We now have States that allow free license to all vices lethal to the family. Pope Leo would have understood that demonic strategy

The State Exists to Serve, Not Usurp, the Family

by Anthony Esolen

We are approaching, in this series, Pope Leo XIII’s great encyclical Rerum Novarum, on the condition of the working classes.  I’ve been maintaining that it is impossible to discuss Catholic Social Teaching without specifying what Catholics understand as a society.  I’ve also insisted upon the wise dictum of Saint Thomas, that grace perfects nature, which alone suffices to instruct the attentive Catholic that to sever faith from civic life is artificial and unnatural.  Now it’s time to look at two societies which the Pope holds up for our affection and admiration: the Christian family, and the Church.

Far from seeing religion as a pleasant decoration superadded to civil society, the Pope affirms that “religion, and religion only, can create the social bond” (Au Milieu des Sollicitudes, 1892).  History—and Leo is an historian with a long and broad vista—teaches us as much.  The key word in his sentence is bond.  This bond is more profound than the phantom “contracts” dreamed by Hobbes, Locke, and their followers.  For Leo sees another dimension, the moral and spiritual depth of man—what makes it impossible for us to reduce him to his material wealth and appetites. 

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