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The encyclical letter Rerum Novarum of Pope Leo XIII is proof of the vitality and clarity of the Catholic Church as she addressed the principal issues of the modern world. It is a brilliant and compassionate response to the brutality of industrial capitalism and to the ultimately violent ideologies of socialism on both the right and the left. Anyone who reads this document will be amazed that the Roman popes, whose thought and office were despised by the cutting edge elites of that time, as today, were able to describe and correct the defects of contemporary society, offering real solutions.
Sadly, the solutions offered by the pope were largely unheeded, and where they were they were opposed by capitalists and socialists alike. Pope Pius XI published the encyclical Quadrigesimo anno in the 1930s on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of Rerum novarum with a similarly trenchant analysis, which this time included the banking system and high finance. Sadly, the world did not listen, and still does not, as the responses to the social teaching of Bl. Paul VI, St. John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI show.