A.  The Principial Basis of Catholic Social Philosophy⤒🔗

Within the past seventy years four great Popes have written on a wide variety of human concerns such as family life, political life, liturgical life, and social and economic life. Among their writings they submitted for urgent universal considerations four documents on economic and social matters, and these papal encyclicals, as they are called, provide the basis for the modern Roman Catholic theory of labor. Given their titles in English these encyclicals are:

1. "Revolutionary Matters" (Rerum Novarum) by Leo XIII in 1891.
2. "Forty Years After" (Quadragesimo Anno) by Pius XI in 1931.
3. "To the Church Hierarchy in the United States" by Pius XII.
4. "Mother and Teacher" (Mater et Magister) by John XXIII in 1962.

Pope Leo XIII saw the evils of his day stemming from the French Revolution. In the opening paragraph of Rerum Novarum he says:

It is not surprising that the spirit of revolutionary change, which has long been predominant in the nations of the world, should have passed beyond politics and made its influence felt in the field of practical economy. The elements of conflict are unmistakable: the growth of industry and the surprising discoveries of science; the changed relations of masters and workmen; the enormous fortunes of individuals and the poverty of the masses; the increased self-reliance and the closer mutual association of the working population; and finally a general moral deterioration.¹

Then the Pope goes on to identify the evidences that social injus­tice is accompanying this revolution as follows:

1. By the end of the nineteenth century workers' unions were almost completely wiped out.
2. No alternative protection for working people was being established.
3. The individual worker was a helpless victim in the new uncontrolled competitive market.
4. New forms of interest-taking were being developed.
5. A relatively small number of influential men were gaining complete control of industry and commerce, even on an international level.
6. In all these new ways of doing business and dealing with workers, neither individuals in business nor leaders in government wanted any advice or comment from religion. They in fact denied that moral principles had anything to do with economics.

Then Leo XIII sets out to suggest in broad outline the way in which a solution is to be found which squares with the traditional principles of natural justice and natural equity:

1. Both in private life and public life men must accept the moral standards of the Gospel and respect the dignity of man as a child of God, created with an immortal soul and as a temple of the Holy Spirit, and an adopted brother of Christ. Man shares through grace the very life of God himself and he is called to eternal union with God. Consequently, "no one may with impunity outrage the dignity of man, which God himself treats with great reverence, nor impede his course to that level of perfection which accords with eternal life in heaven" (Rerum Novarum, 57).
   From this dignity flow the basic rights of man, which include the right to life itself, the right to live as befits a human being, the right to a job, and the right to a living wage. For this reason Leo rejected the notion of a limited wage fund available for the needs of workers. On the contrary, they have every right to share equitably in the wealth they help to produce. He says:

It is incontestable that the wealth of nations arises from no other source than the labour of workers. Equity therefore commands that public authority show proper concern for the worker so that from what he contributes to the common good he may receive what will enable him, housed, clothed, and secure, to live his life without hardship. Whence it follows that all those measures ought to be favoured which seem in any way of benefiting the condition of workers (Rerum Novarum, 51).

In these famous words Pope Leo XIII laid down the great principle that a proper share of the wealth of nations must go to the workers whose labor produces this wealth. He does not, of course, accept the Marxist concept that labor is the sole source of production. This is evident elsewhere in the Encyclical when he rejects socialism. But he does hold that labor is entitled to a proportionate share of the national wealth, a share that permits workers to live as befits human beings.

2. At the same time workers must labor conscientiously and take pride in the fruits of their labor. They must respect the employer and his property.
3. Leo recognized that the right of workers to join together in labor unions, but he insisted they must see to it that such unions represent their cause without violence and rioting, and they must repudiate leaders with evil principles. He argued that it is "a right of nature" that permits man to form private societies and the state "has been instituted to protect and not to destroy natural right" (Rerum Novarum, 72). Moreover, the workers may also determine the type of association they wish to have. "Furthermore, if citizens have the free right to associate, they must also have the right freely to adopt the organization and rules which they judge most appropriate to achieve their purpose" (Rerum Novarum, 76).
4. Employers must respect the human dignity of workers. It is a denial of their dignity to consider workmen as mere sources of muscle and power from which to make money. It is a repudiation of the worker's relationship to God to countenance working conditions and working hours which are a detriment to his physical and moral welfare and which prevent him from carrying out his religious duties. It is a veritable iniquity towards employees to take advantage of their need for wages to impose work unsuited to their health, their age, or their sex. Above all, to underpay, to defraud, and to conduct or permit usurious practices would be sins against the workers that cry to heaven for vengeance … Finally, the employer must refrain from treating the unions or associations formed by workers as revolutionary and subversive societies. Labor associations are the natural right of a citizen. Leo had strong words about excessive hours of work.​

Assuredly, neither justice nor humanity can countenance the exaction of so much work that the spirit is dulled from excessive toil and that along with the body sinks crushed from exhaustion. The working energy of man, like his entire nature, is circumscribed by definite limits beyond which it cannot go (Rerum Novarum, 59).

5. The relations of employers and employees are so significant to the common good that one rightly assumes that the government will direct its interest and its authority towards encouraging and promoting good labor conditions. Laws are needed to act as guideposts to both sides and to act as sanctions when necessary. The Pope urged that public authorities therefore safeguard the rights of workers.

Rights indeed, by whomsoever possessed, must be religiously protected; and public authority, in warding off injuries and punishing wrongs, ought to see to it that individuals may have and hold what belongs to them. In protecting the rights of private individuals, however, special consideration must be given to the weak and poor. For the nation, as it were, of the rich is guarded by its own defenses and is in less need of governmental protection, whereas the suffering multitude, without the means to protect itself, relies especially on the protection of the state. Wherefore, since wage workers are numbered among the great mass of the needy, the State must include them under its special care and foresight (Rerum Novarum, 54).

Leo does utter one word of caution, holding that "the law ought not to undertake more, nor should it go further, than the remedy of evils or the removal of dangers requires" (Rerum Novarum, 53). This is in accord with the Roman Catholic principle of subsidiarity, about which we shall have more to say. Excessive or extreme state intervention leads to undue centralization of political power and leads to totalitarianism. When Pope Pius XI discussed this problem he was more specific in terms of the protection offered. "These laws undertake the protection of life, health, strength, family, homes, workshops, wages and labour hazards, in fine, everything which pertains to the condition of wage workers, with special concern for women and children" (Quadragesimo Anno, 28).​

6. One of the key contributions of modern papal social teaching to the industrial field has been its promotion of labor-management harmony rather than the class struggle. Leo XIII pointed out that:

It is a capital evil … to take for granted that one class of society is of itself hostile to the other, as if nature had set rich and poor against each other to fight an implacable war … The two classes mentioned should agree harmoniously and should properly form equally balanced counterparts to each other. Each needs the other completely; neither capital can do without labour nor labour without capital (Rerum Novarum).

Pope Pius XII asserted:

In the economic domain management and labour are linked in a community of action and interest … Employers and workers are not implacable adversaries. They are cooperators in a common task … Both parties are interested in seeing to it that the costs of national production are in proportion to its output. But since the interest is common, why should it not manifest itself in a common outward expression (May 7th, 1949).

Perhaps the strongest expression came from Pope Pius XI:

In actual fact, human society now, for the reason that it is founded on classes with divergent aims and hence opposed to one another and therefore inclined to enmity and strife, continues to be in a violent condition and is unstable and uncertain. But complete cure will not come until this opposition has been abolished and well ordered members of the social body – industries and professions – are constituted in which men may have their place, not according to the position each has in the labour market but according to the respective social functions which each performs (Quadragesimo Anno, 82-3).

Pope Leo believed that employers, workers, and governments would continue to struggle in vain to work out peaceful, just relations in industry and the economic order in general, unless they first turned to Christianity with its gospel of peace and the grace to live that gospel. For this reason they must all abandon the idea that the sphere of industry and commerce and social and political ethics are somehow neutral areas of life outside the competence of religion. Either religion supplies the enlightenment and grace which modern men so desperately need, or modern society will walk blindly and tragically to greater conflict and sure disaster.²

Of this famous Roman Catholic Bill of Rights and Duties in the Economic Order the great Reformed philosopher and statesman, Abraham Kuyper, wrote in a footnote to the published version of his speech on "The Christian Religion and the Social Question," delivered in Holland in 1891:

It must be admitted to our shame, that the Roman Catholics are far ahead of us in their study of the social question. Indeed, very far ahead … The action of the Roman Catholics should spur us (Protestants) to show more dynamism … The Encyclical of Leo XIII gives the principles which are common to all Christians, and which we share with our Roman Catholic compatriots.³

The root of all the evils in the modern world, Pope Leo XIII thus suggests, is the threatening divorce of the natural from the super­natural world, between the realms of nature and of grace. As his biographer R. Fulop Miller writes in Leo XIII and Our Times:

All the utterances of Pope Leo … have in common a basic idea – that it must again become possible, as it was in the thirteenth century, to resolve all apparent contradictions between reason and faith, between the striving after temporal ends and the higher ordination to a divine end … and thereby to re-establish that harmony between the two that had been achieved in the Summa Theologica.⁴

In studying the Roman Catholic view of labor it is essential that we keep this emphasis upon principle in mind. Unlike the secular Anglo-Saxon pragmatic and empirical approach to reality, the Popes' social teaching and the resulting Catholic Action are derived from what J. Husslein in his Social Wellsprings aptly terms "social wellsprings" or principles. The Roman Catholic philosophy of labor is a principial philosophy, not a pragmatic one.

Let us then examine the Roman Catholic application of its principles both in theory and in practice. In the encyclical Rerum Novarum we meet primarily with principle, in Quadragesimo Anno with theory, while Catholic Action attempts to apply it in practice. As such Rerum Novarum may be considered as the prolegomena and Quadragesimo Anno the statement of Roman Catholic social philosophy.

Like his great contemporary Abraham Kuyper, Pope Leo XIII pinpointed the true origin of the modern "social question" in the spirit of the French Revolution as it had come to manifest itself in the revolutionary movements of the closing years of the nineteenth century. The Pope would have agreed with Kuyper's brilliant analysis:

The French Revolution … produced its evil not so much in this, that it threw the Bourbons from the throne … but rather through the complete change it produced on the sense and phi­losophy of life of the nations. In the Christian religion lay the principle that the subjection of all to God creates the tie which joins authority and freedom – the French Revolution casts out the majesty of the Lord and tries to build up an artificial authority based on the free will of the individual … The Christian religion taught us to understand life on earth as a subordinate part of an eternal existence – the French Revolution denied and opposed everything which fell outside the horizon of this earthly life. The Christian religion spoke of a lost paradise, a state of purity from which we fell, and for this reason called us to humility and conversion – the French Revolution saw in the state of nature the criterion of the normally human, incited us to pride, and put, in place of conversion, liberalization of man's spirit. Moreover, the Christian religion has, as fruit of divine pity, brought into the world the pity of a love springing from God – the French Revolution placed over against that the egoism of the passionate struggle for possession. And, to touch on the basic point, which lies at the heart of the social question, the Christian religion sought personal human dignity in the social relations of an organically associated society – the French Revolution destroyed that organic tissue, broke these social bonds, and finally, in its work of atomistic trifling, had nothing left but the monotonous self-seeking individual, asserting his own self-sufficiency.

This is the pivot on which the whole social question turns. The French Revolution, and so, too, present day Liberalism, is antisocial, and the social need which now disturbs Europe is the evil fruit of the individualism which was enthroned with the French Revolution.

Here then the die was cast. It could not happen otherwise that out of this wrenching loose of everything that held our human life together in human dignity, there must of iron necessity be born first a deep-seated social need, then a widespread Social-Democratic movement, and finally for every people and nation a nettling social problem … Neither the social question … nor the Social Democracy which now threatens the public order … would ever have assumed … such ominous directions if the French Revolution had not brought about such a complete change in the consciousness of the nations, the classes and the individual.⁵

As Kuyper saw it the social question of his age had arisen out of man's apostasy and rebellion from God since the days of the French Revolution. He correctly interpreted the collectivist theories of the socialists and Marxists as the inevitable reaction against the individualistic theories of the French revolutionaries; he writes:

The common characteristic of all the forms and degrees in which this imposing movement expressed itself, is in the rising of the community-feeling, feeling for social justice and for the organic nature of society, against the one-sidedly developed individualistic form which the French Revolution and its corresponding economic school of laissez-faire had impressed on society.⁶

At the same time Kuyper believed that socialism and communism were not only opposed to the principle of the French Revolution, but that they were its inevitable fruit. He explains:

This apparent contradiction results from the fact that the individualistic character of the French Revolution is only a derived principle. It is not the root principle, from which it borrows its dynamic. For the French Revolution, the root principle is its God-provoking "no God, no master" or, if you will, humanity emancipated from God and his established order. From this principle there develops not one line but two. First, the line along which you make up your mind to break down the established order of things, letting nothing remain but the individual with his own free will and imaginary supremacy. But alongside of this there develops also the other line, at the end of which you are tempted to push aside not only God and his order, but also now deifying yourself to sit on God's throne, as the prophet said, and create a new order out of your own brain. This last, now, is what Social Democracy (socialism) does. But in doing this, it is so far from letting go of the individualistic starting point that it rather would found the social structure it wants to erect, by way of universal suffrage, on the sovereignty of the people, and thus on the individual will … The starting point of the Social Democrats as well as of the Liberals is individualistic, in the individual person, and thus in the Pelagian free will.⁷

According to Kuyper the modern dilemma between collectivism and individualism, socialism and conservatism is thus a false one, since both have accepted the apostate humanist doctrine that the source of power and authority over men is to be found in the will of man rather than in the will of God, and that man's reason rather than God's Word should henceforth become the ordering principle of human society. Both socialists and liberals had reacted against the practical results of the French Revolution. Yet neither party had repudiated the rationalistic ideas of the Enlightenment, which had brought Europe to the brink of disaster. All the leading statesmen of Europe had remained "enlightened" and the theories of Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, St. Simon, and Auguste Comte had become the common property of both groups. The only point where there was any disagreement was in the area of the practical and in the means to realize the utopian ideals of the Enlightenment.

