate of her
members. It is she who created in the world the practical working idea
of a common humanity, the basis of all genuine social improvement. The
trials of Catholicism have come more often from the luxury and the
sin of those in high places than from the disaffection of its great
masses. As this movement has gathered force, and passed from theories
into the domain of action, the Catholic Church, through her head, has
followed it with attention and respect. The whole pontificate of Leo
XIII. is remarkable for acts and documents which have passed into the
history of social endeavor in the nineteenth century. His personal
charities, large and enlightened, are as nothing in comparison with
the far-reaching acts like the refusal to condemn the association of
the Knights of Labor. His encyclical on the Condition of Workingmen
recalls the only possible lines of a final concord between labor and
capital—the spirit and teachings of Jesus Christ, the best Friend our
common humanity ever had. In the same way, his latest encyclical on
Jesus Christ, with which the religious history of the century closes,
emphasizes the true basis for the restoration of peace and harmony
and justice between the poor and the rich, between the producers of
capital and the capital that stimulates and regulates production. We
may be confident that the papacy of the future will not show less
enlightenment and sympathy in its attempts to solve these delicate and
grave problems with the least injustice and the greatest charity.