Revisiting Rerum Novarum on its 133rd anniversary, I am struck by two related observations. First, by how familiar it sounds. If you set aside the clunky translation and 19th century writing style, it could have been written yesterday. Second, by Pope Leo XIII’s descriptions of how the unchecked personal greed of both capital and labor could produce a corrupted state and ruin our society. Would that we had listened to him!

Observing the conflict between owners and workers touched off by the social upheaval that followed the industrial revolution, Pope Leo asks, “What advantage can it be to a working man to obtain by means of a society material well-being, if he endangers his soul for lack of spiritual food?”

True Capitalism and True Communism aren’t so different. Both are profoundly materialist. Owners, in their greed, covet additional possessions. Workers, in their greed, covet possessions they lack. Both, variously, utilize manipulation, propaganda, coercive laws, and force to achieve their ends. Neither are so different in that light. Whether one seeks to accumulate wealth or distribute it broadly, the focus is on the here-and-now. Seeking either as an end in itself is contrary to Christianity. Riches, “whether we have them in abundance, or are lacking in them—so far as eternal happiness is concerned—it makes no difference; the only important thing is to use them aright.” The Pope, citing our Lord, inquires: “What doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?”

From our recent experience in the Cold War, American individualistic capitalist materialism seems far superior to Soviet collectivist communist materialism. But that attitude embraces the idea of class struggle, which is “So irrational and so false” that “the direct contrary is the truth.” Red or blue, Leo demonstrates, neither were Christian: “as our Lord teaches… the mark or character that distinguishes the Christian from the heathen” is this: “After all these things do the heathen seek… Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His justice: and all these things shall be added unto you.”

What happened during the 20thcentury? It seems to me that capitalism and communism merged. Since the New Deal, the American government has continually expanded, and still expands, at an unprecedented rate. The government took control of the economy, brought women into the workforce to toil as men, permitted and supported divorce, created a welfare state to promote broken families, legalized and endorsed contraception and abortion (one would hate for a child to wreck a career or lifestyle, the poor are a drain on society), created a burdensome tax system with complex carveouts for the wealthy inaccessible by the common man, created a regulatory superstructure that privileges massive businesses over local competitors. Each of those came, at first, gradually. Then, in the 21st century, the previous century’s material prosperity started to end, and everything has begun coming apart… America has not been seeking the Kingdom of God. What should we expect?

This all tracks Pope Leo’s warnings against proposals for the state to usurp paternal, familial, and property rights. What he warns of sounds familiar, where “society would rightly be an object of detestation rather than desire,” where the state would “be unjust and cruel if, under the name of taxation, it were to deprive the private owner of more than is fair,” where “the sources of wealth themselves would run dry, for no one would have any interest in exerting his talents or his industry,” where they “strive[e] against nature [] in vain.”

Today, having failed to heed Pope Leo’s warning, we live in an era of social deracination, economic decline, and an unprecedented mental health crisis.

Leo XII taught that mutual duties bind the rich and poor, that we all rely upon each other. The principle has been eternal, but the industrial revolution and its aftermath have changed the particulars. Sadly, rather than embracing this collective challenge, we have chosen greed, isolation, and enmity. Today the rich and poor, as best they are able, seek their gain at the other’s expense.

We are far from the common good.

The industrial revolution rocked the Christian social and political orders. Rerum Novarum began the Church’s yet unfinished response. To see today the same problems as Pope Leo XIII is a call to action! To continue his still-unfinished work and implement the Church’s still-unimplemented teachings.