Kuyper called upon the Reformed Christians of Holland to break with this false choice between liberal and conservative, socialist and individualist, because both liberalism and conservatism and socialism and individualism are united in their common apostate humanistic presuppositions about man in society and the possibility of achieving community between men upon the basis of a "common reason" rather than a common faith. Kuyper brought into the open the fundamental issue in modern economics and politics: will men and nations accept God's authority, law, and sovereignty over their lives, or will they make their own reason sovereign? He writes:

The first article of any social program which will bring salvation must remain: "I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and earth." This article is today being erased. Men will no longer recognize any God in statesmanship. Not as though men did not find the poetry of religion charming; but because whoever says I believe in God thereby also acknowledges that there is an ordering of nature by God, and an ordinance of God over our conscience; a higher will, to which we as creatures have to submit ourselves. Today, everything must be a free creation of human art. The social structure must be planned only according to whim and caprice. And therefore God must go, so that with no natural bond to restrain them, men can turn every moral ordinance into its opposite, and undermine every fundamental of human association.⁸

Why should the Pope concern himself with such mundane matters as the condition of the working class and the social inequalities between the classes? As supreme guardian of religious truth is he not going beyond his jurisdiction? Roman Catholics will answer that the Pope is fully entitled to pronounce upon such mundane matters because fundamental moral issues are involved and hence the reference to the "general moral deterioration" mentioned by Leo at the end of the opening paragraph of his encyclical. According to Roman Catholic doctrine the Church is not only the official teacher of divine revelation but also the custodian of the nations' morals. As such the Church is the official moralist which decides on the morality of all human acts. Thus Leo says:

We affirm without hesitation that all the striving of men will be in vain if they leave out the Church. It is the Church that proclaims from the Gospel those teachings by which the (class) conflict can be brought to an end, or at least made far less bitter; the Church uses its efforts not only to enlighten the mind, but to direct by its precepts the life and conduct of men.⁹

To understand this claim of the Pope to have jurisdiction over public affairs involving moral issues, we must briefly consider the social philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, since Pope Leo based his own teaching upon a Thomistic foundation, as he himself announced in his encyclical Aeterni Patris, issued in 1879.

B.  The Thomistic Theory of Human Society←⤒🔗

Aquinas' view of human society is entirely dominated by the Roman Catholic ground-motive or basic religious presupposition of "nature" and "grace." As he himself put it: "Grace does not abolish nature but perfects it."

Nature, conceived as form and matter in the Greek sense, became for Aquinas the autonomous basis of supernatural grace. By means of his doctrine of the eternal law of God, with its subjective counter­part in the natural law, Aquinas sought to accommodate the Greek-form-matter motive with the biblical nature-sin motive. Through the natural law the creation, in its essential nature, has a subjective part in the eternal law of God. According to Aquinas, the point that distinguished the rational creature from the irrational was the former's ability to reason and therefore to perceive the eternal law of God, that is, the divine ordering of things. Man, through natural law, shared in the eternal law of God and consequently was, by employing his natural reasoning faculties, in a position to know good and to know evil "The impression of the divine light in us" propels this natural law that is implanted in us, and this natural law enabled man "to be in possession of the natural principles of his actions." In a different place he held that "natural law was nothing less than the participation of the rational creature in the eternal law."¹⁰ Such a synthesis of biblical and Greek ground-motives implied a distinction between a natural and a supernatural sphere of thought and ac­tion. Within the sphere of nature a relative autonomy was ascribed to human reason, which Aquinas supposed to be capable by its own unaided light of discovering the natural truths about the universe and of man's social life within it.

Christ, the Word of God made flesh, was now no longer seen as the new root of the creation, as the great reformer of true nature, but as existing in the supernatural realm with God and His angels, making contact with man by means of the sacraments of the Church. "Nature" concentrated in "reason" was declared self-sufficient and autonomous in her own sphere, the temporal world order. Aquinas, in fact, made the natural reason of man independent of God's written revelation. Learning, morality, political life, and "natural theology" were therefore, as autonomous areas of natural reason, practiced in an Aristotelian manner. But in addition to this intrinsically pagan idea of "nature," a "supra-temporal" area of grace was constructed which transcends natural reason and can only be ap­prehended by the light of God's revelation. In his study of A History of Political Thought: The Middle Ages, Walter Ullman of Cambridge University writes:

Aquinas himself considered at all stages of his mature writing that there were always two levels on which any discussion on political topics ought to proceed. This two-tier system was indeed an im­perative necessity if the Aristotelian welter of ideas was to be accommodated within the Christian structure. The traditional gulf between nature and grace was bridged by Thomas. There was no ambiguity in his thought about the efficacy of nature itself and of natural law – both did and could operate without any revelation or grace or divine assistance because they followed their own inherent laws and these latter had nothing to do with grace. But – and this was the great step forward – whilst in the traditional doctrine there was a sharp contrast between nature and grace, in fact a very real dichotomy, with Thomas there was none of it; with him contrast and dichotomy gave way to a hierarchy of different orders, so that the two opposites were to be seen as two hierarchically differently placed orders, the one the natural, the other the supra-natural. Hence, so far from being hostile to each other, nature and grace were to be viewed as complementary. This was the meaning of the often quoted statement of Thomas that "grace does not do away with nature but perfects it."¹¹

The Christian view of the Fall now had to be accommodated to this pagan conception of "nature" as well. The scriptural view of the "heart" as the religious root and center of human nature had to be abandoned in favor of the Aristotelian concept viewing "reason" as the origin of human nature. The "heart" became identified with the temporal psychical function, now considered the stimulant of the will. Thus Thomas could no longer admit that human nature is de­praved in its very root because of the falling away from God of the heart in rebellion and apostasy. Instead, he taught that "nature" was not completely spoiled by sin, but merely "wounded," that is, the supra-natural gift of grace had been lost.

The idea of nature as an element that contained its own force and its own principles of operation enabled Aquinas to declare that this or that phenomenon was "according to nature," "above nature," "contrary to nature," and so on. Setting out from Aristotelian premises, Thomas had no difficulty in applying them to society and its government. As Ullmann points out:

The Aristotelian teleology regarding the operations of nature and the idea of the State as a product of nature reappeared in the Thomist system; and so did the Aristotelian definition of man as a "political animal," which Thomas improved by designating man also as a social animal, so that his definition was expanded to man being "a political and social animal."¹²

Man's nature, according to Aristotle, was taken to be a composi­tion of form and matter. In this case, "form" is the rational soul, and matter is the material body. Every creature that is composed of form and matter has become. The form principle gives to the process of becoming the direction for the attainment of its own particular "telos" or end. Every creature that has become thus strives by nature after the attainment of its own proper end or purpose in life, in that its "essential form" realizes itself in the "matter" of its body. Thus a plant strives by nature to develop from its seed into a perfected plant, the embryo of an animal to the finished animal form. According to Aristotle, in the case of man his natural perfection consists in the complete development of his rational nature which distinguishes him from plants and animals. "The rational law of nature" has been created as part of this rational nature and it impels man to do good and to refrain from evil. Man therefore "by nature" naturally strives after the good.

Aristotle's doctrine culminated in his view of the state as the supreme community of citizens, which was a product of nature, the result of the working of the laws of nature, and not the result of any agreement, social contract, or convention, as the Sophists had claimed it to be. The laws of nature which brought forth the state were to Aristotle germane to man himself. He was born with them and they determined him to live in the state, without which he could not exist, and within which he could achieve his own perfection. Man was thus by nature a political animal. The state, to him, was the consummation of all other natural unions, such as the family, the village, the town, etc.

The state is in fact the highest form of community. All other societal relationships, such as marriage, family, blood-relation, vocational and industrial groupings, all these are merely lower components which serve the higher. The state is grounded in the "rational-moral" nature of man. Nature working through the vehicle of human will and reasoning not only brought forth the state, but also determined its path. Since nature willed "the good," Aristotle argued, and since the state was the supreme expression of all human associations, it followed that the state aimed at the highest good.

The instrument by which this aim could be achieved was, for Aristotle, the law, that is, the articulated will of nature pronounced by the citizens. Man cannot realize his natural perfection in isolation, but only within the community. Marriage and the family are the first "lower" necessities of life, the "next higher" are fulfilled by the village community. But these lower societal relationships are not autonomous; only the state can, as the perfectly autonomous, self-sufficient and independent community, provide man with all that serves the perfection of his "rational-moral" nature. In the Politics of Aristotle we read:

When we come to the final and perfect association, formed from a number of villages, we have already reached the polis – an association which may be said to have reached the height of full self-sufficiency_; or rather (to speak more exactly) we may say that while it grows for the sake of mere life … it exists, when once it is fully grown, for the sake of the good life (and is there­fore full self-sufficient).

Because it is the completion of associations existing by nature, every polis exists by nature, having itself the same quality as the earlier associations from which it grew. It is the end or consum­mation to which those associations move, and the "nature" of things consists in their end or consummation; for what each thing is when its growth is completed we call the nature of that thing, whether it be a man or a horse or a family…

From these considerations it is evident that the polis belongs to the class of things that exist by nature, and that man is by nature an animal intended to live in a polis. He who is without a polis, by reason of his own nature and not of some accident, is either a poor sort of being, or a being higher than man.¹³

Thus Aristotle constructs the relation between the state and the other societal relationships according to the scheme of the whole and its parts, and of the goal and the means, from the "lower" to the "higher." The "lower" relationships as different kinds of parts of the state have no goal in themselves, but all must serve the state. Man is by nature a state-oriented being, for already in the forming of marriage, family and kinship groupings the natural compulsion to form the state is germinating. By nature the state for Aristotle thus exists before the individual. The state is implicit in the rational-moral nature of man, as the mature form of a plant in its seed, or the full-grown body of an animal in its embryo.

Based on the rational faculty of man's nature, the state is defined by its purpose; namely to care for the general welfare. According to Aquinas' conception, it is in this natural purpose that the immediate basis for civil authority lies. For without such authority the state community cannot exist. If then the state has its origin in nature, then so does civil authority. Accordingly Aquinas taught that po­litical institutions are an aspect of "natural" morality, that is, they can be justified on a purely human plane, independently of religious values.

For Thomas, man and Christian became conceptually different notions. Man was a natural product, and as such demanded attention. His naturalness was his hallmark, and as a member of human society he was a social animal. Ullmann points out:

The complement of man in organized society was the citizen. The citizen was man writ large. The citizen was, to Thomas, no longer the subject, the sub/ditus, who simply had to obey superior authority. It was Aristotle's definition of a citizen as one who partook in government which supplied the solvent and which made possible the release of the (inferior) subject from (superior) authority. For, sharing in government was precisely what was denied to the subject (of the theocratic church-state), nor had he any share in the making of the law which was given to him. The important point here is that Thomas, by absorbing Aristotle's ideas, effected in the public sphere not so much a metamorphosis of the subject as the rebirth of the citizen who since classical times had been hibernating. It is impossible to exaggerate the significance of the emergence of the concept of the citizen; his rebirth was of crucial importance … Moreover the distinction drawn by Aristotle between man and the citizen reappeared in Thomas' system:

It sometimes happens (he said) that someone is a good citizen who has not the quality according to which someone is also a good man, from which it follows that the quality according to whether someone is a good man or a good citizen is not the same.

