CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XIV., No. 83.—FEBRUARY, 1872.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by Rev. S. T. Hecker, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.
THE DUTIES OF THE RICH IN CHRISTIAN SOCIETY.
NO. I.
IN REFERENCE TO COMMUNISM.
Under the foregoing title, we propose to present to the careful attention of the wealthy class of American citizens a series of essays on some topics which concern them very nearly. We intend to make each one short, that it may be easily read, and that the reader who is interested in the matters we discuss may have time to think over each topic by itself. We address them principally to Catholics, and shall, therefore, always take for granted and appeal to Catholic principles and doctrines. Yet we are convinced that others not Catholics will find a great deal in them which they must acknowledge to be true, and likely to do them good, if they are at all earnest and conscientious.
Since we expect to say some things to the rich, and to those who are by other advantages besides wealth in an elevated social position, which will be severe, and perhaps to some unpalatable, we may as well begin by placing a guard against a possible misunderstanding of our intent. No careful reader of our magazine can suppose that we would sympathize with or encourage any movement hostile to the just rights or reasonable privileges of the wealthy class. Moreover, we cherish a deep respect for all the hierarchical institutions of the political and social order, as well as for their more sacred and elevated counterparts in the ecclesiastical system. We recognize the necessity, even in our republican commonwealth, of a certain elevated social class, in which men of wealth must unavoidably have an eminent position. Whatever we have which can check our ultra-democratic tendencies, infuse a conservative spirit into our public opinion, give dignity, decorum, and stability to our institutions, elevate and refine our social tone, and add a becoming splendor to our civilization, calls forth our sympathies, and receives our deliberate and reasoned approbation. Whatever censures, therefore, we may pronounce upon
the vices, follies, and delinquencies of the rich and the otherwise highly placed in social rank, and whatever admonitions we may address to them respecting the duties and dangers of their position, must be taken as coming from a friend, not only to themselves as individuals, but to their class. With these preliminaries, we address ourselves to our task.
We have placed the title “In Reference to Communism” at the head of our first article for one special reason. Communism threatens the wealthy class with a war of extermination. It is obvious, therefore, that the rich have more need to reflect on the duties and dangers of their position, at the present time, than they have ever had before. So, then, we call their attention at the outset to the war which the fanatics of revolution are preparing for them, in order that our words may have more weight, and that they may give more serious thought to the subjects we intend to discuss with them. And here we will explain that we employ the single terms “rich,” “rich people,” etc., for convenience’ sake, including under this designation other qualifications besides moneyed wealth, and other persons besides those who possess great fortunes; namely, all those who possess any species of privilege or power which gives them social dignity and influence.
We say, then, to the rich: your class, your privileges, your possessions, your lives, are threatened by an enemy whose character is disclosed by the bloody orgies of the Paris Commune. What application do we make of this grave and alarming fact? Simply this. The rich members of society ought to reflect seriously on all the questions which relate to their position in the commonwealth. They ought to think of their duties, to examine their own delinquencies,
to consider the line of conduct they ought to adopt, to use their power and influence rightly and rationally, to educate their children carefully, and in every way to prevent and defeat the nefarious plots of the party of revolution. We say, earnestly and emphatically, that there is now a special necessity and obligation to use wealth, education, intellectual power, social influence, political power, moral and religious force, to avert the dangers which threaten society, and to promote its solid and firm establishment on a right basis. Moreover, the self-interest of the rich demands this of them most imperatively. All their private and personal interests depend on the peace and good order of society. Their own safety demands of them that they should work for the salvation of political and social order, when they are in danger, just as they would bear a hand at the pumps on board a leaking ship, or man the batteries of their own beleaguered city. Hostility between the wealthy and the laborious classes is a great evil in society. When the hostility of the masses against the aristocracy becomes violent, and tends to produce a revolution and an exterminating war of the former against the latter, there is a deadly sickness in the body politic which threatens its dissolution. This state of things exists at present in Christendom. We are not so deeply affected as yet in this country; but we are not altogether sound or safe from the infection, and there is reason enough to be on the alert to protect ourselves from it. The rich have duties toward society in general, and toward its several classes and individuals in particular. And they have, at the present time and in present circumstances, a special obligation to give these duties careful attention.
