--- On Mon, 4/20/09, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
> Subject: [lbo-talk] more...
> To: "lbo-talk" <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
> Date: Monday, April 20, 2009, 2:10 PM
> more Rerum Novarum:
>
> > The great mistake made in regard to the matter now
> under consideration is to take up with the notion that class
> is naturally hostile to class, and that the wealthy and the
> working men are intended by nature to live in mutual
> conflict. So irrational and so false is this view that the
> direct contrary is the truth. Just as the symmetry of the
> human frame is the result of the suitable arrangement of the
> different parts of the body, so in a State is it ordained by
> nature that these two classes should dwell in harmony and
> agreement, so as to maintain the balance of the body
> politic. Each needs the other: capital cannot do without
> labor, nor labor without capital. Mutual agreement results
> in the beauty of good order, while perpetual conflict
> necessarily produces confusion and savage barbarity. Now, in
> preventing such strife as this, and in uprooting it, the
> efficacy of Christian institutions is marvellous and
> manifold. First of all, there is no intermediary more
> powerful than religion (whereof the Church is the
> interpreter and guardian) in drawing the rich and the
> working class together, by reminding each of its duties to
> the other, and especially of the obligations of justice.
[WS:] This is just papal bull, bad literature if you will.
A far more sinister is the Catholic Church role in splitting the labor movement in the 20th century by setting up fake labor unions and threatening Catholics with excommunication if they dared to belong to other unions. The damage that the Catholic Church did to labor organizing can only be compared to that done by the US judiciary class.
Wojtek