Introduction
In this essay I will identify the issues which brought about this papal encyclical in 1891, specifically the social conditions of people, resulting from industrialisation and the church’s Christological role in declaring human dignity in terms of God’s plan for mankind. I will set out the historical position in Britain in this late Victorian era within the context of European radical political upheaval, as part of the need for reform and a response from the Church. These issues will be compared with the encyclical one hundred years later, to analyse the development of policy in1891 and 1991 in terms of the church’s teaching, within the context of the wider social and political movements of the late twentieth century. I will determine that whilst John Paul II used the centenary in 1991 to publish Centesimus Annus and see it as a ‘re-wording’ of the original, it ultimately failed to take forward the radical change envisaged in Rerum Novarum, with limited exceptions.
Firstly we need to analyse the background to the period leading up to Rerum Novarum’s publication. Historically it can be argued that the encyclical came too late in the period, fifty years after the 1848 year of revolutionary fever in mainland Europe, yet too early for the full effects of socialism and Marxism in Russia, to have played out. Amidst the background of reform, Leo in his capacity as a papal delegate in the 1840s onwards, had witnessed first-hand the poverty and the effects of industrialisation. Rural communities moved wholesale to the crowded cities but were paid subsistence wages, often in dangerous working conditions with long hours and little rest. L...
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Elected in 1958 as a ‘caretaker Pope’, Pope John XXIII implemented the greatest reforms in the Church’s history. His involvement within the Church had played a significant contribution to the reforming of social, political and liturgical Christian traditions. During the early twentieth century, the Catholic Church still held the century old conservative beliefs and traditions as they continued to separate the Church from the secular world, therefore, disadvantaging the Church to a world that was modernising. In addition to this, the Church restricted modernist thoughts due to the belief that new theologies would threaten the power and authority of the Church, but ...
Carleton- Munro, Dana. The Speech of Pope Urban II. At Clermont, 1095. The American Historical Review. 11. no. 2 (1906): 231.
Towards the middle of the nineteenth century a “Catholic” candidate, Paul Blanshard, ran for presidency. Blanshard was a burden to the Republicans due to his religion. The view of Catholicism was an institutional and political problem. Even if the candidate was not Catholic, he was married by a Catholic priest and apparently that was a connected him to Catholic problems. A political problem because Catholicism was a world power that of Pr...
Roles of the Catholic Church in Western civilization has been scrambled with the times past and development of Western society. Regardless of the fact that the West is no longer entirely Catholic, the Catholic tradition is still strong in Western countries. The church has been a very important foundation of public facilities like schooling, Western art, culture and philosophy; and influential player in religion. In many ways it has wanted to have an impact on Western approaches to pros and cons in numerous areas. It has over many periods of time, spread the teachings of Jesus within the Western World and remains a foundation of continuousness connecting recent Western culture to old Western culture.-
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At the beginning of the sixteenth century church theologian, Martin Luther, wrote the 95 Theses questioning the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church. In this essay I will discuss: the practices of the Roman Catholic Church Martin Luther wanted to reform, what Martin’s specific criticism of the pope was, and the current practices Pope Francis I is interested in refining in the Roman Catholic Church today.
The contemporary Church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch-supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the Church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the Church's silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are.”
...s distributed in Theology 101 at the University of Notre Dame, Fremantle on 22 April 2008.
The renaissance and the reformation were two of the most significant changes in history that has shaped our world today. Both of these great time periods are strikingly similar in some ways and totally different in others. This is because the renaissance was a change from religion to humanism whether it is in art or literature; it is where the individual began to matter. However, the reformation was,” in a nutshell,” a way to reform the church and even more so to form the way our society is today. The first half of this paper will view the drop in faith, the economic powers, and the artistic and literary changes during the renaissance, while the second half will view the progresses and changes the church makes during the reformation.
This particular encyclical by Pope Leo XIII warns of one of the greatest social problems of the late 1800's and of today - the neglect in which Christian virtues are observed. Two very distinct and opposite parts encompass mankind. The first represents truth and virtue, (God's earthly kingdom) the other represents all things against virtue and truth (the kingdom of Satan). Since the beginning of Creation, these two parts have been in conflict.
Pius goes through each of the liberal ideals dissecting each of them, clarifying the Church’s position throughout the encyclical. However, when Pius IX’s statements are put in their original context, Pius IX’s statements are not a condemnation of the liberal government of that time. Dupanloup’s clarification condemned liberal Catholics as heretics, and they were disgraced (pg 316). Pius IX’s favour to those who accepted the whole of his encyclical shows that liberal Catholicism cannot be reconciled with Pius IX’s statements in the Syllabus of
Gonzalez, Justo L. 1984. The early church to the dawn of the Reformation. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
Modern Catholic social teachings trace its beginnings to the writings of Pope Leo XIII. His insight on Christian philosophy, politics and the social order and applies to teachings in current injustices in the economic order. Leo XIII’s teachings were also critical participation in the developments of modern social and economic life. He rooted his social ethics in the supreme value of the human person and added that all political and social structures need to respect and respond to this primary and moral claim of human dignity. While the Church and the political community are autonomous and independent of each other in their own fields, the Church is “at once the sign and the safeguard of the transcendental dimension of the human person”.