“If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” Psalm 11:3.

In the conclusion of Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII makes the following remark: “Every one should put his hand to the work which falls to his share, and that at once and straightway, lest the evil which is already so great become through delay absolutely beyond remedy.”

Absolutely beyond remedy. That’s a scary thought. If evil was “already so great” in 1891, what would Pope Leo XIII think now, if he took but a cursory glance at the present state of things?

I’m chronically melancholic, but I’m trying hard to be an “optimist by conviction.” The situation isn’t hopeless, but it’s really bad. I sure wish it was better. If we’ve learned anything these past few years—no, months—it’s that our plan of pouring money into a primarily political assault on evil has been a failure. Maybe we should pay more attention to something else that Pope Leo XIII says in Rerum Novarum: “[I]f human society is to be healed now, in no other way can it be healed save by a return to Christian life and Christian institutions.”

I don’t mean for this to be a thesis, but it’s far from my own. In one of the final paragraphs of the encyclical, the Pope writes: “[M]en should rest persuaded that the main thing needful is to re-establish Christian morals, apart from which all the plans and devices of the wisest will prove of little avail.” (My emphasis.)

Another thing that caught my eye (and shifted my perspective) when reading this encyclical is when Pope Leo XIII places “gifts of the mind” on at least the same level as temporal riches. One who has received such gifts “has received them for the purpose of using them for the perfecting of his own nature and… for the benefit of others.” He quotes St. Gregory the Great, who compares one who does not employ these gifts (notably, “art or skill”) to the man in the Gospels who hid the one talent that he was given and did not make use of it to bear fruit.

Christian morals need to be restored if we’re to have any hope of renewing the culture. The problem is: how do we bring these back? How do we re-establish the moral foundations that have been destroyed, especially since the very foundations of knowing reality itself have been destroyed?

Perhaps, in one way at least, through “gifts of the mind;” through “art or skill” heretofore undervalued.