Forgotten Treasures
The Counterrevolutionary Lion, Part II

by Peter A. Kwasniewski

In the last column we looked at a number of masterful social encyclicals that Pope Leo XIII promulgated for the universal Church in order to guide her in the midst of delicate and difficult dealings with modern nation-states and modern economic situations. What Leo was really grappling with was the emergence of a thoroughly secularized way of life and worldview, a worldview severed from the Christian past and obsessed with the pursuit of worldly “progress.”

Setting Up the Defense

Pope Leo was among the first to size up the full magnitude of the change that was taking place as the Western world abandoned the Redeemer’s sweet yoke to run after fashionable “-isms” such as liberalism, materialism, and consumerism. These promised ever-expanding freedom while achieving little more than the gradual destruction of the natural and supernatural institutions that console and delight man during his sojourn on earth.

In response to so profound and multifarious a challenge, we see the great Pope addressing not only the social themes spoken of in the last article, but numerous others of larger cultural and religious significance. Leo seems to address these themes as if to erect a bulwark of defense, while also providing a foundation for the positive Catholic response that must, with God’s help, occur if we are to save souls and save the Christian civilization that is our fitting home.

For example, in his encyclical on Christian matrimony, Arcanum (1880), Leo XIII speaks perspicuously of the Creator’s original intention for marriage and the family, and offers a forceful critique of the novel theories and liberal legislation that were just beginning to undermine the family at that time.

Read from our vantage more than 125 years later, we can see, alas, how precisely accurate was every single dire prediction made by the Pope about the deleterious effects of such ideas and laws. But we can also see how well he develops the positive side of his subject, in a way both beautiful and insightful, and which remains entirely valid and fruitful for today’s readers. In fact, it may be said without fear of exaggeration that this encyclical single-handedly inaugurated modern Catholic teaching on marriage and family, which from the time of Pope Pius XI onward has been so very rich and well developed.

In the remainder of this article I shall speak briefly about seven of Leo XIII’s encyclicals concerning the foundations of our intellectual and spiritual life, the unique identity and mission of the Church founded by Our Lord, and the need to reject the pomp of secular humanism in a resolute return to the grace of Jesus Christ.

The Catholic Intellect and the Holy Spirit

Certainly one of the most famous and influential of Leo’s encyclicals is the one often entitled “On the Restoration of Christian Philosophy,” more familiarly known as Aeterni Patris (1879). Note that the Pope, elected in 1878, wasted little time in making sure this document reached the Catholic world. One of the numerous unfinished matters of business that Bl. Pius IX had assigned to the First Vatican Council, which had been forced into suspension in late 1870 by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, was a thorough review and reform of Catholic studies in philosophy and theology. This Leo himself undertook, drawing upon his own experience of the systematic power, synthetic genius, and timeless relevance of St. Thomas Aquinas. With vigor, consistency, and pontifical pressure as needed, Pope Leo XIII brought it about that seminaries and educational institutions around the world took the Angelic Doctor as their guide in studies.

Aeterni Patris was, as it were, the Magna Charta of this movement of restoration, or better, invigoration. It bears rereading today because of the grand sweep of Christian intellectual history it presents and the balanced but decisive preeminence granted to Aquinas as leader and model. The Church would surely be better off if Leo’s advice had been accepted in greater purity—that is, if the actual writings of St. Thomas had become the backbone of Catholic studies rather than countless and often inadequate neoscholastic manuals. But the story of the rise and fall of Neo-Thomism, as well as the more hopeful story of the resurgence of Thomistic discipleship occurring in our own time, must be left for another occasion.

Again, it was in keeping with the First Vatican Council’s effort to articulate the harmony of faith and reason and to respond to the haughty spirit of historical-critical reductionism that Leo XIII issued his encyclical “On the Study of Holy Scripture,” Providentissimus Deus (1893). Like Pius XII’s equally important encyclical on Scripture from a half-century later, Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943), Leo’s has been the victim of a subtle but systematic campaign waged by Catholic modernists who would prefer to leave behind that “traditional stuff” about the divine inspiration, inerrancy, and infallibility of the sacred writings.

But Pope Leo, who was well aware of the attempt of liberal Protestants in his own day to cut down the word of God to merely human, and therefore fallible, proportions, would have none of this heresy. He eloquently reaffirmed and explained traditional Catholic doctrine on the dual authorship, divine and human, of the books of Scripture; the consequent guarantee of freedom from all error; the unbreakable connection between Scripture, Tradition, and magisterium; and the various senses of Scripture discerned by the Fathers of the Church. He also touched on how to make use of modern tools of analysis without imbibing the false philosophical views of their creators.

