AMERICAN SOCIAL PASTORAL

frh Christianity Failed To Oust Marxism
Christians Have Let The Church Down
THE Joint Pastoral on the Social Order which has just been issued by the American Hierarchy is the latest in the long series of authoritative pronouncements by Popes and Bishops on where Christianity stands in regard to the burning problem of the day, the problem of how a man shall live in an economic order which is directed to the making of money and the wielding of power.
The concluding sentences of the Pastoral might well be committed to memory, for they summarise in concise language the main points; of the Christian challenge.
They read : " In conformity with Christian principles, economic power must be subordinated to human welfare, both individual and social; social incoherence and class conflict must be replaced by corporate unity and organic function ; ruthless competition must give way to just and reasonable State regulation; sordid selfishness must be superseded by social justice and charity. Then only can we eliminate the twin evils of insufficiency and insecurity, and establish the divine plan of a brotherhood of man under the fatherhood of God."
(I)
ALIENATION OF WORKING-MAN IN the early part of the Pastoral the Bishops refer to the alienation 1 from the Church of large numbers of working-men. It was this fact which, fifty years ago, haunted the mind of Leo XIII and which prompted him to restore to the world those social and economic principles of Christendom which had been allowed to lapse through disuse after the Reformation. Leo felt—and here his thought was parallel to that of Karl Marx—that the new world would depend upon solving the social problem rather than attempting to recapture for Christianity the artificial political order, with the protection it afforded for the exploiters of the Industrial Revolution.
Rerum Novarum still reads like a revolutionary document : Misery and wretchedness press unjustly on the majority of the working class. . . . Society is divided into two widely different castes : those who manipulate for their own benefit all the sources of supply and the needy and powerless multitude, sick and sore in spirit. . . . A small number of the very rich have been able to lay upon the teeming masses a yoke little better than that of slavery itself. . . . Ti may be truly said that only by the labour of working-men do States grow rich. . . . A workman's wages should be sufficient to support himself, his wife and his children. . . . It is just and right that the results of labour should belong to those who have bestowed their labour. . . ."
To re-read these sentences makes one wonder what need there can have been for further Encyclicals and Pastorals, what need for this latest Pastoral, which echoes the voice of the great Pontiff. We are forced to conclude that Rerum Novarum failed.
(ii) " RERUM NOVARUM " FAILED REBID/ NOVARUM did fail. It failed because the body of Catholics was not courageous enough to attend to it. It failed because it was not articulated by the limbs of the Mystical Body of Christ. Berm Nocarum lacked only one thing which Marxism possessed : it lacked the appeal to violence. Marxism won through because it possessed the physical dynamism of chess-conflict. Men fought for Marxism. They plotted. They established societies. They organised the workers. They aimed by strikes and the methods of revolution to dominate or capture the State. Leo appealed to another kind of force, the force of the spirit, the dynamism of Christian justice and charity. And it was in this appeal that he failed. The body of Christians proved incapable of rising to the call of the Church, as the body of Marxists rose to the call of the class-conflict. They proved incapable of setting in their own lives the Christian example which might have made the methods of Marxism as unnecessary as they were inadequate. They lacked the will to see that Christianity should stand everywhere for justice rather than respectability. It is terrible to think in what degree we Christians are responsible for the social troubles of our day and the alienation from the Church of the people through our indifference in following the lead of Leo XIII. Even now it is no uncommon thing for a Catholic 'newspaper or a Catholic book or a Catholic speaker to be considered dangerous or subversive or " as Pink as they dare be " because they take seriously the words of Leo, fifty years ago, or the words of the American Bishops to-day. Listen to them : " Industry should therefore provide not merely a living wage for the moment, but also a saving wage for the future against sickness, old age, death and unemployment. . . ." " To remedy the situation it is necessary .to adopt right principles for the distribution of the income of industry. . . ." " The two great dangers which society faces in the present state of economic organisation are, first, the concentration of ownership and control of wealth; and secondly, its anonymous character, which results from some of the existing business and corporation law, whereby responsibility towards society is greatly impaired if not completely ignored. . ." " Our economic life must be reorganised on the constructive principle of social and moral unity among the members of human society." A WRONG CHOICE IT is easy to make excuses and plead the danger to the social fabric I of Christian principles in their naked