All this would he strictly true and sufficient to arouse the rich to a greater vigilance in fulfilling the duties of their high position, even if they were free from blame, as a class, for the disorders and evils of modern society; but, if they are chiefly to blame for these evils through their past neglect and delinquency, there is an additional and imperative motive in this fact for a strenuous effort on their part to repair the past in the present and the future by a redoubled fidelity and energy. We think they are to blame. It is our deliberate judgment that communism, and the whole mass of social disorders which have lately come to the surface of the body politic under this loathsome and deadly form, are principally to be traced to the abuse of power and wealth by the governing classes. Kings, nobles, rich men, authors, politicians, have, in part by their gross abuse of the trust committed to them, and in part by their neglect and indifference, generated the moral petroleum to which demagogues and leaders of revolution, the Mazzinis, Garibaldis, Karl Marxes, Dombrowskis, and Raoul Rigaults, have applied the torch. There have been many great and good things done by kings, and by the members of the political, social, and intellectual aristocracy. There have been many admirable and excellent persons, many heroes and saints, among these elevated classes in society. Nevertheless, on the whole, they have been, especially for the past three centuries, grievously delinquent, and continually becoming worse; and even more extensively delinquent by neglect than by positive criminality. The greatest part of the miseries and crimes which darken the annals of history may be traced to kings and their associates in government. Their ambition, their selfish policy, their
unjust or unnecessary wars, their disregard of the happiness of the common people, their haughtiness of demeanor, their personal vices and corrupting example, have been the fruitful causes of misery and vice among their subjects. They have reacted against themselves by producing hatred and contempt of thrones and kings, of authority and government. The aristocracy have followed closely the royal example set before them. And the men of genius and intellectual culture, the princes and rich men of the realm of arts and letters, since the fatal epoch of the renaissance of paganism, have prostituted their heaven-born gifts to the service of every destructive error and every corrupting vice. The greater number of those who have not positively aided the work of ruin have been apathetic and indifferent, and have not positively aided the work of salvation, at least with the zeal and energy which might justly be expected from them.
Moreover, kings, nobles, and the wealthy class have made war on the church. They have revolted against the Holy See, enslaved the hierarchy and the clergy, and despoiled the church.
They have robbed and well-nigh suppressed the monastic orders. In this way, they have sapped and undermined the foundations of their own stability; for it is the principle of religious obedience and reverence, first of all toward God, and then secondarily toward all powers established and sanctioned by the law of God, which is the source of the sentiment of loyalty. The rebellion of the state against the church must, therefore, terminate in the rebellion of the lower against the higher classes in the state. The monastic institution was the strongest of all links between rich and poor, great and humble, by reason of the fact that its members belonged to both classes at the same
time. The destruction of monasticism, therefore, resulted necessarily in a hostility of these two classes toward each other. So it has come about that the aristocracy, excited by kings against the church, turned next against the kings, the commercial and middle classes turned against the aristocracy, and now the masses are turning against the men of wealth, or, as their own leaders express it, against “the supremacy of cash.” The condition of the laboring classes is, at best, in many respects a hard one. It is a great and an arduous thing which is required of them; to submit patiently to the supremacy of the higher classes. Religion alone makes their position tolerable; religion, binding together both the superior and the inferior classes in divine love. The hierarchy and the aristocracy must be recognized by the people as holding their high position for the common good of all, and as working with a self-denial equal or superior to their own; that is, as really laborers in another sphere of action, but with a common end in view, in order that they may contentedly acquiesce in the inequality of rank, wealth, and social privileges which prevails in society. So soon as the people are convinced, whether wrongly or rightly, that the privileges of their spiritual or temporal superiors are mere privileges of a caste, which despises, rules, and taxes the people for its own selfish aggrandizement and pleasure, they begin to hate them with a deadly hatred. The Catholic people are content that the Pope govern, rebuke, and punish them; that he possess the wealth and splendor of a spiritual and temporal sovereign; that he reign as the vicegerent of God on earth—because they believe that all this is for their own highest good. They are content that bishops and priests possess
all the honors and privileges of their office, and willing to sustain them in these, for the same reason. Take away this belief, and it is not long before they begin not only to withhold their contributions, to withdraw their allegiance, to refuse obedience, to lose respect and love for their spiritual superiors, but to cry out for their overthrow and even clamor for their blood. It is the same in respect to the secular privileged classes. And, at the present moment, since the greatest amount of external and material privilege, splendor, and worldly good in general has passed into the hands of the wealthy class, it is this class which is most immediately exposed to the brunt of the attack which is directed against caste and privilege. We will quote the language of one of the official organs of the International Society, the Egalité of Geneva, in order to show with the utmost clearness what is their spirit and aim:
“When the social revolution shall have dispossessed the bourgeoisie, in the interests of public utility, as the bourgeoisie dispossessed the nobles and the clergy, what will become of them?