Let me make a suggestion for summer reading or for a study group: If you seek an accurate grasp of the Catholic understanding of Scripture and its role in the life of faith, study these four documents and in this order: Vatican I’s Dei Filius, Leo XIII’s Providentissimus Deus, Pius XII’s Divino Afflante Spiritu, and Vatican II’s Dei Verbum.

One of the more surprising encyclicals of Leo XIII is his Divinum Illud Munus, (“On the Holy Spirit,” 1897.) Surprising to us, that is, because many Catholics have been led to think that the Holy Spirit was the “forgotten person” of the Holy Trinity until His rediscovery, so to speak, by the charismatic movement in the twentieth century. But nothing could be further from the truth, as anyone familiar with traditional Catholic devotions and literature can attest; indeed it could never have been true, since the Spirit of God is at work in every sacrament, every liturgy, every motion of the soul toward God, every holy person who has ever lived.

This encyclical itself, in its lucid exposition of the Holy Spirit’s “place” in the Trinity and of His presence and action in Christ, in the Church, in the human soul, and in the world, is—quite apart from its authoritative status as papal teaching—a true masterpiece of theological and spiritual prose. We see in its pages a demonstration of how the seemingly abstruse doctrine of St. Thomas can “come alive” in the hands of one who really understands it.

One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic

In 1896 the indefatigable Leo XIII brought out his encyclical Satis Cognitum, “On the Unity of the Church,” which treats the fundamentals of ecclesiology so well that Pope Paul VI in his inaugural encyclical, Ecclesiam Suam (1964), drew special attention to it as a key source for upcoming discussions at the Second Vatican Council, which shortly thereafter produced the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium.

Leo’s encyclical has the great merit of focusing precisely on the question: Did Jesus Christ really intend to found a Church, a visible and hierarchically structured body of believers on earth, charged with the mission of carrying His Gospel and extending the effects of His redemption to the ends of the earth? The Pope systematically, yet succinctly, marshals scriptural evidence, the testimony of Tradition, and rational arguments to bring home his conclusions about the uniqueness and unicity of the Church of Christ with its definitive episcopal structure. In all my years of studying ecclesiology and apologetics, I have not seen any presentation of these themes that is quite as direct, uncluttered, elegant, and inspiring as Leo XIII’s. To say that it would make a splendid text for a study group, an adult education class, or a theology course at school is an understatement.

The Needs of Modern Man

Although each of the nearly 100 encyclicals promulgated by Pope Leo XIII offers insightful commentary on the situation of modern man, as well as consistent good advice for Catholics, there are three encyclicals from around the turn of the twentieth century that have struck me for years as especially emblematic of this Pope’s acute theological vision, uplifting religious fervor, and bold cultural critique. They are Annum Sacrum, “On Consecration to the Sacred Heart” (1899); Tametsi Futura, “On Jesus Christ the Redeemer of Mankind” (1900); and Mirae Caritatis, “On the Holy Eucharist” (1902).

Each speaks of the immense love of God given to us in Christ Jesus, the mercy extended to us castaways of Adam’s shipwreck, and the divine truth in which alone our minds can find peace amidst the storms of ever more bewildering and contradictory philosophies of life. The Pope is not content merely to assert that such is our dire condition and such our salvation; he spells it out step by step: Here is where the false philosophies will lead you, Modern Man, and here is how God can rescue you from the pit of destruction that grows with your neglect and contempt of His good news.

In these pages, Leo XIII issues an impassioned plea for conversion from the heart, beginning with the Church herself and moving outward in concentric circles to embrace all mankind. And like all the popes before and after him, Leo beckons us to gather around the most sublime of all sacred mysteries on earth, the Holy Eucharist—the Body and Blood of our Redeemer—and to let it gather us into one Church, one Body, full of the lifeblood that heals the fallen sons of Adam.

Those who read the encyclicals I have recommended will be amazed to see how much of the essential work of Vatican II, the evangelical impulse of John Paul II, and the pastoral wisdom and witness of Benedict XVI is luminously anticipated and lined out in them, like a well-wrought sketch in preparation for a painting. Readers will begin to sense how deeply and decisively the Church’s magisterium was shaped and set on course by this remarkable pontiff in his quarter-century reign (1878–1903), whose choice fruits continue to bloom in the garden of the Church.

Peter Kwasniewski is an associate professor of theology at Wyoming Catholic College and a visiting professor at the International Theological Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in Gaming, Austria. He received his BA in liberal arts from Thomas Aquinas College in California and his MA and Ph.D. in philosophy from The Catholic University of America.

Kwasniewski has published extensively in scholarly and popular journals and directs Gregorian chant and other sacred music. He and his wife, Clarissa, have two children and are lay members of the Order of Preachers.

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