The significance of this statement does not need any comment. It was the denial of what for want of a better term we have called the totalitarian point of view. It was a major step forward towards a new orientation. What applied to the one need not necessarily apply to the other. The citizen – political man – answered the description of a being different from mere man. Thereby the spectre of splitting up man's activities begins to be discernible, and herewith the subjection of man to different sets of norms and postulates (political, religious, moral, economic, etc.).¹⁴

This sharp conceptual contradistinction between man and citizen was to be of crucial importance; it broke down the monolithic structure, it broke down the oneness or wholeness point of view, and considered the individual person from at least two angles, the political and the moral. And, when once the implications of this dichotomy were understood, the consequences also followed: first, the separation of the Christian from the citizen, and from the man; and later ensued the further categorization into social, economic, cultural, etc., norms, each with its own set of principles. It was nothing but the atomization of man's activities.¹⁵

By dividing up human life into two realms of nature and grace, Aquinas thus undermined the unified field of knowledge and experience revealed by God to man in the Holy Scriptures. Knowledge of the natural sphere for Aquinas could be obtained by man's "natural" reason, which had remained uncorrupted by the Fall of man into sin. Only man's will had fallen, not his reason. From this incomplete view of the biblical fall has flowed the most serious consequences, including the Social Question with which Pope Leo XIII was so concerned. Man's intellect became autonomous or independ­ent of God's holy Word. This autonomy, in the course of the following centuries, was to provide the basis for the secularization of Western philosophy, law, politics, art, business and economic life, and, above all, Western science and education. Upon the basis of this autonomy first provided by Aquinas, European life, intellectual, artistic, scientific, and economic, became free of God's law and separated from His revelation. As a result there soon came to be felt no need for a distinctive Christian philosophy of society and the state. After Aquinas the tendency towards complete secularization increased until it reached its apostate climax in the French Revolution in 1789 and the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.

The idea of the "natural" social and political nature of man led Aquinas to assert the necessity of the full and harmonious integration of the individual in the community. Thus he writes:

The goodness of any part is to be considered with reference to the whole of which it forms a part. So, all men being a part of the city, they cannot truly be good unless they adapt themselves to the common good. Nor can the whole be well constituted if its parts be not properly adapted to it.¹⁶

Aquinas in fact sees the state as the absolute and total community in the domain of natural society, of which all the other social spheres can be but subservient parts. In other words, the relationship between the state and the other natural spheres of life is conceived of by Aquinas and most subsequent Roman Catholic thinkers as that of the whole of its parts. The individual citizen as such has no meaning or value apart from the whole community of which he is a part. According to A. P. D'Entreves:

There is no doubt that Aquinas conceives of the State as an organism, of the individual as subordinate to the community, and of the common good as the supreme value to which all others are instrumental. He repeats and endorses the Aristotelian statement, that the family and all other groups differ from the city not only in size, but "specifically," and derives from it the conclusion that "the common welfare is different in nature from that of the in­dividual, just as the nature of the part is different from that of the whole."¹⁷

At the same time Aquinas did not at all advocate the cause of state absolutism, as later apostate humanists were to do with their theories of the indivisible and inalienable sovereignty of the secular state. He pointed out that the prince has authority only so long as he governs according to the moral law. He is "under God and law." The action of the state is delimited by objective rules of justice which ensure the respect of the fundamental demands of the Christian conception of human personality.

When Aquinas teaches that the individual and the "lower" spheres of life are parts of the state, he also adds the proviso: insofar as they are of the same order. This means to begin with that the supernatural order in its sacramental superstructure, of which both the individual and the institution are a part, is withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the secular authority, which Aquinas limits to the natural domain of life. As Aquinas himself puts it:

Man is not formed for political fellowship in his entirety, and in all that he has … but all that a man is, and can do, must be directed by God.¹⁸

Aquinas thus delimits the authority of the state over the individual by objective rules of justice and morality which ensure that he will obey God.

The Roman Catholic conception of the state is not only opposed to political totalitarianism, but it is also opposed to the centralization of all power in the state. It conceives of the state as being built from the bottom up, in a step-by-step ascent from the lower to the higher communities. A higher community must not concern itself with what a lower community can do satisfactorily by itself.

Out of this doctrine there has developed the celebrated Roman Catholic principle of subsidiarity or supplementation which received official expression in the encyclical Quadragesimo Anno of Pope Pius XI as the guideline for the delimitation of the task of the government with respect to the regulation of business life. According to this principle, the state is to provide for the common good only that which neither the individual nor the activities of the lower communities can provide. The principle of subsidiarity is expressed as follows in Quadragesimo Anno:

It is an injustice, a grave evil, and a disturbance of right order for a larger and higher organization to arrogate to itself functions which can be performed efficiently by smaller and lower bodies … Of its very nature the true aim of all social activity should be to help individual members of the social body, but never to destroy them.¹⁹

In his fundamental work Christian Democracy in Western Europe 1820-1953, Michael Fogarty compares this Catholic principle of subsidiarity with the Dutch Reformed doctrine of sphere sovereignty.

The Catholic and the Reformed (notably Dutch Reformed) Churches express in slightly different terms an essentially similar idea about social structure. Catholics speak of the "principle of subsidiarity." … For the Reformed churches the corresponding principle is that of "sovereignty in one's own circle," or "the special task and vocation of each group."

There is obviously a difference of accent. The Protestant conception underlines the separate and exclusive responsibility of the individual and the small group, though only with defined limits and subject to the vocation of service to others. The Catholic phrasing stresses rather the inclusion of these small units of society in greater wholes, within which however they have a sphere of autonomy on which they have a right to insist. But in practice the two conceptions come to much the same thing. There is work to be done at every level of social organization from the individual to the international community, and the responsibility for what can be done at lower levels must not be allowed to gravitate to the top. Every social unit or group has a sphere of work which it can do efficiently in the interests not only of its members but of society as a whole, and this sphere must be defined and reserved for it. A higher authority may of course insist that some subordinate group live up to its responsibilities … It may "direct, watch, stimulate and restrain," as the encyclical goes on to say. But only in the last, extreme resort may it take over its subordinate responsibilities and discharge them itself. A phrase sometimes used to cover this whole conception, from both the Protestant and Catholic side, is "autonomisation"; the "autonomisation," that is of individuals and social groups. It can also be described as "horizontal pluralism"; a policy which insists on the independence, rights and responsibilities of each individual or group which can show that it has a legitimate sphere of its own; independence firstly as against others on the same level of social organization, and secondly as against those at other and particularly higher levels.

Horizontal pluralism is defined primarily as a way of helping the growth of human personality. It offers the greatest number of openings for leaders to develop and show their ability; and for effective participation by the rank and file. It avoids the dangers of both "massification" and "atomisation":

The danger of massification is not merely that the individual is swallowed up in the mass … It is also that he is simultaneously isolated within the mass. He hesitates to open himself to others. He tries to ensure that only superficial contacts develop between himself and others; his neighbours; contacts based on common interests, or public events which affect his group, his class … his workmates as a whole. But he loses the true warm contact with other human beings. He and his neighbour slip by one another, not knowing the reality and basis of each other's life, or the reality of each other's need ²⁰ (Evangelie en Maatschappij, Dutch Protestant Trade Unions, November 1953, pp. 154-155).

While commending Fogarty for this excellent exposition, we must disagree with his assertion that the Catholic doctrine of subsidiarity and the Reformed doctrine of sphere sovereignty are "essentially similar." On the contrary, they are fundamentally divergent, since the Catholic principle is derived from the Thomistic conception of the "reasonable nature" of man. As Dooyeweerd points out:

It is the Greek concept of nature which here comes to the fore. This concept of nature … is the result of the Greek form matter motive, i.e., the religious motive of Greek culture.

The "reasonable law of nature" teaches that man only depends on those necessities of life for which he cannot provide as an individual. The same law of nature teaches that a lower community, like the family or business, is only dependent on the higher (ultimately the state) for those interests of the community of which it cannot take care itself. This then is the content of the famous principle of supplementation…

This does not alter the fact that Thomism views the individual as well as the lower communities in the "natural domain," as parts of the complete state.

It is precisely against this essentially Greek view of society that the scriptural principle of sphere sovereignty is opposed … According to this scriptural principle God created everything af­ter its own kind. That which possesses a completely different character of its own can never as such become part of a whole, of which it differs principally in its own kind.

The insight into the inner structures and the proper peculiarity of the differentiated spheres of life (i.e., the church, the state, the family, the school) is precisely foreign to Thomistic social science. It distinguishes the communities only from the next object to which they are subservient in their co-operation with the natural perfecting of man. In this, to give some examples, the marital community … is understood by Thomas as a "legal institution founded in human nature, subservient to the propagation of the human race."

Is the inner character and law of life of the marital community in this way in any sense encountered? How, then, can we judge the marital relation when husband and wife can no longer expect children…? Is the marital relationship really characterized, in its inner nature, by understanding it as a legal relationship? Would not marriage become a hell if the legal point of view were the dominant consideration? ²¹

In accordance with its religious ground motives of nature and grace Roman Catholicism requires as an essential element of its social science a superstructure of grace to complete the substructure of nature. As Aquinas put it, "grace does not abolish nature but perfects it." Man is not only called to perfect his reasonable nature, but he is also called to elevate himself to the realm of grace. For Aquinas there is natural law and there is revealed truth, but of both of them the Church, God's voice on earth, is the interpreter, natural law only differing from revealed truth in that man could have come to it even without divine revelation in the Scriptures. But, things being as they are, the Church stands to uphold it. Therefore it follows that though the individual has indeed rights against the state, he has no rights against the Church. As Thomas argues in De Regimine, behind the humanum regimen there is always the divinum regimen. In this world the powers of rex and sacerdos are committed separately, the one to earthly kings, the other to priests, and principally to the Roman pontiff. But the different value of the ends necessarily implies a subordination of the one power to the other, of the regnum to the sacerdotium. Hence it follows that to the Supreme Priest, the successor of Peter and Vicar of Christ, "all kings in Christendom should be subject, as to the Lord Jesus himself." For Thomas the Church has an inherent right to declare when the prince's rule was in violation of the moral law.²²

Just as the state is the perfect community in the "natural" realm, including its parts and all other natural spheres of life, so also is the Church of Rome in the realm of "grace," the whole of Christian so­ciety in its supra-natural perfection, the perfect community of Christendom. According to this medieval conception of "the corpus christianum" (the body of Christ) the ecclesiastical institution of the visible Roman Catholic Church comprises all of the Christian life. Rome looks for the whole, the total unity of the Christian society, in the temporal institution of the church.²³

From this claim of the Church of Rome to have a final authority over the state and over the individual citizens and to represent the total community of the Christian life follows the demand that the other natural communities of society shall be directed by Catholic principles of individual and social conduct. For the good Roman Catholic, therefore, the Christian family, the Christian school, and Christian social action and the Christian state must act and live in accordance with the decisions and policy of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. This does not mean that Rome denies the "natural basis" of these spheres of life. As long as they move in the natural realm they may enjoy autonomy and make their own decisions. But as soon as moral issues or problems emerge then the Church must intervene since she reserves for herself the binding explanation of the natural law.

In the light of this brief summary of Roman Catholic social philosophy we can now understand why it was that Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI in their famous encyclicals not only offered directives for the specific Christian aspect of the "social question," but they also explained in these letters the dictations of the "natural law" and the "natural moral law" as these affected Christian social action. As Pope Pius XI said in Quadragesimo Anno:

It is the moral law alone which commands us to seek in all our conduct our supreme and final end, and to strive in our specific actions for those ends which nature has established for them.²⁴

What then does the Roman Catholic Church teach about social issues? It teaches that we must use natural reason rightly, and reason teaches us that "every man has by nature the right to posses property as his own."²⁵ Humanity must remain as it is; "there will always be differences and inequalities of condition in the State."²⁶ The Church concerns itself to incline the rich to generosity and the poor to resignation, and labors for the reconciliation rather than the conflict of classes. The "first and most fundamental principle" of social policy must be the inviolability of private property. "The chief thing to be secured is the safeguarding of private property by legal enactment and policy. Most of all, it is essential, in these times of covetous greed, to keep the masses within the line of duty."²⁷ Property must also be protected from excessive taxation by the state. The class structure of rich and poor is divinely ordained and unchangeable. However, this does not mean that there has to be class conflict. "Each requires the other, capital cannot do without' labor, nor labor without capital."²⁸

For Leo, the relationship between employer and employee is a moral one, and hence "religion, whereof the Church is the interpreter and guardian, is exceeding powerful in drawing rich and poor to­gether." The Church teaches that the work should be honest and conscientious and the employer should not treat his workers as cattle and should pay his men a just wage.

Leo justified social legislation within carefully defined limits, taking a position very similar to that of the more moderate group of Protestant social reformers in the English-speaking world. He advocated Sunday rest, the regulation of the work of women and children, and maximum hours for at least some types of men's labor. He urged the ideal of a living family wage instead of "free" wage contracts, but he did not suggest actual legislation for a minimum wage. The regulation of hours and working conditions, generally, he considered, could be better handled by boards within industry than by the state directly. Here, of course, he was setting forth "guild" conceptions of industry. He defended the association of workmen as a natural right which the state could not abrogate, and he especially recommended the type of association in which the employers and employees were members. Such corporations should provide for religious duties. They should also attempt to prevent unemployment and should create funds for emergencies such as sickness, accident, and old age.²⁹

"Finally," says Leo, "employers and workmen may themselves effect much … by means of … institutions and organizations. The most important of all workmen's associations are unions."³⁰ Leo is mere still dealing with principles; Pius XI will elaborate these into a practical program which Catholic Action will then execute. But the basis has been laid in Rerum Novarum, which, we have showed, is derived from the Thomistic doctrine of human society.