“We cannot answer with positive certainty, but it is probable that the new order of things will give them, to borrow an expression from one of our friends, an infinitely more precious wealth, that of labor, well paid, at their discretion; so that they may be no longer obliged to live by the labor of others, as they have hitherto lived. In case some of them should be incapable of labor, which will happen to a good many, seeing that hitherto they have never learned the use of their ten fingers, what then? Well, then they will be given tickets for soup.
“‘But that is too little,’ the bourgeois will howl.
“‘Too little!’ the workman will reply—‘too little to have work, at your discretion, well paid, and soup for the invalids! The deuce! You are hard to please. We could have been well satisfied with such terms formerly.’”[119]
This is the unavoidable conclusion, and the practical as well as unavoidable conclusion, to which the whole mass of the people must come, unless they are convinced that the rich labor more usefully for the common good, and for the good of the poor, by means of their wealth with its attendant privileges, than they would by manual labor. They cannot be convinced of this, unless rich and poor alike recognize the truth of religious and Christian principles, and act on them practically. On the materialistic, anti-theistic ground, you cannot get a foothold against communism. It is all a waste of words to show that civilization, art and science, social and political splendor, national greatness, etc., require the concentration of wealth in a few hands. What does the poor man care for these, if this life is all, material good the summum bonum, and he himself miserable? His condition becomes insupportable, and he would rather burn the world with petroleum than bear it. It is very true that his desperate efforts will make his condition far worse. But he will not listen to you when you try to prove this to him, and, if you should even convince him, you would only render him more desperate. He must believe that he is under the government of God, that he has been redeemed by Christ, that heaven is opened to him by faith, that this world is a place for gaining merit by labor and suffering, that the difference in rank, wealth, and privilege is ordered by God for the good of all and every one, if he is to be contented with his lot. For him is the Pope, the bishop, the priest, the splendid church, the glittering vestments and chalices. For him, too, is government, for him is commerce and trade, for him science and art, for him are some
men rich. The church and the state are necessary for his good, and both church and state have need of men in whose hands wealth and power are deposited.
If the people are to be convinced of this, they must see that their spiritual and temporal superiors are convinced of it, and act accordingly. The rich as well as the poor must act on Christian principles—act as men who have a trust committed to them for the common good. They must, in a word, be zealous laborers in their own sphere. And it is especially incumbent on them, at the present time, to do everything possible to ameliorate and elevate the condition of that class of society who are not merely doomed to a life of manual labor, but to a life of misery and degradation. The people have been taught that they possess political sovereignty, and universal suffrage has given them the right and power to exercise it. Can they be expected, then, to remain content for ever with a sovereignty which is united with a state of social abjectness and misery? Is it safe or prudent to neglect, despise, or insult them; or to swindle them and defraud them of their rights, and at the same time to flaunt before their eyes the gaudy insignia of what they believe to be ill-gotten wealth? Especially when we consider that they read the newspaper every day. We leave it to our rich merchants and our educated men to think over and answer to themselves these questions.
For ourselves, we are convinced that the only safety for the wealthy class, and for society, is to be found in a return to purely Christian and Catholic principles. And we shall proceed to give our views more definitely and in detail upon the part which devolves on the rich in this work of social regeneration, in our future articles.
[119] See the Dublin Review, Oct., p. 459.