THE SOCIAL MOVEMENT
Through the whole century one line of thought and action has been gradually disengaging itself from all others and dominating them. That is the social movement, or the tendency towards a more evenly just and natural conception of all the relations that arise from the common dwelling of mankind in organized society. It has long taken the form of institutions and plans for the betterment of the conditions of the people, of woman, of all who suffer or think they suffer from the actual organization of society. If there is something Utopian in certain plans or hopes, there is too much that is justifiable at the root of other attempts to reorganize our social conditions. Not to speak of the undesirable inheritances of the past, the new conditions created for the common man by the spread of industrialism and commercialism have often been painful in the extreme, and have aroused both violent protests and deep sympathy. By the help of God we have abolished the reproach of slavery in every civilized land, but we hear from the laboring multitudes a vague cry that they are already in the throes of a return to that accursed institution.
Here the doctrines of Catholicism are eminently in accord with the right conception of human nature, the functions of authority and mutual help or charity, the duty to live, and the right to all the necessary means for that end. She is sympathetic, historically and naturally, to the toiling masses, who, after all, form everywhere the bulk of her adherents, and have been always the most docile and affectionate of her members. It is she who created in the world the practical working idea of a common humanity, the basis of all genuine social improvement. The trials of Catholicism have come more often from the luxury and the sin of those in high places than from the disaffection of its great masses. As this movement has gathered force, and passed from theories into the domain of action, the Catholic Church, through her head, has followed it with attention and respect. The whole pontificate of Leo XIII. is remarkable for acts and documents which have passed into the history of social endeavor in the nineteenth century. His personal charities, large and enlightened, are as nothing in comparison with the far-reaching acts like the refusal to condemn the association of the Knights of Labor. His encyclical on the Condition of Workingmen recalls the only possible lines of a final concord between labor and capital—the spirit and teachings of Jesus Christ, the best Friend our common humanity ever had. In the same way, his latest encyclical on Jesus Christ, with which the religious history of the century closes, emphasizes the true basis for the restoration of peace and harmony and justice between the poor and the rich, between the producers of capital and the capital that stimulates and regulates production. We may be confident that the papacy of the future will not show less enlightenment and sympathy in its attempts to solve these delicate and grave problems with the least injustice and the greatest charity.