C.  The Catholic Program for Social Action←⤒🔗

On the fortieth anniversary of Rerum Novarum, Pope Pius XI issue an encyclical titled "On Restoring the Christian Social Order," but more commonly known, as all encyclicals, by its first words, Forty Years After. In it Pius "gratefully recalls" Leo's famous letter, and notes that many of its injunctions have had a beneficial influence in church and modern society.

Pius further states that "new needs of our age and the condition of society have rendered necessary a more precise application and a more certain amplification of Leo's doctrine."³¹ Pius then says:

But before proceeding to discuss these problems we lay down the principle long since clearly established by Leo XIII that it is our right and duty to deal authoritatively with social and economic problems … For the deposit of truth entrusted to us by God, and our weighty office of declaring, interpreting, and urging in season and out of season the entire moral law, demands that both social and economic questions be brought within our supreme jurisdiction, in so far as they refer to moral issues.³²

In these words of Pope Pius XI we clearly see that for Roman Catholics the whole "social question" hinges upon "the entire moral law." As E. T. Gargan puts it, "What is wrong is not the structure but its misuse."³³ As Roman Catholics view things, it is not the structure of modern society that is at fault, but man's abuse of it. The structure is for the Roman Catholic always "natural," but the direction of human affairs must be guided by supernatural norms. For the Calvinist, life is religion; for the Roman Catholic, life is morality. As a result Roman Catholic social reconstruction turns out to be no true reformation of society at all but at most a re-direction of things as they are naturally given, or a super addition of Catholic morality and social science to the social structures as they stand. The Roman Catholic does not, from a scriptural sense of the structure of reality, reform or attempt to reform the state, but rather he largely accepts it as it has gradually developed in the historical experience of the Western nations. He seeks a solution by thinking of the Roman Catholic Church as a supernatural addition to the natural civil so-society in which the Church finds itself. Thus Roman Catholic reform proceeds largely by way of synthesis and accommodation of Roman Catholic social theory and unredeemed human institutions. Such a method of cultural accommodation of course finds its origin in the Thomistic nature-grace ground motive. Of Aquinas' attempt at synthesis H. Richard Niebuhr writes in Christ and Culture:

In his theories of man's end, of human virtues, and of law, as well as in other parts of his practical philosophy and practical theology, Thomas combined into one system of divine demands and promises the requirements cultural reason discerned and those which Jesus uttered, the hopes based on the purpose in things as know by the cultivated mind and those grounded on the birth, life, death and resurrection of Christ. The whole effort at synthesis here is informed by, if not grounded on, the conviction of which Trinitarian doctrine is a verbal expression; namely, that the Creator of nature and Jesus Christ and the immanent spirit are of one essence.³⁴

This "nature-grace" way of thinking about man in society is for the Roman Catholic not just a method of getting things done but a basic frame of reference or religious ground motive which determines the way a Roman Catholic thinks and behaves. It is thus a religiously orientated view of the whole meaning of life and may therefore be considered a faith commitment which becomes the governing principle of all practical action.

For this reason Pope Pius XI approaches the question of social order from a moral rather than a religious standpoint. He appeals to men of all races and classes to unite on the basis of the one universal natural law by appealing to their natural reason. Given his Thomistic presuppositions, he is forced to "reconstruct" in this moralistic way by appealing to the natural moral law rather than to the Word of God directly. Thus he renews the Church's plea to all men of good will to meditate on the solutions he proposes. He begs the more "reasonable" leaders of industry, labor, education, and government to influence the economic order along the following lines:

1. To use their rank and their initiative to convince all sectors of the economy, including agriculture, that they are interdependent, and that no one of them can live without the others.
2. To set out to create a spirit of partnership in which industry, labor, agriculture, science, education, and government will combine their efforts for the betterment of all. As a means of proving their sincerity he recommends a return to some form of the guild system of earlier times, a vocational system grouping together those in the same field and then binding the vocational groups into regional and national councils. The Pope sees the development of this kind of coordination as the one way to ensure partnership and equity within each of the sectors of economic enterprise and between the sectors.

The Pope makes use of the Latin ordo when speaking of this vocational system of grouping together those in the same occupa­tion. This word ordo has been translated into English as "occupa­tional group," "vocational group," "functional group," "guild," "estate."

Husslein speaks of the conception as follows:

Cicero speaks of the Order of Scribes and of the Senatorial Order. Similarly we can speak of the Order of Agriculturists, the Order of Miners, the Order of Physicians, the Order of Builders, the Order of Steelmen, if we so desire. But the point is that precisely so the Holy Father would have his word Ordo employed.³⁵

By means of such professional and vocational guilds or estates the Pope hoped to solve the problem of the class struggle. Thus in the Order of Builders, the contractors as well as the Italian ditch diggers would all be in it together. It is by such means they must organize, and thus create a "sovereign sphere. " Von Nell-Breuning describes this Catholic "sphere sovereignty" in his work, Reorganization of Social Economy, as follows:

Here it is a question, as in the case of social order in general, of the rights of member societies toward society as a whole and vice versa. Since member societies are societies in the true sense of the word, having their own purpose, there follows first of all that all the legal conditions peculiar to each social organization will in their case exist to be effective, valid by themselves, and independent of a superior social authority investing them with their original and therefore social rights of individuals. This is the natural right of self government which is an attribute of the members societies for the sake of realizing their special purpose and the fulfillment of their own vital tasks (Principle of Autonomy).

This autonomy, however, cannot be absolute, but is subordinate to the moral end, and therefore, to the whole society. According to the law of unity of authority within society, it follows that the supreme authority which must care for the common good of the entire society, must also possess the right to supervise the activity of member societies, to regulate the indispensable contributions of the member societies toward the society as a whole, and to intervene against violations of the public welfare committed by member societies (Principle of Intervention).

The order of social authorities itself is in conjunction with the order of special objectives within the general social objective; the good to be realized by member societies within the framework of public welfare will be greater, the more they participate in the social authority. As a result, we have a subordination and a super-ordination of the multifarious authorities in society which we designate as the Principle of Hierarchy.³⁶

As we have already seen, the Roman Catholic theory of society also requires the Principle of Subsidiarity as the corollary of the Principle of Hierarchy. It means that since each "order" or member society takes care of a particular good, and since all together aim at the common good, each member society is a part of the whole in an ever-higher gradation of authority. The state, concerned as it is with the common good exclusively, is the highest (natural) rung on this ladder of authority. Von Nell-Breuning believes that only by means of such a social system can modern society avoid class conflict; He writes:

The present economic regime discloses two classes with opposing interests … The obvious solution is the substitution of corporative orders for the different trades or industries, in each of which orders both classes are embraced, capital and labor, employer and employee, cooperating in common council and common efforts for the good of the common trade or industry, and at the same time keeping in view the entire good.³⁷

This doctrine of the corporative state has become the Roman Catholic social ideal; the state governs a hierarchy of societal relationships where each is part of the greater whole, i.e., the state which directs all human activities towards man's natural purposes. But since "grace does not abolish nature but perfects it," the state in Roman Catholic social theory must itself operate in accordance with the dictates of the natural moral law as this is declared and defined by the Roman Catholic hierarchy. The state exists by the grace and favor of the Church, but since the Church is not concerned with technical matters, it allows the state a large measure of practical autonomy. As Husslein explains the doctrine:

The Church is not concerned with technical questions. These she leaves to experts. Nor is she concerned with political questions as such, but only in so far as they come under the moral law.³⁸

By means of this doctrine of the corporative state Pope Pius XI hoped to thwart the socialist and communist parties' efforts to win the allegiance of the working classes of Europe. In Quadragesimo he stated unequivocally that it is impossible for a Catholic to be both a sincere socialist or communist and a true member of the Roman Catholic Church. As things turned out his encyclical was used by the Fascist parties of Europe to justify the rule of a clique of industrialists over industry without the inconveniences of trade unions and parliaments. Under Mussolini's Fascist dictatorship the national control of industry rather than self-government in industry became the essence of the matter. Both in theory and in practice the Fascist state is above syndicates and corporations, and the tendency developed for the new organized orders of industry to become merely administrative arms of the ministry of commerce for a more highly centralized control of industry by the government. Under the Fascist version of the corporative state both workingmen and employers lost their independent organizations, and received in return equal representation on the new boards appointed to govern industry. In his encyclical the Pope expressed some qualifications about Mussolini's exploitation of the guild system as possessing "an excessively bureaucratic and political character."³⁹ In general, how­ever, the Pope felt that the Fascist corporative system had proved its ability to settle industrial conflicts by state action and in the "repression of socialist organizations and efforts." J. H. Nichols rather unkindly but no less truly points out that "Virtually every Fascist revolution of the next decade was to fly the flag of Quadragesimo Anno and its corporative state."⁴⁰

No doubt it was this experience which prompted Pope John XXIII, in his great encyclical Mater et Magister, to demand a far greater participation by the workers in the industries in which they work:

We hold as justifiable the desire of the employees to participate in the activity of the enterprises to which they belong as workers. It is not feasible to define a priori the manner and degree of such participation, since these depend on the specific conditions prevailing in every enterprise – conditions that can vary from one to another … But we think it fitting to call attention to the fact that the problem of the participation of the workers is an ever-present one, whether the enterprise is private or public; at any rate, every effort should be made that the enterprise become a community of persons in the dealings, activities and standing of all its members. This demands that the relations between the em­ployers and directors on the one hand, and the employees on the other, be marked by appreciation, understanding, a loyal and ac­tive cooperation and devotion to the undertaking common to both, and that the work be considered and effected by all members of the enterprise, not merely as a source of income, but also as the fulfilment of a duty and the rendering of a service. This also means that the workers may have their say, and make their own contribution to, the efficient running and development of the enterprise … The demand for workers to have a great say in the conduct of a firm accords not only with man's nature, but also with recent progress in the economic, social and political spheres.⁴¹

Provided the principle of unity and efficiency of management is ensured, Pope John felt that the desire of workingmen to share actively in the life of the firm where they work is a legitimate one, and one which must be satisfied to the degree and in the manner permitted by the actual situation. He thus taught:

A humane view of the enterprise ought undoubtedly to safe­guard the authority and necessary efficiency of the unity of direction, but it must not reduce its daily co-workers to the level of simple and silent performers, without any possibility of bringing their experience to bear (on the running of the enterprise) and entirely passive in regard to the decisions that regulate their activity.⁴²

As technology advances, greater skill will be required of workers, and this in turn will require that greater educational and training opportunities should be afforded to these workers. All this serves to create an environment in which workers are encouraged to assume greater responsibility in their own sphere of employment (Mater et Magister, 96).

Up to this point, John XXIII had not advanced too far beyond the teaching of his immediate predecessors. The next observations he made, however, involved a far greater recognition of the proper role of labor in the modern world. He noted the development of labor unions in recent time, approving the idea of collective bargaining, and the great part these unions had played in avoiding the class struggle. Consequently these workers should now "be given the opportunity to exert their influence through the state, and not just within the limits of their own spheres of employment." In other words, Pope John wanted unions to achieve their objectives by means in addition to collective bargaining. Thus he said:

The reason for this is that the individual productive concerns, regardless of their size, efficiency, and importance in the state, form but a part – an integral part – of a nation's entire economic and social life, upon which their own prosperity must depend. Hence, it is not the decisions within the individual productive units which have the greatest bearing on the economy but those made by public authorities and by institutions which tackle the various economic problems on a national or international basis. It is therefore very appropriate, or even necessary, that these public authorities and institutions bring the workers into their discussions, and those who represent the rights, demands and aspirations of the workingmen; and not confine their deliberations to those who merely represent the interests of management (Mater et Magister, 97-99).

Economic decisions by political bodies on a national or international level are public matters, not private actions by the owners of property. Hence workers, and the unions that represent them, participate as a matter of right in deliberations that so deeply affect their welfare. On this public level, their interests are coordinate with those of management, whereas on the company level workers' claims, while real and substantial, are necessarily subordinate in economic matters.