ruggedness. But of what use is the social fabric if it drives men from God and alienates them from the Church? As we look around today and watch civilisation tottering to a pagan, godless economic and social collapse, can we honestly as Christians say that we were right to prefer the preservation of the State, of the " respectable order," of our melting money, to the demand of Pope Leo that we should save society and leave the State and respectability to fend for themselves? But how distinguish this Christian socialism from Marxism ? it may be asked. That, again, is an extraordinary question, as coming from Christians. Does not every item of the Christian programme lead to God through the practical love of our neighbour and the defence of his rights as a human being, made in God's image, while every item of Marxism leads to the domination of the material godless State? Does not every true Christian social reformer look to the individual body and soul of the least of Christ's brethren, while every Marxist looks to the domination of an abstract class, the triumph of the impersonal proletariat Is it for the Christian philosopher suddenly to turn materialist, and judge the true nature of changes not by their final causes, but their material constitution (iv) THE MARXIST FRAUD rfDivine plan of a brotherhood of man under the fatherhood ,, God." What moaning have those words for the Marxist who denies God ? As Pope Leo made so clear, Marxism is a fraud because it makes promises which it cannot fulfil. It. promises happiness and power to the worker through the sole acquiring of wealth and a political stake in the new workers' republic. Yet all history and all psychology have proved of er and over again that mere wealth and power cannot bring happiness. The millionaire, after a life spent in making money and enjoying it, is as likely to commit suicide through the contemplation of the inanity of his career as is the underpaid worker through despair. Set before men the acquiring of wealth and power as the ends of life and no person can point out at what exact point happiness and satisfaction will result. The more you get, the more you want. In truth, Marxism does nothing but attempt to render to the millions what has failed to satisfy the so-called lucky few. And inevitably every vice and every injustice which has brought the capitalist world crashing down before our eyes will be transferred to the Marxist world. The stories of Russia, of Spain, of Popular Front France have proved it. Christianity rejects absolutely both the concrete inducement of acquiring wealth and power and the abstract ideals of a workers' State or a world dictatorship of the Proletariat, because the first cannot bring satisfaction and the second is as much of a snare as any other political structure which fails to put the needs and rights of the living individual before the abstract good of the mass. Christianity offers to every human being, as a distinct living person, the happiness that results from seeking God, the Father of all men, through the living, in soul and body, of the life planned by Him for the satisfaction here below of the desires implanted in him and the attainment hereafter of the end for which he was created.
• (v) PRACTISING WHAT WE PREACH B"Tall this means nothing to the millions whose conditions of life make them the insecure slaves of a system whose ends bear no relation to their own true welfare, body and soul. The person is the living unity of both. Both demand the right to fulfil their natural ends and to enjoy what is needed and what God gave them for this purpose. That is why Christianity, while utterly rejecting the ends of Marxism, should not rest until society sees to it that every Person, however humble or ignorant or incapable, is given the full chance of making his life. To every working-man, to every member of the itnemployed, to every beggar it says : We demand that you shall have your opportunity to live a full human life, for this opportunity is the natural, God-willed condition under which you should attain happiness by doing the things, natural and supernatural, which God meant you to do. Nothing may stand in the way of this. No Christian worthy of the name can be content until society consciously works for this end and sacrifices everything to it.
Such is the real burden of the social encyclicals and pastorals. Such is the teaching of the Church. But the Church is not an earthly force, a political power, a revolutionary army. The Church leads, but she cannot enforce. Whether what the Church declares to be true is put into operation does not depend upon the Pope or the Bishop : it depends upon the body of Christians. They must articulate the doctrine of Christ by their lives and their work. They must, without turning Christianity into a political party, see .to it that political parties adopt this radical Christian programme. One encyclical or pastoral can follow another, and little headway will be made until the body of Christians, clergy and lay, sit up and realise that what the Pope is saying is something which depends upon each of us. Until that happens, the army of those who suffer hour byhour from " the twin evils of insufficiency and insecurity " have the right, to answer : " We will begin to take Christianity seriously as an alternative to Marxism when Christians begin to take seriously what Christianity preaches."