D.  Roman Catholic Temporal Action←⤒🔗

While the Popes have provided the social theory by which men should be guided in their social life, it is the task of Catholic Action and of the "lay apostolate" to carry it out. Michael Fogarty calls this the "sphere of strategy" or of "middle principles." He says:

There is a difference here between the Catholic and the protestant views, due to differing conceptions of the nature and authority of the Church. But this difference is more apparent in theory than in practice. To summarize, define, and teach the broader principles of political and social conduct, those most immediately following from revelation and the natural law is seen even by Protestants as the business in the first instance of the trained theologian or philosopher, and in the second of Christian Action movements, more or less formally under the official Church's control. But to decide how these principles can best be carried into effect in a given political, economic or social environment is seen even by Catholics as primarily and essentially the responsibility of the lay Christian Democratic movements. And this covers the long-term strategic judgments as well as day to day tactics.⁴³

In 1951 and again in 1957 a World Congress for the Apostolate of the Laity was held in Rome. The idea that the Roman Catholic layman is also an apostle or servant of Jesus Christ in some sense was not new, but it had tended to become forgotten. Then, thanks to the great Liturgical Movement which has now been operative in the Roman Church for the past hundred years, a new emphasis has come to be made on the common priesthood of all the faithful and an insistence on the social responsibility of the Christian.⁴⁴ Then Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno gave the laity its charter of action, calling upon it to join with the clergy in the Christianization of modern society.⁴⁵ The purpose of both Congresses was to search for the best methods and principles which would render the work of the lay apostolate effective in the conditions of post-Christian society. In his address to the First World Congress, Cardinal Gracias stated:

Every good Catholic is an apostle. The mother who teaches her children, the father who does neighbourhood evangelization, or simply shows exemplary conduct are acting as apostles. But this apostleship is derived. The Church hierarchy is the true apostolate. It was to the twelve that Christ gave the apostolic mandate, not to all the believers, and the twelve handed down their jobs; Peter to the Pope, the others to the cardinals and bishops.⁴⁶

Thus the Church of Rome does the "official," the Roman Catholic layman the "unofficial" apostolic work. The Church cannot handle all the work, and hence the laity must help the clergy. "Catholic Action," said Pius XI, "is the participation of the laity in the hierarchical apostolate."⁴⁷ In his pamphlet What Is Catholic Action, J. Newman points out that such participation never means that the layman takes over the official work of the clergy, but that he can do work on behalf of the clergy, at the clergy's request. This is the more official participation. He can also engage himself in unofficial participation such as neighborhood evangelism. The lay apostolate arises from the fact that every Catholic by virtue of his baptism and confirmation is in some way a priest. But such priesthood is subordinate to that of the clerical priesthood. As the encyclical Mediator Dei made plain, the layman is not a priest, save in a spiritual or metaphorical sense, since of himself he does not possess or enjoy the true power of the priesthood to celebrate the Mass.⁴⁸

At the point that laymen organize to carry out the hierarchy's social and political directives we have a special form of the lay apostolate, namely Catholic Action, and when such organized groups concern themselves with social problems, we find Catholic social action. They can be study groups, or perhaps welfare organizations, or educational groups.

In an appendix to his work True Humanism, Maritain distinguishes between three distinct planes of such Catholic action. First there is the spiritual plane, when the Catholic acts as a member of the Mystical Body of Christ. He writes of this plane:

Whether it be in the order of liturgical and sacramental life, of the work of the virtues or of contemplation, of the apostolate or of works of mercy, our activity has its determining object in eternal life, in God … the service of the redemptive work of Christ in ourselves and in others. This is the plane of the Church itself.⁴⁹

Then there is the second plane of activity, which Maritain defines as the temporal one, when Catholics act "as citizens of an earthly city, engaging in the affairs of humanity's earthly life." Of this plane he writes:

Whether it be in the intellectual or moral order, scientific and artistic or social and political, our activity, while all the while, in so far as it is right, being turned towards God as its final end, has as its determining end a good which is not eternal life, but one which is generally concerned with the things of time, the work of civilisation, or of culture. This is the plane of the world.

These two planes are clearly distinct, as the things which are Caesar's and the things which are God's … They are distinct, they are not separate … They are different, but the one is subordinate to the other; the temporal as such needs to be vivified by the spiritual.⁵⁰

Maritain then distinguishes between "acting as a Christian" in the world and "acting as a Christian as such" by which he means that "we must not only act as Christians and as Christians as such, as liv­ing members of Christ, on the spiritual plane; we must also act as Christians, as living members of Christ's body, on the temporal one. Otherwise the weakness and abstention of Christian energies in the things of time will result in the abandonment of the world into the hands of other energies who do not labor for its good."⁵¹ With this may be compared Edmund Burke's famous words: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

Maritain then suggests that there is a third plane of activity, which is intermediate between the other two. Of his plane he writes:

This intermediate plane is that of the spiritual as inflected to the temporal one, the plane of the spiritual where it joins the temporal … On this third plane as on the first the Christian acts and appears before men as a Christian as such and to this extent commits the Church … It is on this third plane as on the first that the laity is called by catholic action to collaborate in the apostolate of the teaching Church. It is on this third plane that they exercise a catholic civic action … when they intervene in political affairs in the defense of religious interests … The whole work of catholic action is done on the first and on the third plane.⁵²

Elsewhere, in Scholasticism and Politics, Maritain expressly states that Catholic action does not and cannot take place on the second plane, i.e., the temporal or worldly plane. He says:

On the temporal level, our action … if it is what it ought to be … will be an action proceeding from Christian inspiration, yet it will not present itself as specifically Christian … On the spiritual level … it will have as its object the expansion of the Kingdom of God in souls, as specifically Christian (the Christian apostolate) … It is on the first and on the third level of the Christian's action – on the level of the purely spiritual and on that of the spiritual uniting with the temporal in the name of spiritual values – and only on these two levels, that Catholic action is accomplished, because this is, by definition, an apostolic action.

Catholic action does not remain on the purely spiritual level of itself, it demands passage to the lower level … Christian social action is par excellence in its mode of action. In what sense is this so? … Let us not forget that the social, the economic, and the political, are intrinsically dependent on ethics, and that, by this title, for this formal reason, are concerned with eternal life, and therefore with the pastoral ministry of the Church.⁵³

Pius XII confirmed Maritain's teaching when he remarked that "it is self-evident that the apostolate of the laity is subordinated to the ecclesiastical Hierarchy,"⁵⁴ but that lay organizations may enjoy a certain measure of autonomy. The answer of autonomy lies in a distinction between guiding directives and actual activity.

If the Roman Catholic hierarchy has not given specific directives, then by definition it follows, Maritain writes, that there can be no Catholic Action but only action by Catholics:

Where this Catholic action on the world is not itself directed to apostolic ends … there is, of course, action by Catholics but no Catholic action as such. That is why economic and professional works – cooperatives, social insurance, trade unions and the like – no matter how Christian their inspiration may be, do not enter into the concept of Catholic action.⁵⁵

Maritain's teaching received official approval at the Second Vatican Council in the decree De Ecclesia, which states:

The economy of salvation demands that the faithful should learn to make a careful distinction between the rights and duties they have undertaken as members of the Church's flock and those which belong to them as members of Human society. They must make efforts to harmonize both sets of rights and duties, bearing in mind that they must be guided by the Christian conscience, no matter what the temporal activity in which they are involved, for not even in temporal business can any human activity be removed from God's control. In our day there is the greatest need that this distinction and this harmony should be seen in the clearest possible light in the manner in which the faithful act, if the Church's mission is to be able more fully to correspond to the special conditions of the world today.⁵⁶

In practice, this distinction concerns two different but complementary forms of apostolic activity, both of which are quite indispensable to the Church's mission to the world. On the one hand Catholics believe in Catholic Action under ecclesiastical patronage and concerned with the spiritual apostolate of the Roman Catholic Church in the modern world. On the other hand they believe in action by Catholics not directly subject to the hierarchy, which takes place on the natural level, where they can only do what their hands find to do. As Maritain well puts it:

The social is by nature concerned with the second level, the level of the temporal, on which we act as members of the earthly city, and on which we ought to act in a Christian manner, on our own responsibility, at our own risk and peril, but not professedly as Christians sent by the Church.⁵⁷

The full implications of this vital distinction have recently been clarified by Paul Crane, S.J., in his article, "Reflections on a Failure," in the December, 1965, issue of Christian Order, and by B. A. Santamaria in The Price of Freedom. Here is what Crane says:

1. The object of any Catholic Social Movement is to influence evolving society in a Christian direction.
2. The essential instrument of influence can only be the active group of dedicated Christians working within society itself. Without this type of group action no Catholic Social Movement will prove effective. The object of such a movement must be to build up a network of these groups.
3. The unity of these groups is forged on the basis of uncompromising and shared allegiance of members to the truth of Christian principles.
4. To work effectively such groups must pursue concrete and defined objectives which fit into a pattern of positive reforming activity.
5. The long-term effectiveness of these groups will be maintained to the extent that they are (a) well serviced by a paid secretariat, (b) coordinated within a strategic network by a competent authority, (c) constant and uncompromising in their dedication to Christian principle and the need for its application.
6. The activity of these groups does not fall within the sphere of Catholic Action properly so called. It represents rather the action of Catholics. As such, it should not be placed under episcopal jurisdiction. The organized Church, as such, is not involved in the activity of these groups. It is Catholic laymen who are involved, along with other Christians, in their working environment. Their activity should merit at least the active sympathy not only of right-thinking Catholics, but of all men of goodwill.
7. Misunderstanding of the nature and purpose of these groups is bound to cause friction within the Church and between the Church and secular society. The prospect should be faced with equanimity, and a firm resolution on the part of authority within the Church never, for the sake of appearance of peace, to suppress the efforts of those who give their lives to the pursuit think, is what our Lord meant when he said that he had come to bring not peace, but a sword.⁵⁸

From this excellent statement it follows that Catholic Action and Action by Catholics must be understood as a function of the Roman Church's doctrine of the "antithesis" between God and the powers of darkness. But, as Dooyeweerd reminds us, this antithesis is understood by Rome entirely in the light of its religious ground motive of nature and grace. As such Rome views the antithesis on the one hand as the attempt to separate nature from the faith of the church and on the other hand as the refusal on the part of unbelievers to place the social institutions of the natural world, i.e., marriage, family, school, etc., at the service of grace and its main channel, the clerical hierarchy. As Dooyeweerd says:

"Nature" and "grace" cannot be separated according to the Roman Catholic view. He who thinks the "natural life" to be sovereign places himself over against Roman Catholicism in an irreconcilable antithesis.⁵⁹

Dooyeweerd then points out that this carries with it consequences in the realm of Catholic action. In a predominantly Roman Catholic country the Roman Catholic naturally will not need to form a specifically Roman Catholic political party or labor union. But in a country with a strongly mixed population he will have to accept the antithesis in these realms.

Thus Pope Pius XI declared:

Whenever the laws of the country … make it impossible for Catholics to form Catholic unions or political parties, under such circumstances, they seem to have no choice but to enroll themselves in neutral trade unions.⁶⁰

In accordance with this directive the Pope ruled on February 2, 1926, that the Mexican Roman Catholics could not form a political party which calls itself Catholic. Dooyeweerd quotes a Dutch Roman Catholic writer on this subject who wrote during the last war as follows:

One may conclude that wherever the enemy of the church is in control, and is willing to war against the church with its power, and carry with it with all fierceness, if there seems any reason for it, in such a case a Roman Catholic political party would only make things worse and this is undesirable … In a country which has little anticlericalism a Catholic party would promote this anticlericalism. This would do more damage than good … On similar grounds one must conclude that a Roman Catholic political party in Mexico or for that matter in France or England or the U.S.A. would be undesirable.⁶¹

However, this writer maintained his thesis that "a Catholic political party in principle is the right thing wherever the state does not acknowledge the ecclesiastical power."⁶²

Rome further teaches that if and when the formation of a Catholic political party or labor union is inexpedient or impossible, then the Catholic must belong to a Catholic action labor group. Hence, we find Catholic trade unions in Quebec, but not in the U.S.A., and a political party in the Netherlands, but not in Canada. Nevertheless the ideal remains to bring all areas and aspects of modern society into subjection to the Roman Catholic hierarchy. Thus Catholic Action seeks wherever possible to bring pressure upon governments, legislative bodies, and the press to realize the social philosophy of the papacy. Roman Catholics demand freedom in the English-speaking world to bring in the Roman Catholic utopia. Louis Veuillot's famous proposition about religious liberty aptly sums up the Ro­man Catholic attitude toward liberalism and democracy in general. "Where we Catholics are in the minority, we demand freedom in the name of your principles; where we are in the majority, we deny it in the name of our principles."⁶³

In no field of modern society has Catholic Action achieved greater results than in the field of building up Catholic trade unions. In Holland and Flanders the Christian unions are today the largest, and probably come close to an absolute majority, while the Socialist unions come second, and the Communists a bad third. In France and Italy the Communist-controlled unions come first, but unions under Christian Democratic leadership now have a majority. In Germany, Austria, and Switzerland the socialist unions come at the top. Christian trade unionists are in these lands a minority, but strongly enough organized and well enough represented in certain trades and industries to count for a good deal more than the Communists. In Switzerland there are independent Catholic and Protes­tant unions. In Germany there have for some years been separate Christian clerical workers' unions. On the whole, it is in Germany and Austria that Christian influence in the trade unions has made least progress since the First World War. It may not have much diminished, but can scarcely be said to have increased. Elsewhere, including Switzerland, the increase has been clear and great.⁶⁴

According to Michael Fogarty these Catholic trade unions define their attitude towards socialists as follows:

1. The Socialists, and particularly the Marxists, saw the right development of society as leading towards public ownership and national planning. The Christian movements accepted some degree of this but aimed primarily at a decentralized order based on industrial self-government. Firms should be autonomous (and therefore independently owned), with workers' participation in management, ownership, and profits. Industries or professions should be self-governing, on the basis of collaboration between freely organized trade unions and employers' associations. Special attention should be given to the basic unit of social and economic life, the family.
2. The Socialist road led through class war and revolution. At this time the Socialist movements included not only Social Democrats in the modern sense, but also what would now be called Communists, and in some countries … substantial bodies of anarchists. The Christians' aim on the other hand might be described as collaboration through conflict. Employer-worker collaboration was possible and indeed necessary, though it could become effective only if each party was ready and able to stand up for its own views and interests.
3. For the Socialists the forces which counted in society were basically material (the economic infrastructure) and in no way supernatural, and reflected themselves in massive class movements. The objective was to win the class war. The. Christians, as trade unionists, were not likely to underestimate the importance of economic factors or of social classes. But the decisive factor, whether as means or aim, was for them the quality of individual personalities. As Cardinal Faulhaber was later to say, "the soul of culture is the culture of the soul." And the Word of God was their guide, with its message on the supernatural as well as the earthly destiny of man Fogarty points out that both Catholic and Protestant unions in Europe today are run by the workers themselves. As early as 1900 most of those concerned with the Christian workers' movements had become convinced that effective cooperation between classes could best be achieved only if each class stood firmly on its own feet. It took rather longer, in fact down to 1912, to secure equally general support for the corollary that standing on one's feet might on occasion entail fighting for one's rights, if necessary with the aid of a strike.⁶⁵

E.  The Roman Catholic Doctrine of the Right to Strike←⤒🔗

Today neither Catholic unionists nor Catholic theologians see any objection in principle to strikes, provided that the usual conditions for a "just war" are fulfilled. Gerard Tremblay of the Confederation of Catholic Workers in Quebec stated that "The National and Catholic syndicates never objected in principle to a just strike … For the strike is based on the right of legitimate defense, and upon freedom of work."⁶⁶ The bishops of Australia in 1947 said that "Under modern conditions, the right to organize in trade unions and the right to strike, under certain defined conditions, are inseparable."⁶⁷ The bishops of Quebec in 1950 noted that certain categories of workers perform services so essential that they are forbidden by law to strike. The bishops held that under these circumstances there should be compensating methods which are adequate to obtain justice and redress of grievances. "The law should, for example, provide for compulsory arbitration, adequately safeguarded in regard to impartiality, effectiveness, and promptness of decision."⁶⁸

According to Roman Catholic doctrine the conditions that make a strike permissible are the same as those for a just war. These are: a just cause; failure of bargaining and conciliation; expected results proportionate to the sacrifice involved; and the use of lawful and morally sanctioned means.

The first requirement, calling for a just cause, does not mean that only matters of strict justice warrant a strike. Between demands of justice and those that involve injustice there is a wide area of claims based on equity and fairness. If the dispute is over wages, for example, the Roman Catholic moralist would say that a strike is justified if the employer is making extraordinary profits and paying sub­standard wages. He would say that a strike is unjust when workers, already paid wages above the industry average, strike for still more and drive an employer to the edge of bankruptcy.

Should Christian workers strike for better wages in an industry already paying them a living wage but which has had several years of unusually good profits? Suppose these profits resulted from better market conditions and not from any increased productivity on the part of the workers? Is this unusual surplus to be given to the stockholders, who are already receiving a good return on their investment, or should the workers also demand a share? Strict justice casts little light on this problem. Yet there would seem to be a case in equity and fairness in giving the workers a share in these additional returns. John F. Cronin believes that "One might even justify a short strike to enforce this demand." He points out that political strikes are in a different category.

In a democracy, it is not normal to use economic pressure to secure political demands. Secondary and sympathy strikes also create problems. May workers strike to help their fellows in a competing plant where a strike has already taken place? They may if they have a direct interest in the result, since they may have reason to fear that failure of one group to get its demands will lead to similar pressures on them later on. But it would not be fair to go out just as a demonstration of sympathy, when no direct interest is involved. Jurisdictional strikes often involve problems of justice. They may be permitted when an employer arbitrarily disregards established rules and customs. But they do not seem fair when the employer is the innocent victim of a dispute between two unions.⁶⁹

Then there are the cases envisaged by the house of bishops of Quebec, in which the public interest could not tolerate a strike. Cronin believes that "generally speaking, doctors, nurses, firemen and police should not strike." But where such strikes are prohibited he suggests that "there should be alternate methods for a just settlement of grievances."⁷⁰

A second condition recognized by Roman Catholic moral theologians for a morally permissible strike is the use of normal means for settling disputes before a strike is called. There should have taken place a reasonable period of negotiation. If this fails, Catholics believe in calling in conciliators to try to mediate the dispute. They have therefore worked, wherever possible, to establish public and private agencies to establish such a service.

Cronin is not too happy about the use of arbitration or labor courts to settle disputes over the negotiation of contracts. He says:

No one doubts the value of these devices when used to inter­pret or to enforce a contract previously agreed upon. But they suffer serious deficiencies when used in the negotiation of claims and interests that arise when a new contract is being discussed. Arbitration is a judicial procedure, whereas claims and interests are not usually matters of strict right.

To cite an example, a union may wish to promote employment in an industry by securing pensions that would permit long-term employees to retire at the age of sixty. It might also ask that workers be given a ten-week vacation after ten years of service. These may be laudable innovations, but a judicial body would be hard put to reach any decision on them. A further difficulty with arbitration is that it entrusts to outsiders decisions that may vitally affect the future of a company. An ill-considered wage increase, for example, might bankrupt the firm. In spite of these limitations, however, compulsory arbitration may be a lesser evil where strikes are forbidden.⁷¹

A third condition recognized by Catholic moralists as justifying a strike is that the expected results should be proportionate to the sacrifices involved, not only for the workers, but also for the public. Strikers must have a sufficiently good reason for declaring a strike. This reason must be proportioned to the importance of the evils which always result from a strike: loss of time, harm done to industry and family budgets. Again, Catholic trade unionists believe that strikers must have some hope of success. They must weigh with caution possibilities of success or failure. "Labor leaders who provoke a strike when they are about certain that it will not succeed work directly against the best interests of the labor class."

The final condition recognized by Roman Catholics to justify Christians striking is that morally acceptable means must be used in carrying out a strike. Consistently with their great respect for property rights, Catholic trade unionists forbid sabotage in all its forms. Similarly, unlike apostate humanist trade unionists, Catholic unionists respect the rights of non-strikers and even of their employers. As Cronin points out:

It certainly would be unfair for workers to leave a steel mill, without first taking the steps necessary for a proper cooling of the furnaces. Strikers in a food store should make provision for the orderly sale of perishable goods. No matter how bitter may be the resentment of the workers against an employer, it is not legitimate to destroy his machines or damage his property. Even worse is the use of violence, as may happen when strike-breakers are imported.⁷²

While admitting the right of picketeers to use persuasion (peaceful) to stop non-strikers working, no reputable Catholic unionist would resort to violence to the person, which is everywhere condemned.

With these principles surely no Reformed Christian can disagree. As long as sin infects the hearts of employers and employees, provision must be made for the civilized regulation of industrial disputes. Even as Christians work for harmony and cooperation in industry and try everything in their power to promote a peaceful settlement of disputes, they cannot close their eyes to the fact that sometimes the strike weapon is the only instrument which the worker can use to bring unjust and tyrannical employers and companies to their senses. As such strikes are the price exacted by man's inhu­manity to man and the direct outcome of human sinfulness. As long as sin continues to exist in modern industry, so long will strikes continue to occur.

F.  Catholic Action at Work in Western Europe←⤒🔗

At first the Catholic unions of Europe were greatly divided over what form their relationship should take with the Catholic bishops or clergy. What was to be the working relationship of the Catholic union to the Catholic Church? Members of the Clerical Workers' Union of France, for example, were required in the early days to be members of a religious guild. The German Catholic unions on the other hand insisted on the principle of interdenominationalism. Denominational unions might be more or less formally under the authority of the clergy. They were under it very formally in the case of the Italian unions at least until 1902. The Dutch Catholic unions are today the most denominational in Europe. The Protestant unions in Holland and the Catholic unions in Switzerland set out to be interdenominational, but ended up by being confined to one de­nomination or group of denominations alone.

The debate ran on for many years, down to the First World War, its storm centers being Germany, where the "trade union controversy" of these years became one of the landmarks of the whole history of the Christian workers movements. Fogarty points out that "The debate as a whole did more than any other to clarify the distinction between Catholic Action and Christian Democracy." Agreement crystallized in the end, about 1914, round three principles:

1. There should be what will be called here "Workers' leagues": in Germany or Holland they would be called "class" or "Stand" organizations. Their business is primarily education and personal formation, for which orthodox doctrine is particularly important, and which is therefore of special interest to the Churches as such. Such leagues accordingly belong properly to Christian Action. They should be organizations of laymen, but under the authority or at least – as it is more correct to say in the case of Protestant bodies – under the very marked influence of the clergy and the Churches as such.
2. Trade unions on the other hand are concerned chiefly with matters of economic and political. technique, which are only indirectly and as regards principles the responsibility of the official church. Their effectiveness also depends much more than that of the leagues … – on the support of the mass of workers, many of them by no means strong believers, whose confidence rests on their conviction that the union is not only a strong but an independent advocate of their interests. Unions therefore belong to the field of Christian Democracy, and can and should have a much slighter official connection with the Churches than the workers' leagues. Unions of Catholics or of Protestants are acceptable, but so are interdenominational unions or even, as in Britain or America, formally neutral unions … Christians should however join only unions which in fact base their policy on the Christian revelation and the tradition of the natural law, and in which the Christian point of view can be effectively expressed.
3. The work of friendly societies, cooperative societies, and similar services might at first sight be classified with that of the unions. In practice however it is often convenient to draw a line between services connected with work, such as vocational training, which are best administered by the unions, and other services of use to the workers and their families irrespective of their trade, which are best administered by the workers' leagues.⁷³

By the early twenties these principles were being applied according to two different patterns.

1. The Catholic workers in Holland, Belgium and Switzerland gave definite form to federated Christian Workers' Movements embracing leagues, unions and services alike. In these federations each constituent movement retained and retains a high degree of autonomy. All have some direct link with the official Church, inasmuch as chaplains are appointed. But in the case of the trade unions the chaplain's role has come to be a very limited one. Of this federated Christian Workers' Movement Fogarty suggests that the outstanding fact about them is that though each individual movement is autonomous, "they are woven together so as, along with neighbouring movements outside the federation, to create for their members a complete frame of life, specifically and outspokenly Christian."⁷⁴
2. In Germany, France, Italy, and among Protestants in Switzerland, and in the end Holland, this tight type of organization has not met with much favor. Here the unions by the nineteen twenties became not merely autonomous within a wider Christian Workers' Movement but entirely independent, and their link with the Churches became much more tenuous. In Germany the unions came to be interdenominational, and in France and Italy they became what Fogarty. describes as "a-confessional." The Dutch Protestant movements followed a rather different pattern, with the result that their trade unions became in practice denominational and they maintain a liaison committee between the unions and the workers' leagues (Table II of Appendix).

G.  The Catholic Organization of Industry←⤒🔗

In the field of work, as everywhere, both Catholic and Reformed laymen in Western Europe are chiefly interested in human personality, and so in building up the cooperative, self-governing, industrial communities which seem to them most likely to favor its development. Their ideas about industrial organization center chiefly around two problems, those of industry-wide organization and of workers' participation in the firm.

As we have already seen, concern for industry-wide organization has been one of the main features of Roman Catholic economic policy and philosophy. "The principal part" of the Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, so Pius XII wrote in 1952, is that which "contains … the idea of the corporative professional organization of the economy as a whole." What this "corporative professional organization" means in practice can best be seen in the Dutch scheme of "Statutory Industry Councils," whose parentage is acclaimed with equal enthusiasm by Calvinists and Catholics alike. The scheme is usually known as P.B.O., from the initials of its Dutch title (Publiekrechtelijke Bedrijfsorganisatie).

The scheme grew out of the conviction that people living together in a certain geographical space have common interests and need common services; and thus they can properly be called a community and ask for the public law of the state to make special provision for their needs. The Dutch came to realize under the inspired propaganda of Professor J. Veraart, that the body of owners, managers, and workers engaged in operating a given set of processes, or in turning out a given product, also have enough duties and interests in common to justify speaking of them as a "community" and equipping this community with legal power to manage its common affairs. After tremendous debate as to the best way this should be done the Industrial Organization Act of 1950 was passed.

Under the Act, Industry Councils can he set up for firms operating similar processes; cotton spinners, for example, and Commodity Councils for those who contribute to the supply of a particular product; from cotton spinners, for example, through to piece-goods. Commodity Councils have a government-appointed chairman. Otherwise, council members are appointed by the appropriate employers' organizations and trade unions. Non-manual workers are guaranteed a place on the trade union side. Ministries may send representatives to the Council meetings, but these have no vote. Councils may be given power to regulate a vast range of matters including:

1. Registering the businesses with which each is concerned and collecting from them a levy and any necessary information, subject to safeguards against the publication by a council of business secrets.
2. Production and distribution, including such aspects as mechanization, rationalization, standardization, management methods, and competition. This covers price fixing, or the prevention of price fixing. Wages, working conditions, and welfare schemes, recruiting and training programs, schemes covering redundancy.
3. Social, economic, and technical research.

A Council may not make any order which is an "impediment to fair competition." Nor may it regulate such matters as business reserves and investment, nor the establishment, expansion, and closing of businesses. Its decisions can be suspended or annulled by the government "in so far as they are contrary to law or the public interest."

It is not intended that all the powers under the Act should be available in every industry or commodity group, nor that all Councils should have the same constitution. Each industry or commodity group is to have a scheme tailor made to suit its own requirements. These are worked out under the supervision of a national Social and Economic Council also set up by the Act. This, as the Act is careful to insist, is in no way a separate "economic Parliament." It is, like the industry and commodity councils, an advisory body to which may be delegated powers to execute certain aspects of government policy. One third of its members are appointed by employers' associations, one third by trade unions, and the remaining third by the government.

Fogarty points out that:

P.B.O. builds on the foundations of a wide range of industry wide activities which have grown up in Holland over the years. The Dutch system of unemployment pay, for example, seen through British or American eyes, looks more like an industrywide guaranteed wage scheme than a scheme of State social insurance. It is indeed a major contribution passed into law primarily through the Christian parties and social movements, to the idea of the industry as a community with a collective responsibility for all those who work for it.⁷⁵

The idea that people working together in the service of consumers constitute a "natural" sovereign sphere, responsible to and for all its members and also the wider community of which it forms part, has been extended by Catholic and Calvinist Christians to the individual firm as well as to the industry or "commodity group." Both wings of Christian democracy in Western Europe believe that management and workers have common interests and joint responsibility. This should eventually, they insist, be reflected in joint control of the firm. For only full industrial democracy, with not merely a con­sultative but a decisive voice for all, can provide full opportunity for the development of the personalities of the workers and the widest chance for the workers to take responsibility and develop their power to lead. But by joint control the Christian workers' movements mean literally "joint" control and honest cooperation between managers and workers, not a step towards total victory in the class war. For they do not dispute the right of investors to earn such profits as the Catholic theory of the just price permits, nor the responsibility of managers towards consumers and shareholders as well as workers.

A statement by the International Union of Social Studies on Workers' Control summarizes the official Roman Catholic view on the subject:

1. There is in general no absolute or "natural" right to joint control of industrial decisions of any kind.
2. But joint control is in modern conditions often very desirable, for the usual reason of promoting the growth of human personality and opening up new opportunities of leadership and responsibility.
3. Each contributor to a firm's activities brings with him needs and interests which others must respect. Any decision which involves solely the interests of a given individual or group is a matter solely for that individual or group. A decision exclusively affecting the value of a firm's capital assets, for instance, is a matter exclusively for those who provide these assets. But decisions which affect the rights and interests of two or more groups are a legitimate matter for joint control.
4. No formula or set of formulas can yet be said to have proved definitely the best. For the moment, therefore, what is needed is the greatest possible amount of experiment under varying conditions.⁷⁶

In his book L'Avenir de Entreprise – un Patronat qui S'Engage, J. Zamanski, the Chairman of the French Catholic employers' organization, was able to suggest dozens of schemes in firms of all shapes and sizes, ranging from elementary joint consultation to fully shared control. The Christian Democratic parties have been largely responsible for the Works Council laws now in force all over Europe; in France from 1945-1946, in Austria from 1947, in Belgium from 1948, in Holland from 1950, in Germany (the most far-reaching of all) from 1951 and 1952.

Within the firm, the Christian Democratic movements agree that the authority and personal responsibility of top management must be preserved, or even strengthened. The main initiative in policy-making within the firm, as well as the main responsibility for execution, must rest with the top management. Managers must certainly follow a policy in the interests and with the consent of their constituents, inside as well as outside the firm. But they themselves must take the lead in making it.

But this does not mean that the industrial manager should behave like an autocrat. In the opinion of the Catholic trade unionists, effective leadership implies readiness to consult on an equal footing with the various interests concerned, and to accept the decisions at which they as a group arrive. Top managers should be bound by decisions reached at the level of the firm as well as of the industry or the nation. In some firms this has resulted in the workers' councils obtaining the right to nominate members to the boards of companies, e.g., German coal, iron, and steel firms. In others this has resulted in various schemes of profit sharing. Outside Germany and Austria, where joint-control has made the greatest strides, it is more usual for laws establishing works councils to give the councils more restricted powers:

1. The right to elect a council, and to meet management on specified occasions.
2. The right to supervise, and often to administer, their firm's welfare work.
3. Varying responsibilities for "personal" matters such as dis­missals, appointments, or works rules; that is, matters most directly affecting the personnel.
4. The right to be informed about the technical and economic progress of the business, and to discuss it. This in some countries includes the right to send in an accountant to establish and to report and advise on facts about the firm's economic position.⁷⁷

While seeking to establish more harmonious relationships between managers and workers in these various ways, the Christian Democratic and Catholic Action movements still recognize the existence of classes, with distinct ways of life and separate interests which they are entitled to develop and defend. The growth of human personality requires not merely that each individual find a role and status in society appropriate to him, but also that he enjoy a certain measure of security. One of the main foundations of security, as the Christian movements see it, is to belong to a class of people like oneself, among whom one feels at home, and to know that this class is organized and indispensable enough to be a power in the land.

Class organization is seen as having value in industrial relations. Christian Democratic movements may sometimes fear trade union interference with self-government in the firm. But none today would claim that it was possible to build mutual confidence and cooperation in the firm or industry without trade unions and employers' organizations. For mutual confidence is impossible without mutual respect, and this must be based not only on character and common ideals but on organization and strength. One of the last serious challenges to this principle from a Catholic source came in 1924. As a result of disputes in the textile industries in the north of France, the Catholic employers appealed to Rome to condemn the Christian trade unions. The reply published in 1929 reaffirmed the value of class cooperation but at the same time made clear that in the view of the Roman Congregation concerned:

1. Trade unions, entirely independent of the employers, are necessary.
2. The defense by these unions of "legitimate economic and temporal interests" is entirely justifiable.
3. This defense may quite properly be carried on in collaboration, from case to case as conditions demand, with other, non-Christian, working class organizations.
4. A special value of separate class organizations lies in their potentialities for education – hence the special importance of keeping them on a Christian basis.⁷⁸

If the purpose of organizing the members of a social class is first of all to give them a sense of security, it is also essential that the labor organization should be run by, as well as for, the members of that organization. There was a time when the idea of the "mixed guild" prevailed, and when no Christian workers' organization was complete without its middle or upper class patrons. That day is over, and the International Federation of Christian Trade Unions has for many years been the most tenacious defender of the whole trade union world of the principle that class organizations must be fully independent and democratically run. It has the distinction of being the only major trade union body never to admit the right of the state or party-controlled "trade unions" to rank as genuine organizations of the working class. Others, including the T.U.C., have for instance been prepared to admit the Soviet "trade unions" to the International Labor Organisation; but never the I.F.C.T.U.

The Christian Trade Union International (I.F.C.T.U.) has helped the Christian trade union movement to expand overseas by opening two regional offices for Africa and one for Latin America. A Cath­olic trade union movement was started in Canada in 1912 by the Workers Federation of Chicoutimi, Quebec Province. By the end of the nineteen forties it had overcome its teething troubles, built up a membership of 80,000, and become the dominant labor organization in French Canada. Shortly after the Second World War the Dutch Protestant unions dispatched an organizer to Canada, and as a result of his work a number of Christian locals were founded, resulting in the formation in 1952 of The Christian Labor Association of Canada. The French and Belgian Christian trade unions have built up substantial memberships in North and Central Africa and Madagascar. A Christian trade union movement appeared in Vietnam just after the war, grew rapidly, and by 1953-1954 was the biggest and best organized in the country.

Roman Catholic Temporal Action has thus exerted a tremendous influence in the formation of Catholic political parties, workers, movements, and trade unions in the homelands of Latin Christianity. Thanks to the successful efforts of the Catholic laity the Roman Catholic philosophy of labor as defined by papal encyclicals has been translated into reality in Western Europe.

H.  Catholic Action at Work in America←⤒🔗

Until 1908 the Roman propaganda supervised American Catholicism as a mission field, and at the time of the First World War half of America's Roman Catholics were still in foreign language churches. Only in the period between the wars, with mass immigration ended did the Roman Church gain sufficient ground in the struggle to unify and organize its vast invasion of America to be able to turn from internal problems and try to shape American society as a whole towards Roman Catholic goals, including its political and economic objectives.

J. H. Nichols writes in Democracy and the Churches:

The significant development of American Catholicism has taken place under Pius XI and Pius XII since World War I. The tremendous expansion of so-called "Catholic Action" under these leaders has made American Catholicism a stronger sociopolitical force than any other American denomination … No other Church or group of Churches exerts such influence on American education, popular culture, labor, or even possibly American politics, local and national. The Catholic Church looms up less as a religious than as a cultural and political force, because of the new quasi-political character of Catholic Action. This type of mobilization of the laity builds on a higher proportion of people who are not at all devout, but merely social and political Catholics. They are willing to accept the hierarchy as their bosses in con­structing an efficient power bloc.⁷⁹

The new era of Roman Catholic influence and power in the United States began with the conversion of the emergency National Catholic War Council to the National Catholic Welfare Conference in 1919 as the coordinating administrative general staff of American Catholicism. Up till then policies on social issues, for example, had varied from diocese to diocese. Now an integrated nation-wide policy was possible. Annual meetings of the Roman Catholic bishops began in the same year. The results of these developments must not be judged in numbers. As Nichols points out:

The significant results of the American Counter Reformation are rather strategic. With the techniques learned in supporting or fighting European totalitarianism, Roman Catholicism in this generation made a systematic attack on the ganglia of American culture and social control, the schools, press, radio, movies, courts, police, military, labor movement, foreign service, as well as political parties, especially on the municipal and state level. With many of these new developments Protestantism had not come to terms and neither had a policy nor agencies to influence them. Rome had both…

Because of the superior organisation of the Roman Church … and because of its sociological location among the less advantaged groups, the Roman leadership found much more popular support among its laity and exerted more actual influence in political and economic life. This was true in legislation and also in such volun­tary social organizations as trade unions and cooperatives.⁸⁰

Typical of the new attitude of Roman Catholicism toward Ameri­can society as a whole was its new social philosophy, as this had become defined in the great papal encyclicals. It was this new philosophy of labor and industry which gave it the edge over all Protestant groups in America by enabling it to claim to speak for the common working class people of the large American cities. Thus American Catholicism must be held largely responsible for F. D. Roosevelt's success in the presidential elections of 1932, 1936, and 1940.

In no field did American Catholicism exert a greater influence than in the field of labor and industrial relations. Led by John A. Ryan, who had achieved fame by his first book, A Living Wage; Its Ethical and Economic Aspects (1906), and R. A. McGowan, the National Catholic Welfare Conference Department of Social Action came to exert more influence upon the course of American labor legislation and policy than all the Councils for Social Service of the Protestant Churches put together. It was Ryan, in fact, who drafted the famous 1919 Bishops' Program for Social Reconstruction, called by F. L. Broderick, "perhaps the most forward-looking social document ever to come from an official Catholic agency in the United States."⁸¹

The program called for minimum wage legislation; insurance against unemployment, sickness, disability, and old age; a sixteen-year minimum age limit for working children; legal enforcement of the right of labor to organize; a national employment service; public housing; no general reduction in wartime wages, but a long-term program for increasing them, not only for the good of workers, but also to bring about a wider distribution of purchasing power, as the means to prosperity; prevention of excessive profits and income through a regulation of rates of interest which allow the owners of public utilities only a fair return on their actual investment, and, through progressive income taxes on inheritance, income, and excess profits; participation of labor in management and a wider distribution of ownership through cooperative enterprises and worker ownership in the stock of corporations; effective control of monopolies, even by the method of government competition if necessary.⁸²

All of the proposals contained in the Bishops' Program, except for the proposal of labor participation in management, subsequently became fact. The program reflected the papal philosophy of the corporate state, and it served as a vehicle for the democratic principles of labor organization and collective bargaining, while it opened up vistas for employers of the elimination of competition within a given industry. Roosevelt's New Deal and especially the Wagner Act and the Social Security Act embodied many of its proposals. Ryan acclaimed the Wagner Act as "probably the most just, beneficent, and far-reaching piece of labor legislation ever enacted in the United States."⁸³

In 1938, to Ryan's delight, Roosevelt called for and Congress enacted a public works program and primed the pump further through building a two-ocean navy. That same year also saw passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which eventually set up a minimum wage of forty cents an hour and a maximum work week of forty hours for certain businesses engaged in interstate commerce. The Act did not go so far in wages, hours, or coverage as Ryan had wished, but its passage marked a triumph for Roman Catholic labor philosophy. In 1940, partly as the result of work by Ryan and McGowan, the United States Roman Catholic bishops issued a statement on "The Church and the Social Order," which warned against industry's abuse of power and stressed the legitimacy of unions and strikes when necessary as a means of bringing about a greater equality in union-management relations. The bishops called upon business and industry to provide "not merely a living wage for the moment, but also a saving wage for the future against sickness, old age, death, and unemployment."

After Roosevelt's death in 1945, Ryan wrote an article for the Review of Politics in which he said that the National Labor Relations Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, and the Social Security Act "have done more to promote social justice than all the other federal legislation enacted since the adoption of the Constitution."

No less striking than this American Catholic program for the reconstruction of modern society was the technique with which Catholic Action set out to control the shaping of American labor. Such a method of action had been laid down by Pope Pius XI. While admitting the right of Roman Catholic workers to join secular trade unions, the Pope pointed out the necessity for taking certain precautions:

Side by side with these unions, there should always be associations zealously engaged in imbuing and forming their members in the teachings of religion and morality, so that they in turn may be able to permeate the unions with the good spirit which should direct them in all their activity (Quadragesirno Anno, 35).

Under direct orders from Pope Pius Roman Catholic seminaries began instructing all candidates for the priesthood in "the intense study of all social matters." ⁸⁴

In addition, the Pope insisted there must be provided specifically Catholic associations for Catholic union members, in which they would receive Catholic moral training in its social and political bearings.

In 1937 the Association of Catholic Trade Unionists (A.C.T.U.) was organized in America to form a disciplined elite within the labor movement. Chapters soon appeared in many industrial cities, each supervised by a priest. This Catholic Action group works inside the unions today as a Catholic pressure group. At present A.C.T.U. work is largely confined to fighting Communist infiltration of the so-called neutral unions, and its successes have been scored chiefly because the overwhelming majority of labor union members in the United States are also anticommunist.

Catholic Action in America also conducts labor schools which perform notable educational service in the practices of union government, public speaking, economics, and Roman Catholic social doctrine.

The influence of this coordinated penetration was soon apparent, especially in the C.I.O., where the Catholics made themselves the main opponents in the war against the Communist infiltration of American labor unions. Of this Catholic and Communist penetration of the American labor movement, J. H. Nichols writes:

Between these two authoritarian disciplined minority pressure groups it began to be increasingly difficult for the American movement to have any genuine liberal democratic development. Catholic Action was using the anti-Communist issue and Communist methods to establish itself in the strategic centers of American labor, and from there to propagandize its whole antidemocratic "corporative state" program. Rome was effectively fighting Com­munism in American labor and providing leadership in widening labor's share of industrial control. In both regards Protestantism was quite ineffective.⁸⁵

The educational work of the N.C.W.C. Social Action Department included a great variety of conferences as well as publications. After 1922, for example, the "travelling universities" of the Catholic Conference on Industrial Problems opened for scores of two-day sessions in a variety of cities. At these conferences theologians, economists, employers, trade unionists, and government experts engaged in discussion on concrete problems. The Roman clergy were provided with more extended courses, in the priests' summer schools of Social Action, which were organized in ten dioceses. As a result a tremendous change in the attitude of the Roman Catholics in America on social action was effected within a generation.

As a result of this Catholic Action, by 1962, when the first Roman Catholic President of America was elected in the person of John F. Kennedy, the Roman Catholics of America, in terms of the conversion and shaping of society, state, and culture, were exerting more influence in American life than all the Protestants of the nation put together, even though they outnumbered the Catholics by three to two.⁸⁶

How can we explain this? The fundamental difference lies in the church discipline exercised in the two religious systems. The Roman Catholic type of discipline is more external and superficial and easier to maintain. It rests, as we have seen, on clerical authority and control of laymen. The self-interest of the Roman clergy is thus enlisted in the effort to maintain discipline. Rome wants its own schools, hospitals, welfare agencies, press, lawyers, diplomatic agents, labor unions, and political party – all the organs of its own Christiana societas perfecta. In short, Roman Catholics in America as in Western Europe are organized as Roman Catholics and not as mere citizens of the respective countries in which they happen to live.

Unfortunately, the great Protestant denominations of the English-speaking world have become an undisciplined and individualistic body of men and women. Each Protestant today tends to follow the dictates of his own reason rather than the Word of God. In this sense each Protestant has made himself his own pope. Until Protestants recover Calvin's system of church discipline, they can never hope to match the Church of Rome in influencing the cultural developments of their respective nations. As J. H. Nichols well says:

A disciplined church has more influence than a church that does not seek to shape its corporate witness by the will of God … What was left of Protestant discipline was democratic, but some had so long avoided measuring their decisions in prayer and discussion together under the judgment of the living God (of the Scriptures) that there was fear that in putting their professed faith to the test they would discover it was no longer there.⁸⁷

In the providence of Almighty God the Christian Reformed Churches of Holland, America, and Canada have recovered such a discipline, and as a direct result they have once more begun to influence the cultural development of their respective nations, especially in the sphere of labor relations. It is therefore to this Reformed philosophy of labor we shall now turn.

Before doing so let us take heed of the somber warning with which Nichols concluded his great study of Democracy and the Churches:

From the viewpoint of Western culture, or the world as a whole, there were three religious and political blocs to be distinguished. The Roman Catholic world was, save in so far as it had adopted protective coloration in the English-speaking countries, politically authoritarian and dogmatically antiliberal. Marxist countries shared the same formal pattern. Each bloc attempted to define the issues so as to carry with them the Puritan democrats. It was "Democracy against Fascism," or it was "Christian civilization against atheist Communism." It is extremely important both politically and religiously that in this tension Puritan Protestantism retain a very distinct sense of its unique tradition and refuse to be hoodwinked by either of these slogans. Whatever temporary alliances might be expedient, Puritan Protestantism is responsible to God alone and can yield its conscience to no infallible interpreters neither to a party (in Moscow) nor to a hierarchy (in Rome).⁸⁸

A Note on the French Worker-Priest Movement←⤒🔗

We have not dealt with this movement in our own text, since it failed and it was banned by Rome as well as the French bishops. However, we would draw the reader's attention to two important books on the subject. First, there is Emile Poulat's Naissance des Pretresuvriers, which deals with the origins of the movement. Poulat has provided for the first time the full background to the move­ment, and he confines himself to what led up to it.

It was the publication of the book called La France Pays de Mission? in 1943 that concentrated French religious opinion on the gravity of the Church's task in establishing contact with proletarian society. The authors, Abbe Godin and Abbe Daniel, gave facts and figures to justify their thesis that France had become a mission country needing reconverting to Christ. Abbe Godin in particular was consumed with a sense of urgency. He had been closely connected with the Young Christian Workers, and increasingly he had come to realize the need for a special group of priests who would identify themselves with the workers of the industrial suburbs in Paris, not through a parochial structure, but in a mission which would seek to penetrate a society wholly estranged from the Church's traditional ministry. In September, 1943, Cardinal Suhard, the archbishop of Paris, had been so impressed with Godin's book that he ordered the publication of 100,000 copies of it, and he gave his full support to the new initiative of a Mission to Paris which he launched with these words: "The primary object of the Mission to Paris is to convert the heathen. Its secondary object is to demonstrate to the Christian community, that it needs to adopt a new attitude." A few days later, on January 17, 1944, after the inauguration of the mission, Godin died. Yet he remains the key figure to an understanding of the worker-priest movement, though he never lived to see it come to birth.

Godin was far from alone. And Poulat provides much unfamiliar material to justify his claim that La France Pays de Mission was only the culminating point of a movement that both in the efforts of individual priests and in the multiplying agencies of Catholic Action had reflected over many years a profound evolution in the French Church's conception of her missionary task. And, above all else, there was the experience of the war, the fall of France, the millions of French prisoners of war, and later the terrible experience of forced labor and the concentration camps. What might have seemed an academic discussion was transformed by the experience of national humiliation and universal suffering into something very real. For the French clergy were conscripts, and in the German concentration camps they were to be confronted with what had hitherto been a reality far removed from their experience – the almost total estrangement of the workers of France not merely from the practice of religion but from the very sense of religion itself.

Even more crucial was the experience of deportation, when priests who were involved in the Resistance or who had otherwise earned the hostility of the Vichy Government or its German masters went off into captivity and in many cases to death in the concentration camps. An identity in suffering, often with those who had no extrinsic share in their faith, gave to many priests a deep sense of the tragedy of the loss of contact between the Church and the common people of France. Deprived of all privilege, they were just men among men, and found new, often unlikely, ways to exercise a fundamental ministry of compassion. And when, in 1942, the German authorities began the massive movement of French forced labor into German factories, there arose a challenge which was magnificently met. Many priests, with forged papers and with no outward sign of their priesthood, went to Germany with the workers just as the prophets of old had gone into captivity with the people of Israel. They shared the workers' toil and their agony and established clandestine groups of Catholic believers which in turn drew others who had hitherto thought little of the Church and had never in any case considered priests as other than comfortably-off strangers. Nothing is more moving in Poulat's book than his account of this hidden work of devoted priests of God – in Berlin, Dresden, Frankfurt – forced to improvise, deprived of all the usual helps and sanctions of an ordered clerical life. As one of them wrote:

Canon law, liturgy; we have had to drop them. All that architecture which piety and human respect have over the centuries built round the body of Christ … That Christ who many of us have touched with our fingers, Christ the worker who has been sent into forced labour alongside us.

Pere Dillard, a distinguished Jesuit economist who had once dined with President Roosevelt in happier days before the war, found in this direct contact with a world that had hitherto been simply a matter of statistics and sociological research a terrible revelation of the truth:

My Latin, my liturgy, my mass, my prayer, everything that makes me separate, a curious phenomenon, like a pope or a Japanese bronze – a stray specimen left of a race that will soon disappear.

It was no longer a case of a few enthusiasts who had become aware of the pastoral problems presented by the loss of faith among industrial workers in a Paris suburb. A whole generation of young priests and seminarians (for they too had been rounded up for forced labor) returned to France profoundly affected by the years of shared work and suffering with the ordinary working people of France. And their return was not easy. The adjustment to wearing a cassock and living the middle-class life of the conventional French priest seemed a return to the wrong kind of status quo. Yet such were inevitably the pressures of clerical life that very soon it became a matter of business as before. But not for all. And the emergence of the worker-priest movement owes much more, as Poulat makes clear, to this tragic and yet invigorating legacy of the war than to any conscious response to the findings of the religious sociologists or indeed to the changing moods of the theologians.

Perhaps this was the essential weakness, a certain impatience that looked for drastic remedies, and remedies that sometimes were applied without enough regard for the true facts of the case. The easy relationship under the stress of captivity, the necessary improvisation and indifference to law, could not automatically be transferred to life in the settled structures of France itself. It is the great merit of Poulat's magnificent book that he relies entirely on the testimony of the men themselves – but his evidence suggests enough to show how certainly strain and misunderstanding on the part of the French hierarchy with the worker-priests were bound to follow.

If Poulat describes the origin of the movement, Gregor Siefer has given us an excellent account of its decline and collapse. In The Church and Industrial Society (London, 1964) Siefer shows clearly why the worker-priest movement failed, due largely to a fatal un­certainty of purpose. As the priest-workers grew closer to the society they sought to redeem through their presence, they were confronted with the responsibilities of the worker as such. They were inevitably caught up in the conflicts of class warfare always so powerful in France; they could hardly refuse to take their place in a common struggle with the workers if their solidarity with the workers was to be no more than a patronizing gesture. Hence the participation in 1948 of some priest-workers in World Peace Move­ment demonstrations, the embarrassments that followed from the Holy Office's condemnation of communism in 1949, and, above all, the arrest of two worker priests in 1952 during the demonstrations in Paris against the new N.A.T.O., C-in-C, General Ridgway.

Again, many priests had become union leaders and their increasing identification with the aims of the workers led to a questioning of many of the features of usual priestly life. Accusations multiplied; priests had given up saying Mass, they never wore clerical dress, and they were even accused of infidelity to the celibacy by which they were bound.

By 1954 the movement had reached a crisis. On January 19, 1954, the French bishops issued a letter to the worker-priests insisting on a choice of alternatives: "either you rely on your own judgment and refuse obedience to Christ, or you believe with all your soul in Christ, even if your own lives, and those of your forsaken brothers, the workers, are thereby broken. The real problem is one of faith."

Such is the dilemma confronting the Roman Church. Rome cannot really accept the idea that is the workers' own responsibility to redeem the milieu that is their own, and if the priest – as priest – assumes a function that is not properly his, this is to impose, by a strange irony, a clericalism in reverse. Until Rome recovers the great Reformation doctrine of the priesthood of all believers in Christ and the doctrine of the calling, there is no way out of the dilemma which she has brought upon herself by her deviation from the religion of the New Testament.